News

Easter concerts are already a tradition at the Brno City Theatre. This Easter, the Rock Mass will be performed on Friday and Saturday at the Music Stage of the Brno City Theatre.  more

The Musica Florea ensemble is preparing a new concert programme to be performed for the first time this April. This year marks the 170th anniversary of Leoš Janáček's birth, and to mark the occasion the ensemble has taken up his earliest compositions to set them alongside works from the early Italian Baroque. Musica Florea will be performing with conductor Mark Štryncl. The soloists will be Barbora Kabátková, Stanislava Mihalcová, Daniela Čermáková, Hasan El Dunia and Jaromír Nosek.  more

The Brno Culture Newsletter brings you an overview of what is happening in theatres, clubs, festivals and cultural events in Brno.  more

Terroir, a term used especially in the wine industry, is the subheading of this year's 31st annual Easter Festival of Sacred Music. It refers to the set of natural conditions, especially soil properties, which give a crop its distinctive character. Terroir perfectly describes the dramaturgy of this year's edition, which is focused exclusively on the work of domestic composers in the Year of Czech Music.  more

The samba and other Brazilian rhythms will have the summer streets of Brno packed with music and dance. The city will welcome Brasil Fest Brno at the beginning of August. This year's fifth annual festival will feature two-time Latin Grammy winner, guitarist and singer João Bosco, as well as pop singer Marina Sena. The festival will host a carnival in the streets, accompanied by concerts and workshops.  more

The last concert from the Invisible City series is entitled Samá láska (Love Alone), based on the poetry collection by Jaroslav Seifert. For the first time ever, an orchestra will play in the Brno Underground Reservoir with the première featuring three compositions written specifically for this space. The pieces are by three Czech composers, Petr Hromádka, Naomi Savková and Tomáš Šenkyřík, and they will talk about music that cannot love.  more

The new programme of the Ensemble Versus chamber choir pays homage to the Feast of Pentecost. Along with other 20th and 21st century choral works, the première will feature three new compositions on liturgical texts commissioned by the ensemble. The concert will be conducted by Patrik Buchta.  more

Some of the big names coming to Brno in the autumn include Al Di Meola, one of the greatest ever jazz-rock guitarists, and cult American saxophonist Kamasi Washington. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Jiří Slavík will be appearing with the nine-member ensemble Polka-boys to perform their Polkatime project, radical reworkings on the polka that in places even border on ragtime. The autumn will also see the continuation of the Club Life series at Cabaret des Péchés. This time with the singer and "jazz artist for the hip hop generation" José James and a double concert featuring two of the Czech Republic’s leading jazz line-ups - the Robert Balzar Trio and the Matej Benko Quintet.  more

The upcoming 69th season of the Brno Philharmonic is centred around three numbers - 90, 200 and 150. The entire season will see the celebration of numerous anniversaries, the performance of several masterpieces and a wealth of world-class soloists such as soprano Chen Reiss, tenor Christoph Prégardien, pianist Alexandre Tharaud, cellist Steven Isserlis, percussionist Adélaïde Ferrière and violinist and conductor Fabio Biondi.  more

This year is the 15th anniversary of the Mozart's Children Festival. It is organised by the Brno Philharmonic and the Brno Elementary Art School - Smetanova 8. It aims to give young talents from South Moravia the opportunity to play in a professional orchestra, the best of whom will then perform as soloists accompanied by philharmonic orchestras.  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 MilfajtováVendula Příhodová and David Krausmore

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 Sitkovetskymore

In the spirit of the idea that Brno and folklore belong together, the Folklore Ensemble Happening of the Year took place on Thursday 6 June. The event was organised by the Brno UNESCO City of Music Office in cooperation with the Brno Dances and Sings association. The event thus became part of a long-term project that set out to map the amateur music scene in Brno, and not only folk music. Last year Brno City of Music reached out to choirs in a similar way, and in the future will host garage bands and more. This just goes to prove the diversity of Brno's music scene, not only as regards professional ensembles, but also enthusiastic amateurs for whom music is an inseparable part of their lives.  more