The pianist who knows everything about us

A restrained and thoughtful performer, a perfectionist, thanks to his abilities he worked a lot and quickly, achieved countless guest appearances and collaborations, especially as a perfect companion for vocal interpreters, free from any vanity. To that extent, this selfless cooperativeness overshadowed his own opus, what he probably loved the most - playing music in a jazz trio, and as a solo pianist.

Fortunately, it is Matija Dedic behind you He also left behind an extensive discography., and he recorded two of his best albums on the stage of "Lisinski", without or with an audience. Visiting Brussels (2006, Dallas Records) also records Arsen's song "Conversation with the Waiter", which will soon be among the highlights of their joint concerts. And under the roof under which he performed many times, he returned less than three weeks after his father's death to, alone on stage and in the silence of the large hall, record in one day Matija plays Arsen (2015, Croatia Records). Nothing rash about it, the son covered his father's famous songs as early as 2005 (CD Another view 2005, Dallas) and continued to interpret and elaborate his music. Namely, the qualities of the older Dedić's lyrics and singing left his compositional range somewhat neglected, so Matija plays Arsen along with chansonnier classics and several TV themes, he also performs a couple of songs for clappers, and one of the repeated ones is "Ni Ti, ni ja", this time tango-dramatized.

As a full-blooded jazzer, Matija did not shy away from covering "light notes", but he only returned to one author for the second album: Zlatan Stipisić-Giboni, with whom he collaborated many times, guested at his big concerts and much more. Although it is a CD A secret skill (2020) better known, Matija's arranging abilities are better represented by the much earlier one tempera (2004, Dallas), which also contains several very effective points for piano with an electronic background, more precisely with so-called loops; listen to Oliver Dragojević's classic "Good morning, sadness" in this way.

In a great trio of internationally trained and established jazz pianists from the area ex YU, who flew into the world while Yugoslavia was falling apart, along with two from Belgrade - the French student Bojan Z. (Zulfikarpašić) and his peer Vasil Hadžimanov, who went to the USA and returned - Matija was the closest to home. He graduated from the Jazz Academy in Graz in 1997 and remains most devoted to the "ordinary", concert piano. After the "Boilers Quartet" - at the end of the nineties, the leading force of Croatian, then regionally rejuvenated jazz - Matija Dedić started his own trio. Academically/classically savvy, with excellent techniques, and by temperament a romantic/lyricist, he inherited from his mother Gabriela-Gabi Novak a feeling for swing and a love for jazz in general; refined and precise musical expression came naturally to him in a rich, arrangement approach like his father's. And just as it is difficult not to remember him - even in his mature years - as a boy with tanned feelings, it is impossible to avoid his insatiable thirst for music and everything connected with it. When I met him personally, already as a regular participant of the leading European jazz festivals, he surprised me with a childishly curious question: "Čaća told me to ask you, did you maybe listen to Vlada Vitas live? He says that he is the best pianist who ever accompanied him". A big compliment from Arsen's uncle, because he is good at the piano himself, and he could choose a wide range of accompanists and they always played excellently for him. I would like Vladimir Vitas, a citizen of Belgrade and an informally trained jazz pianist, a collaborator of many, and a few of his own recordings, to have heard it as well. Matija didn't even blink until he made me remember all the details - hand position, movement on the keyboard, repertoire...

In a standard jazz trio like a fish in water, Matija Dedić was not a wild improviser, but an inspired and thoughtful soloist/leader, close to Esbjorn Svensson (est) and Brad Meldau. Checking is easiest through one of the three albums he recorded with his American companions: a double CD From The Beginning (2009, Dallas), created not during Matija's trips across the Atlantic, but in Zagreb, after Meldau's guest appearance. Dedić Jr. retained his longtime companions, one of the most accomplished rhythm sections in contemporary jazz – drummer Jeff Ballard and double bassist Larry Grenadier – and produced excellent material; he also added a solo piano number, a dedication to Dora Pejačević, the first Croatian female composer whose works he especially affirmed, and "Round Midnight" is...Monk crossed!

Matija also had a lot of interactions in Belgrade, with whom he loved publicly. More than his own uncle (art historian and painter Milutin) and the great poet after whom he was named, from his father's legendary friendship with Bećković, Dedić junior was drawn here by something completely different. Without any fanfare, he started appearing in our part of "these spaces" shortly after entering the 2005st century, that is, before Arsen's triumphant concert return, in the spring of 594. First in clubs and small halls, then at jazz festivals in Valjevo, Novi Sad, Pančevo and Belgrade; as if he did not miss the opportunity to meet (and play) with his colleagues from the academy in Graz, where our trumpeter Stjepko Gut taught them, so they became the leading younger jazzers in Serbia - double bassist Predrag Revišin, trumpeters Marko Đorđević and Dragoslav Fredi Stanisavljević, drummer Dušan Novakov (see "Vreme" no. XNUMX).

A wider audience - outside the biggest cities and festivals - saw him in a duo with Zoran Predin. Successful albums covering pop standards of the late of Yugoslavia Traces in memory (2011. Menart and 2016. Croatia Records) promoted with concerts mainly in theaters, wherever there were decent pianos (see "Vreme" no. 1106). And Matija searched around Serbia for a bizarre synthesizer with buttons instead of dirks. "Would you help me find it, I've only heard it exists?" I saw them, in an advertisement across the entire color page in the music magazine "Jukebox". The eastern part of SFR Yugoslavia was one of the few markets for large accordions-dugmeters, the so-called pasuljara, which also had numerous rows of small buttons instead of holes for the right hand; moreover, the "folks" bought them so much that the famous Italian manufacturer "Dallape" made a special model of a button machine, and in the eighties, with the advent of electronic keyboards in folk bands, he also "adapted" a larger synthesizer and even advertised it in a rock magazine! Some of them must have been sold around the Balkans, I promised Mattia and we found a used one; he had to try that too, to play and force some music out of him.

Gabi Novak had her own return to Belgrade (and to jazz) with a bang in 2009 at the local jazz festival, and Matija was an inevitable support there. He also provided genetic support to his father at his last Belgrade concert, at the end of 2011 at "Kolarac" ("Vreme", no. 1090). Matija and Gabi performed the star-studded concert "For Arsene" in the spring of 2016 ("Time no. 1319), and in 2018 they performed as a tandem for a handful of lucky people at the "Parobrod" cultural institution, in the central capital municipality of Stari Grad. In previous seasons, Matija and Gabi were prominent guests of a series of chamber concerts, first "Pianist pop jazz classics" and then "Female pop jazz vocalists", in Arsen's Piano Hall Dedić, in front of his image on the wall; a selection of recordings by various artists was released on vinyl/LP in 2017 and 2019, and then together as a double CD in 2020 (Multimedia Music).

Unfortunately, "Parobrod" was overhauled due to the change of government, Arsen was repainted, the sign was removed from the promotional materials, and the hall is no longer called that. Matthias came by with his daughter Lou to show her around and was disappointed. One of the last things he did in Belgrade was a version of Arsen's evergreen "Milena": he accompanied Ana Stanić, and the video was directed by Milutin's son Filip Dedić, right where Arsen can no longer be seen.

And suddenly, he's gone. Matthias now stands by his father, shoulder to shoulder. Another one from Dedić, which you listen to every day.