Reviews
The combination of modern jazz with tramp songs is insane at first glance or – as Vilém Spilka likes to say – a piece with a "Cimrman element". In reality, however, Spilka's new album Podvod (Deception) with adaptations of Honza Nedvěd's songs is a surprising but, in terms of musical tradition, a perfectly understandable project. more
Nearly sixty students of the Faculty of Music at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts joined forces to launch two operas in their home-based Orlí Street Theatre. The evening belonged to a pair of chamber operas. The first one was the premiere of the short opera Mistrová, aneb Když bolševici zrušili Vánoce (Forewomen aka When the Bolsheviks Cancelled Christmas) by Petr Hala. And the opera The Little Prince by Miroslav Hába was performed for the first time after nearly forty years. more
The music career of the violinist and singer Jitka Šuranská resembles a spiral motion. More than ten years ago, she chose cooperation in a duo with Jiří Plocek over dulcimer music, in which she was a regular member. After that, she played folk songs alone with a looper, and her first solo album Nězachoď slunečko was truly a solo album but with many guests. And now she is releasing another record. However, this time as a member of a new band, a very compact and bright sounding trio. By the way, the fact that the word TRIO is on the album cover – unlike the names of the band members – in capitals stresses that it is truly a band album and not a solo one. And in this lies both the greatest strength as well as some minor weaknesses of the recording. more
The new family comedy Jak jsem se ztratil aneb Malá vánoční povídka (How I Got Lost or a Little Christmas Story) bets on more than just a music flashback to the sweet early 1960s. The Brno National Theatre has been playing it since its weekend premiere. A seven-member band directly on stage forms the audio and narrative backdrop to the sentimental journey back in time. Older folks will emotionally reflect on the sweet "sixties", while those younger will discover this decade. And that is what the new production of director Martin Františák bets on. more
The prologue of the November echoes of the JazzFest in Brno was Wednesday's concert of a four-member star formation around guitarist John Scofield. Their five-week European tour promoting the new album Country For Old Men released in September of this year continued in the Sono Centrum. more
It is like the state budget: It can be considered the budget of any new government only two years after its election. This applies in all aspects, starting from the perspective of an idea and ending with the purely practical, i.e. technical, promotional and organisational perspective. Two years ago, the Janáček Brno Festival was the proverbial tipping point. The new director of the organiser Brno National Theatre had only been in office for a year and the opera director Jiří Heřman for six months. A lot of change was going on at Brno City Hall (which remains the only major benefactor of large music and theatre institutions; it seems like this does not concern the regions and the state) and the existing dramaturgical nature of the event was dismantled after the festival. After two years, the concert series can be seen as a series of alternating successes, however, with some worrying symptoms of amateurism. more
The musical scene of the Brno City Theatre stages the musical comedy Lemonade Joe. Therefore, one of the most popular post-war heroes, who has been criss-crossing the Czech stages since 1944, returned to the local main stage last weekend. He became immortal in 1964 thanks to a brilliant film, a replica of which cannot be expected this time though. First of all, the theatre version contains many more songs, but the screenplay is different from the extraordinary celluloid version in some moments and in the final result. The new production directed by Petr Gazdík turned the well-known title into a wild narrative musical show that does not claim to be related to the famous film. On the contrary, thanks to its original humour and the method of its use, the new production tries to break through all the widely popular quotes to its own and legitimate version. more
Luboš Javůrek's Bokorama has never belonged to the absolute best of our folk scene but it has long maintained a position of a solid band whose melodic songs have the potential to reach a wide audience. More than a band, Bokomara is a trademark that covers various Javůrek projects – ranging from the singer-songwriter duo with Petra Šanclová to – today already traditional – the joint concert programme with Naďa Urbánková. more
A trio of concerts with the same programme as performed by Czech Virtuosi in early September in monasteries in Vranov, at the Grohova Street in Brno and in Doubravník can be considered as much a final goodbye to a beautiful holiday (a visit to the church delicately set into a beautiful landscape is in itself one of the noblest tourist experiences) as a step into the new concert season. Let's remind ourselves that the Brno ensemble with the difficult English-Italian name has been filling the space between large orchestras and chamber ensembles since its founding in 1998 in more than just the Brno concert life - so far they have performed a third of their concerts abroad. And they do so at a high level: its members are top players from the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Opera Orchestra, led by the concert master Pavel Wallinger from his stand. more
Saturday night completed the 17th Špilberk International Music Festival with an original attempt at a dialogue between the jazz band Robert Balzar Trio with the exceptionally talented singer Dan Bárta and symphonists of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra. The final, fifth concert of the festival in the crowded courtyard of the Brno castle provided a dignified end to the August series of musical evenings with live and recorded music, offering a varied mix of different musical genres. more
The 17th annual Špilberk International Music Festival opened on Tuesday with a concert of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic Choir. The somewhat asymmetric program was filled with two well-known cantatas: Te Deum Laudamus by Antonín Dvořák and Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. more
One of the reasons for founding Dragoun's band Futurum in 1983 was allegedly a desire to do "short songs" at a time when Progres focused on broad zones. The fact that the nearly 10-minute song Zdroj then became one of the biggest hits of Futurum is a different story. The founder of Futurum, Roman Dragoun, has remained faithful to shorter songs even in his solo career – from the comeback album Stín mý krvez from 1995 to the present. more
The current album of Tomáš Kočko brings an image of the pre-Christian Moravia, violence and fear of impending changes. The individual songs combine death and the Slavic god of the underworld Veles into a thematic whole. more
On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, the Janacek Opera brought the second of the four major premieres of this season to the Janacek Theatre - Smetana's "simple traditional" opera The Kiss (Hubička). After Jenůfa from the beginning of October, this opera closes the premiere offer of the traditional Czech opera for this season; what is more important, however, is that it opens a four-part show of new works by the greatest talents of the rising generation of Czech opera direction. more
Wise guys, who are versed in every situation, and who know how to fish in turbid waters and come out every time with a profit, are not the only aspect of the Great French Revolution. The Ensemble Opera Diversa held the premiere of a new opera by Miloš Štědroň yesterday which, despite the initial lack of clarity, eventually turned out to be an ironic celebration of political cunning, espionage and managerial skills in dealing with human material. more
Another of the jazz evenings regularly organised by the Brno Philharmonic was dedicated to the duo Will Vinson (alto saxophone) and Aaron Parks (piano). These musicians have been working together in various formations for twenty years. So they decided that it was time to try the most intimate and, according to many, the most difficult - playing as a mere duo. These mid-generation jazz musicians performed a selection of classical jazz material as well as several of their own compositions on Monday 10 March at the Besední dům. more
This year's first concert by the Brno Contemporary Orchestra from the Auscultation series was entitled Gastro (Cuisine), or Dinner for Magdalena Dobromila Rettig (1785-1845). On Sunday, 2 February, the orchestra performed two compositions, or rather performances and happenings by Ondřej Adámek (*1979), who also conducted the pieces, in the dining room of the Masaryk Student House. This was a fairly unusual situation for the audience, when conductor Pavel Šnajdr did not take his place at the head of the orchestra. more
The fourth concert in the Brno Philharmonic's Philharmonic at Home subscription series, subtitled Metamorphoses and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, was dedicated to works by Joseph Haydn, Antonín Rejcha and Richard Strauss. Pianist Ivan Ilić was originally scheduled to appear as soloist in Rejcha's Piano Concerto, but for health reasons he cancelled the concert. Jan Bartoš promptly took over, enabling the audience to hear the original programme on Thursday 30 January at the Besední dům. more
The Brno Philharmonic's New Year's concert on 1 January at the Janáček Theatre is already a well-established tradition. This year was no exception, and the orchestra, led by conductor Michel Tabachnik, gave a performance consisting mainly of works by Johann Strauss the Younger. This was the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra's show opening the 'Strauss Year'. After all, 2025 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the composer, dubbed the king of waltzes. Strauss's compositions were accompanied by works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Strauss and Dimitri Shostakovich. more
"Culture is a Bridge" was the theme of the second Czech-Austrian Partnership Concert, held on Friday, 20 December at Schloss Thalheim. It was the final evening of the 5th year of the pan-European project Czech Dreams 2024, and also part of the celebrations of the Year of Czech Music and the Concentus Moraviae international music festival. Culture is a bridge that connects not only different generations and social classes, but also entire nations. And the Czech Dreams project, which in 2024 alone presented music by Czech composers in 25 European cities in 17 different countries, is an eloquent example of this. In December alone, besides the final concert in Austria, six more concerts were performed in southern Europe, from Amarante in Portugal to Varaždin in Croatia. The concert was dedicated to the Lower Austrian Governor Erwin Pröll, who has long been committed to building and deepening relations between the Czech Republic and Austria. more
Christmas in Brno also means the traditional pre-Christmas concert of the Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO), this time entitled From America to Tuřany. It took place on 18th December and after a one-year break it returned to the Sokol Hall in Tuřany. The BCO, conducted by Pavel Šnajdr, performed works by Mauricio Kagel, Steve Reich, Trevor Grahl and, as always, Miloslav Kabeláč. Appearing together with the orchestra were four singers, Aneta Podracká Bendová, Kornél Mikecz, Michal Kuča and Martin Kotulan. At the end of the first half, Pavel Šnajdr set aside his baton and clapped the beat, joined by Petr Hladík. more
The now world-famous Swedish band Dirty Loops finished their autumn European tour on Saturday, 30 November at Brno's Metro Music Bar. The band featured on the programme of the seventeenth annual Groove Brno funk, soul and jazz festival. The virtuoso trio, consisting of Jonah Nilsson - vocals and keyboards, Henrik Linder - bass guitar and Aron Mellergård - drums, are famous for their flawless technical proficiency, sophisticated original compositions and cover versions of well-known numbers, especially pop songs. However, these songs are often reharmonised in their arrangements and the style is more a combination of disco, pop and jazz fusion. To avoid having to resort to using pre-recorded backing tracks, the trio was joined on tour by keyboardist and vocalist Kristian Kraftling. more
Ensemble Opera Diversa put a distinctive "spin" on its last orchestral concert of the year. It took place on 26 November at the Alterna music club, which is more a rock, electronica and indie pop hangout than an artistic music venue. The pair of selected pieces consisting of Vojtěch Dlask's premièred work Querell Songs for soprano saxophone and strings and Miloslav Ištvan's Hard Blues for pop-baritone, soprano, reciter and chamber ensemble also reflected this. Naturally, it was Ištvan's Hard Blues that gave the evening its name - the clash of the artistic, composed and purposefully "artistic" world (not meant pejoratively) with authentic African-American musical expressions springing from the depths of the soul of a man tested by life formed as the centre of the evening. This was not merely a stylistic inspiration, but more thematic, which was also evident in the opening piece of the evening. This was the composition Querelle Songs, inspired by Jean Genet's novel, previously dedicated to Ensemble Opera Diversa, but this time in a new instrumentation. more
Leoš Janáček's (1854-1928) Moravian national opera Jenůfa was brought to Brno for the Janáček Brno 2024 festival by the Moravian Theatre Olomouc in a co-production with the Janáček Opera NdB. Rather than using the Czech title Její pastorkyňa, the production team, headed by director Veronika Kos Loulová, decided to stage the work as Jenůfa, the name under which it is performed abroad. On Wednesday, 20 November, five days after its première in Olomouc, the audience at the Mahen Theatre could also see the latest domestic take on Janáček's most widely performed opera. The musical staging of the significantly modified original version from 1904 was the work of conductor Anna Novotná Pešková, and the main roles were played by Barbora Perná (Jenůfa), Eliška Gattringerová (Kostelnička), Josef Moravec (Laca Klemeň) and Roman Hasymau (Števa Buryja). more
The office of Brno - UNESCO City of Music, with the financial support of the South Moravian Region, presents a line-up of active folklore groups (ensembles, chasers, musics) in the Brno region as part of the Year of Folklore Ensembles. more
Trumpeter Jiří Kotača founded the big band Cotatcha Orchestra ten years ago. Nowadays, he performs a variety of programmes ranging from the most traditional jazz to a visionary fusion of jazz and electronica. We chatted with Jiří Kotača about how the orchestra has gradually developed, how the original repertoire is blurring the boundaries between jazz and electronica, and also about what fans can expect from the November concert to celebrate the orchestra's 10th anniversary. We also talk about Kotača's International Quartet, as well as how the trumpet and flugelhorn can be enriched with effects. more
On Saturday, 24 August, the Korean radio orchestra KBS Symphony Orchestra with its musical director - Finnish conductor and violinist Pietari Inkinen - came to Brno's Špilberk Festival with an exclusively romantic repertoire. The invitation was also accepted by South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim, a graduate of the prestigious Julliard School. more
For a quarter of a century now, the Brno Philharmonic has been organising the Špilberk Festival at the end of August in the courtyard of the castle of the same name. Four open-air musical evenings offer the audience a selection of concerts featuring classical, film and computer music, as well as often jazz and other genres. This makes it a diverse mix of performers and repertoires with an often pleasant, summery, laid-back ambience. This year's big and rapdily sold-out attraction was the Wednesday evening of 21 August, full of melodies from the James Bond films, performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, headed by world-renowned conductor, composer and arranger Steven Mercurio. During the concert, the audience also got to enjoy singers Sara Milfajtová, Vendula Příhodová and David Kraus. more
As part of its European tour, the Taiwanese Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (TPCC), under the direction of artistic director and choirmaster Dr. YuChung Johnny Ku, took the city up on its invitation and visited Brno. The concert was held on Monday, 13th August in the hall of the newly renovated Passage Hotel. more
The final concert of this year's season of the Brno Philharmonic was devoted to works by Antonín Dvořák and Jean Sibelius at the Janáček Theatre. On Thursday, 20 June, Danish conductor Michael Schønwandt, who had not appeared before a Brno audience since January last year, took the lead of the Philharmonic. In the first half of the programme, the orchestra was accompanied by violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky. more
Editorial
The thirtieth anniversary year of the Concentus Moraviae Festival is subtitled "Rondo Festivo"
The Concentus Moraviae International Music Festival celebrates its thirtieth birthday this year. From May to June it will offer its fans almost forty concerts in impressive venues in twenty festival towns and cities. The festival dramaturgy has been prepared by Jelle Dierickx, who has dubbed the whole event "Rondo Festivo". The playful title is a nod to the festive anniversary year as well as this year's artist in residence, French keyboard virtuoso and composer Jean Rondeau. more
Just in: Martin Glaser appointed Director of the National Theatre. He wants to stay in Brno until July 2028
Today, Culture Minister Martin Baxa announced the results of the selection process for the new General Director of the National Theatre and appointed Martin Glaser to the post. He is expected to start on 1 August 2028. more
Kantiléna is heading off on a US tour to join forces with a prestigious local choir
Nine days, three cities, four concerts, 51 young singers. Kantiléna, the children's and youth choir of the Brno Philharmonic, is preparing for a prestigious American tour, presenting mainly Czech composers to local audiences. more
Manon Lescaut returns to the Janáček Theatre after more than fifty years
After more than 50 years, a new production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut returns to the Janáček Theatre as the opera directorial debut of Štěpán Pácl and with music conducted by Ondrej Olos. more
Dinner that you do not eat, but listen to - the Brno Contemporary Orchestra invites you to a Culinary concert
The Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO) will be serving up a Culinary concert that will show that sounds can be as captivating as the most refined dishes. The event will take place in the dining room of the Masaryk Student Home in Brno and is subtitled "Dinner for Magdalena Dobromila Rettig". However, do not expect food on the table, but music - the main course will be the musical works of Ondřej Adámek. more
The National Theatre Brno is organising a meeting of lecturers from the field of culture
The National Theatre Brno invites Brno lecturers, educators in culture and anyone working in audience education at cultural and educational institutions to come along to a joint meeting at the Janáček Theatre. more
A gig by hypnotic British trio Mammal Hands combining jazz and electronics will open the twenty-fourth annual JazzFestBrno festival at the Fléda club. Newly additions to the line-up are the May concerts of pianist Nikol Bóková with her trio, double bassist Klára Pudláková with MAOMAH, and guitarist David Dorůžka, who will be launching a new joint album with the Piotr Wyleżoł Quartet entitled When the Child Was a Child. From the beginning of February to May, the festival will offer thirteen gigs by some top world jazz stars, as well as performances with a club atmosphere from the Club Life series in the stylish Cabaret des Péchés. more
Change of conductor: Leoš Svárovský is to conduct the Concert with Laureates
The Brno Philharmonic has announced that due to the illness of Robert Kružík, Leoš Svárovský will take up the baton for Thursday's Concert with Laureates. more
A pre-première sneak peek at Manon Lescaut
The production team and soloists will appear in a pre-première preview of the new production of Puccini's opera Manon Lescaut. The preview will take place at the Janáček Theatre and can also be watched online. more
Iggy Mayerov starts 2025 with new single called Feels Like Yesterday
Iggy Mayerov kicks off 2025 with a new single, Feels Like Yesterday, offering an intimate look at life's losses and changes, and the path to come to terms with what we can't control. The single is currently available on YouTube as a recording of a live concert from the Brno Alterna club, and is a precursor to his upcoming album. more
