Dusko Goykovich’s Songbook

Monographic publication of Dusko Goykovich’s compositions.

The foreword was written by Stjepko (Steve) Gut.

Bearing in mind that Dusko Goykovic is an artist who has immortalized the essence of art in his lifestyle and musical work, together with the fact that the Association’s aim is to promote the highest artistic values, this book is the first capital project accomplished by the Association.

Readers, future users, as well as our and international artistic public, will have at their disposal the entire opus of compositions by Dusko Goykovich, a jazz trumpet player and composer, who comes from our midst and whose prolific career has earned him true recognition on the world jazz scene.

Dusko Goykovich is one of the leading jazz trumpet players in Europe, a composer, arranger and a bandleader. Born in 1931 in Jajce, Kingdom of Yugoslavia at that time, he studied at the Music Academy in Belgrade. When he joined the Radio Belgrade Big Band as an eighteen-year-old, he had already been recognised as a talented young jazz soloist.

He left for Germany on 12^th September 1995 carrying the legendary meagre sum of 5 dollars in his trumpet, which marked the beginning of his spotless career lasting to this day. Although in his 80s, Dusko Goykovich actively gives concerts and creates, composes and arranges. Some of the compositions in this publication were written in 2017. During his decades-long career he has performed and recorded with the most famous jazz artists of all epochs and nationalities, developing his personality and his own sound to the level of world recognisability, which resulted in tens of albums released under his name. Without a doubt Dusko Goykovich has already gone down into the history of jazz music for his unique sound. Even during the dark days of jazz, in the moment – when jazz started turning into a bloodless art form – as Ernst Kiefer, the owner of Munich’s club Domicil put it, it went down in writing that Dusko Goykovich has never strayed from his path.

The opus is divided in 6 units: ballads, bebop, blues, medium tempo, Latin jazz and Balkan jazz. An effort was made to provide the compositions in the book in their original form handwritten by Goykovich.