Duško Gojković 90th Birthday Celebration at the Unterfahrt

On Thursday evening, October 14, 2021, Unterfahrt, Munich, Germany, Moderator and Professor Claus Reichstaller along with musicians Sam Hylton (piano), Nils Kugelmann (bass), Rich Laughlin (trumpet), Claus Koch (tenorsax), Michael Keul (drums), Matthias Zeindlhofer (trombone) and Michael Lutzeier (baritonsax) joined together to honor in concert, on his 90th birthday, the beloved bandleader, composer and trumpeter Duško Gojković. It was a pity that dyed-in-the-wool fans and admirers didn’t have the opportunity to celebrate Duško’s birthday with him — he was recuperating in the hospital.

Over many years, it has become a tradition for Duško to assemble 25 or more musicians to celebrate his birthday. It’s always been a copious and festive big band celebration. But, Duško’s absence this year did not prevent a few musicians from reminiscing about him to fellow musicians and the appreciative audience. The monologues reflected a great deal of love and admiration for the much missed musician. We, the audience, too remembered year’s past Duško’s presence on stage. We remembered listening to his melodically sweet trumpet meandering with his assembled musicians. How did past audiences respond to his jazz, blues or samba compositions? In short — they were ecstatic!

Often on these occasions, Duško reminisced about his gratitude to having performed, in his career, with the likes of Tommy Flanagan, Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Duke Jordan, Slide Hampton, Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big B, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Oscar Pettiford, and, … the list goes on!

Duško, too, has never failed to mention his ever gratitude to Miles Davis for his mentorship.

I’ve provided here a must viewing of  Kurt Maas Jazz Award 2021 – Preisträgerkonzert. You’ll not only get to learn more about Duško Gojković, you’ll also get to see the talented Jazz Institute HMTM’s (Hochschule Für Musik und Theater München) students in performance.

 The Evening’s repertoire:

• Unit7 (Unit 7 is a jazz composition by bassist Sam Jones originally composed for the 1962 album Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley. It’s also known as “Cannon’s Theme.”)
• Quo Vadis Samba (Duško Gojković)
• One for Klook (Duško Gojković)
• Summertime (George Gershwin)
• Brooklyn Blues (Duško Gojković)
• 3 for D (Dedicated to Dusko 90th Birthday)
• A Ballad for Miles (Duško Gojković)
• Snap Shot (Duško Gojković)
• Back at the Chicken Shack (Jimmy Smith)

Professor Reichstaller’s brief salute to Duško:

„Duško is my man… I love him and his trumpet playing… . He influenced me a lot, not only as a musician also as a human being.“

Below is an article published in the Suddeutsche Zietung on Duško’s birthday. When you read it, you’ll understand his importance to the Jazz World and ROUTES.

The iron with the golden horn

On his 90th birthday, the Jazz Institute HMTM, the Unterfahrt and the Label Enja honor the trumpeter Duško Goykovich with a tribute concert.
By Oliver Hochkeppel, Munich
The Americans named him the “man with the miracle horn” in the 1950s, and he then became known in Germany as the “Bosnian miracle trumpeter”. Later he could have been called “the Iron”, because the jazz trumpeter

Duško Gojković, who will turn 90 this Thursday, may have had the longest career of all brass players, at least at this level. Only recently has he been unable to play because of an illness, until then the man, who always looked at least 20 years younger than he was, kept himself in shape with iron discipline. He practiced at least three hours a day, “according to his own system,” as he emphasized. The Hotel Bayerischer Hof let him go to the orphaned nightclub, and later the Jazz Institute in a room in the Gasteig, where he could always drink the beloved glass of white wine with it.
As a boy, Dušan Gojkovic, born in Jajce, Bosnia in 1931, heard Willis Conover’s jazz programs on the radio station “Voice of America” and saw Hollywood films such as “Young Man with a Horn” starring Kirk Douglas. The trumpeter Roy Edridge became his first hero, that’s how he wanted to play. At 15 he bought a cornet. After graduating from music school, he joined the Belgrade radio big band RTS in 1950, and Carlo Bohländer brought him to the Hessischer Rundfunk radio band with the great Albert Mangelsdorff in 1955. In Frankfurt, at that time the German jazz capital, he was able to meet all the greats he admired in the legendary “Jazzkeller”: Attila Zoller, Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he soon became friends as he did later with Chet Baker and Miles Davis.
Life as a musician in the USA was tough
Goykovich briefly joined the Frankfurt All Stars, Max Greger and Kurt Edelhagen until he moved to the USA in 1958. In the same year it was a minor sensation at the Newport Jazz Festival and from then on was passed around among the US stars. Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan or Sonny Rollins, then the Clarke Boland Bigband (“my best time”) – hardly a name of high standing that he would not have played with during this time – while at the same time completing a full course of study at Berklee. “I learned everything I know there. Not trumpet, but composition and arrangement. Herb Pommeroy was my teacher. Miles and other greats wanted me to join their bands during this time, but I really wanted to finish my studies. This decision haunts me today, “he said later.
But life as a musician in the USA was tough. “Five years in New York were enough for me. Blacks were not allowed to fly at the time. We traveled thousands of kilometers in the bus,” he reported. He went back to Germany, first to Cologne, then to Munich in 1968, at that time “the hub of the scene”, as he says: “Everyone went to Munich back then, from everywhere: Joe Haider, Klaus Doldinger, Olaf Kübler, Nathan Davis ; Mal Waldron came two months after me. Back then there were still a lot of studio jobs. And in the evenings we went to the clubs. It was also the heyday of Domicile on Siegesstraße, where I played in the house band for a long time. ” Goykovich has been at home here ever since and has been a key figure in the scene: as the founder of the Munich Big Band, as the first director of the state
youth jazz orchestra and with countless publications, especially on his Munich house label Enja, which celebrates his own 50th birthday. Again and again he reinvented himself, always swinging, but sometimes with soul, with Southeastern European or with Brazilian. He won whatever prizes there were, from the Jazz Echo to the City of Munich Music Prize to the “Berklee Master of Global Jazz Award”, which was only awarded for the second time recently.
His friend Peter Wortmann used to organize his birthday breaks, now members of the U.M.P.A. under the direction of Prof. Claus Reichstaller a tribute to which various guests are expected. However, it is also the first birthday concert that Goykovich does not play himself.
Tribute concert for Duško Goykovich’s 90th birthday, Thursday, October 14th, 8.30 p.m., Unterfahrt, Einsteinstraße 42″