Attila Zoller

Attila Zoller (1927-1998) was born in Visegrád in the North of Hungary. His father was a violinist and music teacher and gave him violin lessons from the age of four. He tried trumpet too, before settling on guitar. As a teenager, he began playing with local jazz groups in post-war Budapest. With the arrival of Communist rule in Hungary in 1948, the country became effectively a police state, and Zoller fled on foot, guitar in hand, to Vienna. Here he teamed up with Austrian jazz accordionist, Vera Auer, kick-starting her jazz career in the process.

By 1954, Zoller was in Germany, where he worked with pianist Jutta Hipp and saxophonist Hans Koller, as well as visiting Americans like Lee Konitz, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke. In 1959, he received a scholarship to attend John Lewis’ Summer School at the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusets, where he ended up sharing a room with fellow students Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman. In 1960, Zoller recorded with Pettiford and played with Chico Hamilton. One of his most productive collaborations came when he joined flautist Herbie Mann in 1962, staying with him until 1965, when he and the group’s pianist Don Friedman started their own quartet, which saw them explore a freer approach to jazz. The 1960s also saw Zoller work with Benny Goodman and Red Norvo, and in 1968 with trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff and Lee Konitz.

In the early 1970s, he toured Japan first with Astrud Gilberto and then with fellow guitarists Kenny Burrell and Jim Hall, who had been his tutor at the Lenox School of Jazz. He founded a jazz clinic in 1974 in Vermont, and continued to appear at major international festivals into the 1990s. His last gig, at Zinc Bar in New York City was three weeks before his death, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and Czech bassist George Mraz.

Key Recordings:
With Herbie Mann
Gypsy Cry (Embryo 1971)
Memories Of Pannonia (Enja 1986)