Roland Batik, born in Vienna, combines tradition and modernity as well as classical and jazz. “As a wanderer between musical worlds,” he is one of the most versatile musicians in the country. The sound language of the pianist and composer crosses traditional boundaries. Roland Batik sees himself as a pianist who also composes. The path to his compositions always runs via the piano, improvisation.

Friedrich Gulda as a jumping spark

As a teenager, Roland Batik actually wanted to be a keyboard player in a major rock or pop band. His role models included “The Who” and “Queen,” Keith Emerson, and others. The decisive impulse for his musical development came from a concert he attended in 1971 at a performance of Friedrich Gulda’s “Concertino for Players and Singers.” Roland Batik became a student of Walter Fleischmann at the Vienna Conservatory of Music (today the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna). A little later, he enrolled at the Jazz Institute of the Vienna Conservatory, which Erich Kleinschuster had founded in 1969 (today the Music and Arts Private University of the City of Vienna). There he studied jazz piano with Fritz Pauer and took lessons from Friedrich Gulda. Even during his time as a student, Batik was a successful composer of several stage pieces for the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Roland Batik made his breakthrough as a pianist as a soloist in Friedrich Gulda’s “Concertino for Players and Singers” under the direction of the composer. From Gulda, Batik learned not only the interpretation of Bach and Beethoven, but also discipline, probably one of the essential prerequisites for a musical career. Roland Batik not only perfected his playing, he also found his love of both classical and jazz confirmed: “Really great, style-defining musicians had that: perfect timing. A natural feeling, a completely natural relationship to rhythm. From this ideal timing, the appropriate style of playing immediately emerges.”

International breakthrough – solo, duo, trio

While still taking lessons from Friedrich Gulda, Roland Batik founded the Roland Batik Trio – a jazz formation that still performs today. Between 1982 and 1988, Roland Batik formed an internationally successful classical piano duo with Paul Gulda. As a member of the Vienna Instrumental Soloists, he composed numerous works between 1987 and 1991. After the Batik-Gulda duo split up, Roland Batik turned his attention back to his solo career – often combining classical repertoire with his own cross-border compositions.
 
Concert tours have taken the artist through Europe, the USA, Japan and Korea – but also to the local stages of the Bregenz Festival, the Carinthian Summer, etc.

In 1991 he was awarded the “Wiener Flötenuhr” record prize for his recording of the complete Mozart piano sonatas. In 1999 he received euphoric reactions in the press and on the radio for his recording of the complete piano sonatas by Joseph Haydn.

Bridge builder as a classical pianist, jazz musician and composer

Batik increasingly made a name for himself not only as a pianist, but also became a sought-after composer of piano and chamber music. But Batik does not shy away from large ensembles either: in 1993, he premiered his own “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.1 – Meditation upon Peace” as a commission from the “Jeunesses Musicales” with resounding success. In 1995, he founded the “Bridges” project with the marimba and vibraphone virtuoso Woody Schabata and Heinrich Werkl (double bass), with which he broke new ground in chamber music. What is unusual about this formation is that the drums were replaced by mallet instruments, which can be used both percussively and as “second melody instruments”.

Roland Batik composed four “Intermezzi” for the Altenberg Trio (premiered in the Brahms Hall in Vienna in 2001). In 2004, he composed the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2, which Roland Batik performed for the first time with the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz. In 2008, he composed his Concerto for Piano, Percussion and Orchestra (Concerto No. 3). “On the Move” for string orchestra and jazz trio (2008, premiered as part of the “Allegro Vivo” festival in Altenburg Abbey) and “On the Move Part 2” (2015, premiered as part of the “Piano and More” concert series in the Wiener Neustadt City Theater) are further examples of Roland Batik’s symphonic work. In 2011, the premiere of the “4 Bagatelles for String Quartet and Piano” took place as part of the Carinthian Summer.

space for improvisation

Batik himself says of his style: “I still have the courage to stay in the tonal area; I am not immune to the innovative and contemporary, but there are so many who work in this direction. So it might not be entirely wrong to do something different. Besides, I simply can’t do anything else! […] In my compositions, I strive to merge classical-traditional formal elements with sound ideas influenced by jazz and ethno. […] In my piano compositions, you can find lyrical-singable elements as well as influences from folklore, popular music and avant-garde sound images.” Except in his large-scale compositions, the jazz musician Batik also tries again and again to give the performer room for improvisation without upsetting the formal framework. “But stylistically, my ideas are romantic-impressionistic – with a touch of jazz.”

role model and companion for “cross-border commuters”

In addition, the artist, who has received multiple awards – among other things, he was awarded the title of professor in 2003 – manages to gather outstanding local musicians every year at the end of May as the organizer and artistic director of the Seibersdorf Castle Concerts, which he founded in 1998, and to give high-quality concerts in a stylish setting. In 2001 he received the Lower Austrian State Culture Prize. Since 2014 he has been the musical mastermind of the “Piano and More” concert series.

Roland Batik has been teaching at the Vienna Conservatory since 1977, where he taught jazz and concert piano until 1994 and now concentrates solely on classical music. He is also a regular lecturer at the Vienna Master Classes, the International Mozarteum Summer Academy and the international chamber music festival “Allegro Vivo”.

In recent years, the versatile artist has intensified his concert activities as a solo artist, in a duo with Yuko Batik and the Roland Batik Trio. A new project has recently been created, in the tradition of “Bridges” but also going beyond it stylistically: “The New Quartet” with the three rising stars, Florian Eggner (violoncello), Tobias Meissl (vibraphone) and Martin Gasser (alto saxophone).