protection. He said the federation should focus on creating a jazz academy, a bureau for international concerts and a centre where audio and TV recordings could be exchanged. A great jazz aficionado, Chiriac would copy entire discs onto tapes and arrange them in the station archive. Aurel Gherghel later said, "The station's whole archive was written and arranged by Cornel Chiriac." In 1969, Chiriac organised and advertised the first national jazz festival in Romania, held in Ploiești. He also arranged for the songs played during the festival to be recorded. As a producer, he especially backed the Timișoara band Phoenix and the Bucharest band . He completed important recordings with the former in Radio România's studio (1968–69) and promoted them on different occasions. In 1969, he took steps to bring them to the Golden Stag Festival, managing to include them in the lineup. Coincidentally, Cliff Richard, who eight years earlier had played in The Young Ones, a film that inspired many Romanian rock bands, was scheduled to sing there. Meanwhile, the Phoenix members were staying at Bucharest's Hotel Nord so the censors could watch them. During the festival, Chiriac returned from Brașov with the bad news that Phoenix' concert had been cancelled, but returned hoping to resolve the problem in extremis. Unable to convince the organisers, in protest, he locked himself in his hotel room and set fire to the curtains. The hotel employees and firemen broke down the door to stop the blaze, while Chiriac disappeared during the commotion, taking with him just the tapes with Phoenix. At Radio Free Europe A few days later, he managed to leave Romania and arrived in Austria with the help of a falsified invitation (received during the Brașov festival and having as its initial destination Poland). He spent some time at the Traiskirchen refugee camp, where he was discovered by Radio Free Europe director Noël Bernard. After getting his official documents in order, he continued his activity in Munich, in RFE's Romanian-language section. He re-launched Metronom and Jazz magazin, and started a third show, Jazz à la carte. At first, Chiriac used his microphone to express the anger he felt against those who had hindered his work at Radio România. later recalled: "Often, after doing something without thinking, Cornel had such problems with the German authorities and with the American heads of RFE that he was almost kicked out of Germany and