Good bye, Curt - Radic Musik Forum - Musiknoten-GM-Seq-Style-mp3

CURT PRINA in memory of Svetozar Brazza Radic

Dear Curt,
dear organ music friends!
Barely 3 weeks later, after MARK WHALE, another top organist, musician and colleague has left the music stage forever. We are all sad, even if his departure was not surprising, for everything was preceded by this terrible and incomprehensible illness, where you forget everything around you... Good bye, Curt - at first only these three words come over my lips - but there could be many, many more, because: we knew each other for 50 years (in writing: fifty years!). Our first meeting was at the wedding of the "live bands" in 1968 - more precisely: in August 68' and we celebrated your 40th birthday - I was 22... Where was that? In the Ruhr city of Essen in a dance palace called "Arcadia"! We, the "7 Montenegros" from Novi Sad, just two years in the west, had already made it to our second LP and were engaged in the dance palace "Arcadia" as the so-called "house band" - and of course also in many other "dance palaces" all over Europe - because: the discos were not yet invented - and the dance audience went to the big dance palaces, where all then well-known bands played... And twice in the evening the "Star-Band" did the show appearances - and in the aforementioned August 1968 it was the famous "Hazy-Osterwald-Sextett" - and at the piano, the vibraphone and the trombone you were - CURT PRINA! We realized then that we were already in many of the same dance palaces - including the highlight of a live band at that time, the "big Russia tour"! You were there one year before "with Hazy Osterwald on a big Russia tour" with singer Alexandra in 1967 - and we, the 7 Montengros, were there in March-April 1968 as representatives of the former Yugoslavia during an "East Music Festival" - and we also played in the Moscow Sports Palace Stadium - Oh, man, the stage alone was 50 meters long! We remembered about our experiences in Russia for years afterwards...

And then, in 1978, we met again - at Wersi! I was engaged as "Saturday Presenter" of the legendary Wersi-Helios at the Wersi branch in Neuss - and you came from time to time, at those very popular "shop parties" and played your Wersi Galaxy in big band sound. Then Wersi hired me as product manager directly in Halsenbach - and there we saw each other almost every day, where I was very helpful in recording the GM sequences in the Wersi-Pegasus area. From this time, at the beginning of the 90s, we even had a joint title arrangement of "Hora Staccato" (you did the music recording and I did the notes and sequences). This cooperation was supposed to continue - but Wersi's fate wanted it differently..., nevertheless, even after the active Wersi period we had not given up the connection, but had made very nice telephone conversations from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last ten years these have diminished and all our attempts to visit you have been unsuccessful...You have increasingly been unable to remember anything - lastly in August 2017, when we congratulated you on your 89th birthday: Wally called - and first a glimmer of hope: "Brazza Radic?" - "Oh yes, then you are the maidle, his wife," you said to Wally. Thereupon Wally started confidently: "Dear Curt, happy birthday..." - "Oh yes, it's my birthday today" - you said on it... and a few seconds later,"...and who are you?".
Rest in peace Curt, we will never forget you and your music...

MWP-Nr.241 "Take The A-Train"

                                  Curt Prina playing with a band of four other great jazz musicians
                                  Take The 'A' Train unrehearsed. Near The Hague,
                                  Netherlands, Sunday, 22 November 1992