Larry Vuckovich

Larry Vuckovich (1936) is an American jazz pianist from Yugoslavia.

Born in Kotor, a small Montenegrin coastal town in the former Yugoslavia, the pianist was classically trained as a child but was also drawn to the jazz he heard on Armed Forces Radio and Voice of America during World War II and the Communist regime that followed. After the war, Tito's communists took his home, including the family piano, and imprisoned his father and brother. Jazz came to symbolize freedom. In 1951, when he was 14, his family was granted political asylum in the United States, arriving in San Francisco.

Vuckovich worked with Philly Joe Jones in San Francisco at the Keystone Korner, where he was a resident pianist for five years. Later he worked for five years in New York City, where he performed at the Village Vanguard, Blue Note Jazz Club, Bradley's Zinno, West End, and others.

He returned to San Francisco for a long-term engagement from 1990 to 1997 as house pianist and music director of Club 36 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. He presented several West Coast Jazz Festival performances and served as music director of the Napa Valley Jazz Festival for six years.

Larry Vuckovich Day, December 8, was proclaimed in San Francisco on his birthday. Vuckovich received a B.A. in music at San Francisco State University, where he studied classical piano.