Ady Rosner is a notable figure in 20th century European music history, who was unfortunately subject to persecution by repressive governments more than once during his career. Born Adolph Ignatievich Rosner, he was creating jazz in Poland long before the days of big budget -- at least in comparison -- festivals and Polish jazz artists appearing at Western shindigs. He was perhaps the most famous of all orchestra leaders in Poland during the mid-'30s, and his was the only Polish group of the period to gain an international reputation, touring extensively throughout the distant lands of Latvia, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands, and France. Rosner was the son of a Polish-Jewish shoemaker, who noticed that his child seemed to have some kind of amazing ability on the violin. He managed to enroll the lad in one of the top music academies in Berlin, the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik. The trumpet came into Rosner's musical life for commercial reasons, as it represented a way to make more steady money with dance bands. Rosner's evolution as an early jazz player begins with these occasions to sit in with various dance orchestras, such as the Willi Rosy-Petosy Band, the Weintraub Syncopaters, and the Marek Weber Orchestra. In 1930, Rosner joined Weintraub's Syncopators, a classic jazz band helmed by the talented Stefan Weintraub. Rosner toured the European continent extensively with this outfit, cutting recordings for both Odeon and Columbia. Political events caused an abrupt end to thoughts of upward career mobility. With the rise of Hitler, it was more a question of running for one's life. In 1933, he was in the Netherlands, then toured Belgium's clubs for the next few years. He wound up in Poland by way of Switzerland and Czechoslovakia; Rosner had placed himself in even worse harm's way, but the truth was not apparent for a few years yet. In that time he revealed his leadership and conducting talents, forming an orchestra comprised of players who he had known in Germany, as well as local recruits. The group became popular in Krakow by the mid-'30s. By 1936, Rosner was the highest-paid musician in Poland, a statistic gleaned from the British Melody Maker magazine, actually a traditionally reliable source for gossip relating to musician's incomes, although not much else. Rosner's orchestra toured throughout Poland, playing in such esteemed venues as the Adria and Esplanade in the real old town of Warsaw; not the rebuilt one created from the rubble after the war. The resorts in the Zakopane region were also a regular haunt for this group. Continuing to keep up practice on two instruments, the busy bandleader found time to open his own nightclub in the lodestone town of Lodz called Chez Adi. By the late '30s, there was still not much of a political chill to be felt, with the band continuing to tour throughout Europe, and even cut several sides for French Columbia under the very noses of the Wehrmacht. Fans of ancient European jazz tend to glow over these sides, in which the usual gang of Rosner stalwarts is augmented by a variety of international jazz players, taking on tunes such as "On the Sentimental Side," the Ellington romp "Caravan," and a real showpiece for the leader's trumpet chops, the "Bugle Call Rag." His group continued to play engagements at Polish nightclubs such as Gold & Petersburski through the end of the decade, basking in the attention of fellow orchestra leaders Artur Gold and Jerzy Petersburski, who had taken up the idea of nightclub ownership and were now his bosses. At the time of occupation of Poland by Germany in 1939, Rosner and sidemen were mid-tune at the Esplanade. Rosner was aware that both he and his wife faced extermination, as both were Jewish. The couple fled eastward toward the Russian zone, accompanied by most of the musicians in his bands. Even in such a treacherous atmosphere, thoughts and desires came around to the subject of gigs, as should always be the case when folks are lugging their instruments. In the city of Lvov, now under Russian control after the partition of Poland, Rosner set about landing a gig at a local nightclub. During this engagement he was even approached by the Secretary of the Belo-Russian Republic about forming a State Jazz Orchestra. Rosner took the job and for the next six years became the most important jazz musician in the Soviet Union, a scene that had been hurt incredibly by repression. The purges of 1937 and 1938 might have wiped out many people, but the Russian jazz scene endured with the dignity that is a basic part of the Russian people themselves. Between 1940 and 1946, Rosner recorded and toured extensively throughout all of the Soviet Union, and a 1944 recording of "St. Louis Blues" for the state-owned Melodiya record company is considered one of the most brilliant examples European jazz of the '40s. As is typical for Soviet Union jazz band repertoire during that period, the compositions of Rosner includes feels such as tangos and waltzes. His Soviet recordings from this era were reissued in 1988 in the Soviet Anthology of Jazz series produced for Melodiya. In between these matter-of-fact sounding record release dates, terrible things happened. The man who was once a respected bandleader and top record seller was, along with his wife, imprisoned in the gulags. The bandleading saga does not end here, on the other hand it starts to become clear that Rosner was something of a giant among humanity, not at all the pipsqueak with the loud voice that represents the personality of too many bandleaders. The orchestra he assembled from within the prison camp wound up being sponsored by the camp's director, meaning it was allowed to rehearse up to a military spit-shine polish; a legend that is fodder for those who equate practice and rehearsal with fascism. The group attained such a polish that it was allowed outside the barbed wire gates of the gulag, putting on a tour throughout the entire camp system. In the year 1953, the Stalinist regime decided that Rosner had been "rehabilitated" by the Soviet government. The death of Stalin was something of an alarm clock going off for jazz in Russia, as this was the dictator that had once warned, "First he plays jazz! Then he betrays his country," a schedule that sounds just about right to many folks. Now Rosner was allowed to lead a reorganized orchestra, no longer clad in prison togs. For the next two decades he continued to be an important performer on the Soviet jazz scene, leaving in 1973. By the mid-'70s, he had resettled in his native Berlin, where he died. ~ Eugene Chadbourne