# Pavel Smetáček died at the age of 82; Mick Goodrick at age 77; Victor Evans – Jazz ‘warrior’ dies aged 88: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/11/24/pavel-smetacek-died-at-the-age-of-82-mick-goodrick-at-age-77-victor-evans-jazz-warrior-dies-aged-88-videos-photos/
- Published: 2022-11-24T00:02:46+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Pavel Smetáček died at the age of 82 on 
Sunday. His family informed about the death of the leader of the Traditional Jazz
Studio ensemble. From 1994 to 1998 Smetáček worked as a diplomat at the Czech Embassy
in Rome.**

The ensemble Traditional Jazz Studio commemorated their first concert 55 years ago
in November 1959 with a concert in Prague’s Music Museum in 2014. The ensemble actively
promoted and developed the legacy of traditional jazz. It performed at around 5000
concerts. The Traditional Jazz Studio collaborated with Hana Hegerová, Eva Olmerová
and many Czech and foreign musicians. Pavel Smetáček has received many awards, including
the Czech Jazz Federation Annual Prize for 1967. Pavel Smetáček was the son of the
renowned conductor and musician Václav Smetáček, who directed the Prague Symphony
Orchestra for more than 30 years.

![Zemřel jazzový hudebník a skladatel Pavel Smetáček | ČeskéNoviny.cz](https://i0.
wp.com/i3.cn.cz/1668961131_smetacek.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

**At the back of his influential book _The Advancing Guitarist: Applying Guitar 
Concepts & Techniques_, in an appendix called “Selected Short Subjects,” Mick Goodrick
leads off with a pithy comment on competition: “If compete you must, try to keep
it to yourself.”**

This is not, one might say, the prevailing attitude among guitar slingers. But if
the instrument can invite a tendency toward chest-thumping, and the general sense
that more is more, Goodrick embodied the polar opposite. He was elliptical, understated,
not one for the spotlight. He recorded infrequently as a leader. Yet he was, in 
every way that mattered, a guitar hero. Following his death on Nov. 16 at 77, due
to Parkinson’s disease, tributes poured in from players whose lives he touched and
whose careers he helped launch, including Pat Metheny, his successor in the Gary
Burton Quartet.

“I met Mick in the summer of 1973,” Metheny writes on Facebook, recalling their 
time teaching at a summer jazz camp in Normal, IL. “Mick and I wound up as roommates
for the week. We found an instant friendship and musical bond. We played duets that
first night that remain among my fondest musical memories.” The two became colleagues
on the guitar faculty at Berklee College of Music, and for a spell they were co-
guitarists in what was briefly the Gary Burton Quintet, before the baton was passed.
If Goodrick felt any pangs or pressures of competition, he kept them to himself.

Goodrick — who was born on June 9, 1945 in Sharon, PA — went on to play with Charlie
Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition, his liquid
lyrical lines and atmospheric harmonies always present and alluring but never obtrusive.“
I had the great pleasure of experiencing his creative mastery and dry sense of humor,”
DeJohnette attests on Instagram. “He was able to play ubiquitous chords and sounds
that supported the music perfectly!”

For all his reticence, Goodrick was also capable of searing and emotive solo flights—
for example, his features on “Vox Humana,” a Carla Bley composition from Gary Burton’s
1976 album _Dreams So Real_, or “Unfinished Sympathy,” a Michael Gibbs piece from
Burton’s _Ring_ two years prior. Goodrick’s own 1979 quartet set _In Pas(s)ing_,
surprisingly his only entry in the ECM catalogue, includes the bouncy “Summer Band
Camp” (perhaps inspired by those get-to-know-you duets with Metheny back in ’73).
His fluid single-note lines and subtle accompaniment under saxophonist John Surman
and bassist Eddie Gomez capture the essence of his artistry.

Behind the scenes, Goodrick taught generations of players at Berklee and the New
England Conservatory. He impacted many more through _The Advancing Guitarist_ and
the three-volume sequel, _Mr. Goodchord’s Almanac of Guitar Voice-Leading for the
Year 2001 and Beyond_. The depth of his influence was evident in Brooklyn this past
March, when Joel Harrison’s Alt Guitar Summit spearheaded a celebration of Goodrick’s
legacy, featuring Ben Monder, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Julian Lage, Kate Schutt and more.

As word of his passing spread this week, the social feeds of other leading jazz 
guitarists filled with tributes. Lage Lund: “A day doesn’t go by where I’m not using
or teaching some of the ideas he gave me all those years ago.” Lionel Loueke: “I’ve
learned so much from him.” Miles Okazaki, on _The Advancing Guitarist: _“This masterpiece
came out when I was a teenager and opened up a whole world of possibilities.”

Nir Felder writes: “I was by turns in awe, inspired, scared and puzzled by him.”
Perhaps the scary and puzzling part was Goodrick’s dogged insistence on his students’
own agency. “This is a do-it-yourself book,” he declared in _The Advancing Guitarist_.“
It’s not a method book. You supply the method; you do it yourself.” That said, there’s
perhaps a bit more method than Goodrick lets on, and plenty of complex theory. (
Quartal harmony on the melodic minor scale? Voicings from the symmetrical diminished
scale? The book’s got you covered.)

But nowhere else will a guitar student encounter “the science of the unitar,” as
Goodrick put it. “In most guitar method books,” he wrote, “no mention is ever made
of playing up and down one string. This omission is a huge oversight, because playing
on a single string is absolutely the most logical place to begin on a guitar.” This
is the foundation of the book’s first section, “The Approach.” It’s about rethinking,
reprioritizing, liberating oneself from habits, thinking like a beginner. Then comes
the headier dose of theory in section two, “Materials.”

The third and final section, “Commentaries,” is arguably the deepest, where Goodrick
reveals himself to be equal parts Yoda and Oscar Wilde. “If even one person listens
to you, your playing is drastically altered.” “Listen to the music you play. It 
will tell you things.” “Don’t be afraid to look at the musicians that you are playing
with. Don’t be afraid to look at the people you’re playing to. And even if you are
afraid, look anyhow. You’ll learn much.”

Goodrick played like a musician with nothing to prove and everything to share. He
proffered insights on self-criticism and feeling stale that pertain not only to 
music but to nearly any human endeavor. He thought deeply about pedagogy and the
nature of learning, and the conceptual soundness of his approach is evident in its
democratic spirit.

“Everyone may not have the ability to become a great guitarist,” he wrote, “but 
everyone does have the ability to improve, to get better. To me, that’s more important.”

_A previous version of this post misidentified the saxophonist on Mick Goodrick’s
_In Pas(s)ing_. It is John Surman, not Jan Garbarek._

![Mick Goodrick](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2f96761/2147483647/
strip/true/crop/900x1317+0+0/resize/880x1288!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.
s3.amazonaws.com%2F5a%2Fe8%2F4a3744e34cc98241291291f70971%2Fmick-goodrick.jpeg)

**Jazz singer Victor Evans has died at the age of 88.**

Evans, from Edgbaston, Birmingham, performed with the late Jamaican-born British
Jazz saxophonist Andy Hamilton and The Blue Notes. He also performed weekly at the
Silvershine Jazz Club at the Corks Club in Bearwood, Smethwick.

Blue Notes guitarist Paul Foad said he had continued to sing with them until the
summer, despite being ill, making him “the greatest jazz warrior I know”. “There
really was nobody who could touch him as a jazz vocalist, he could tell a story 
by singing,” he said. Mr Foad said he also was a mentor to the younger musicians,
in particular teaching them how to play slow ballads. “He was the master of that,”
he said. Silvershine Jazz Club dedicated a gig to the “fabulous singer” following
his death on 3 November.

![Victor Evans](https://i0.wp.com/ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/81F0/production/
_127546233_312452412_539798718154362_1376057139359848665_n.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

The musician was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to the UK at the age of 21
in 1964. His daughter, Dionne Thompson, said his passion for music prevailed even
when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2012 and he continued to sing at the jazz
club in the months leading up to his death. She told the BBC: “He was all about 
jazz, even with Alzheimer’s he still remembered how to play and sing.” What a Wonderful
World by Louis Armstrong and Without a Song by Bill Evans were Mr Evans’ favourite
songs to perform.

“We have great memories of the many gigs we did together and the stories he told
us of his life that sometimes had us doubled up with laughter,” the Silvershine 
Jazz Club said on Facebook. “We’re going to miss you buddy.”

![Victor Evans](https://i0.wp.com/ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/154F4/production/
_127548278_4c5f6398-6714-436a-b978-012bcc5b0555.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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