Jan Hammer
Jan Hammer
Jan Hammeris a Czech musician, composer and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the popular 1980s program, Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer, expanding to producing film later in his career...
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth17 April 1948
growing-up growing jazz
Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.
mother singers today
My mother is a singer, still performs today; she's a jazz singer.
impossible problem reason
The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.
bits broke connected happened hopefully jazz maybe music rock showing start wide
Maybe there'll be new bits of music that will start showing up. You know? Like what happened in the 60s. Everything just broke wide open. Music started getting connected between Jazz and Rock and Pop. Everything was wide open, there was much more freedom. Hopefully something like that will happen again.
perform quotes
It's not really that I didn't want to perform at all. What I didn't want to do was try to put together a band, rehearse, on my own. You know what I mean?
happened
The band couldn't have happened anywhere else in the world but New York. That was the catalyst.
clicked people took
The writing is not as important as how the people who are playing, play together, how they clicked and where we took it with improvisation.
passion gone spontaneity
The passion and spontaneity in music is all gone.
knows
You never know what you find once you really get going.
fun play stills
Still for fun, I play the drums, but I don't do much recording with them.
years television film-and-television
I've been doing a lot of music for films and television for quite a few years.
moving fuel way
Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.
talking voice america
It was very hard to get any records, so the only source for us to really hear what was happening was listening to the Voice of America. We would be taping all the broadcast and then sharing the tapes and talking about it.
years wells
I spent well over a year on the road with Sarah Vaughn. That was amazing.