Brno Marathon of Music will fill the streets of the city with music for the seventh time this year

Brno Marathon of Music will fill the streets of the city with music for the seventh time this year

The multi-genre festival will offer dozens of concerts in the center of Brno in mid-August. The music will be played in squares, streets, and concert halls. New to the program this year is the post of artist-in-residence; the phenomenal multi-instrumentalist Anna Fusek will take on this role for the first time. The festival will also present Kateřina Šedá’s popular busker rooms, this year expanded to include Johann Gregor Mendel’s greenhouse.

This year, festival-goers can look forward to one selected artist performing in different musical positions. The first artist-in-residence of the Brno Music Marathon will be the brilliant multi-instrumentalist Anna Fusek, who is one of Europe’s top classical musicians but who also works across genres. For example, she will present her successful project entitled “Cosmology of a Pear”, in which she originally combines early music with jazz, improvisation, and contemporary music. In “Mozart meets Morley”, she will present sonatas by W.A. Mozart interwoven with fantasies for two voices by the Renaissance English composer Thomas Morley. In collaboration with the lively Italian lutenist <Gianluca Geremia, they will present a program entitled “Brief tales for two”. Anna Fusek will conclude her residency with a performance to the rhythm of Brazilian music with the group Aqua Verde and singer Simona Gatto, who will make their Czech premiere at the festival. “Our objective is to provide visitors with unique musical experiences. We have been increasing the musical quality of the festival for a long time. The engagement of Anna Fusek as artist in residence is another contribution to this endeavor,” adds festival director David Dittrich. The seventh edition of the Brno Music Marathon will take place from 11 to 14 August 2022 in the center of Brno.

The unique atmosphere of the festival is created by the performances of street musicians in unique rooms scattered around the city center. This musical and visual project called Streetless Busking is prepared by the well-known Brno artist Kateřina Šedá. This year’s novelty is a room dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of the leading naturalist Johann Gregor Mendel. “We decided to dedicate one room to this personality. And since Mendel conducted his experiments with plant crossbreeding in a greenhouse, the greenhouse will become part of the streetless busking this year," explains the author of the room, Kateřina Šedá. In addition, visitors can enjoy the children’s room, kitchen, living room and bathroom.

The festival has long emphasized world music and related genres. The world music scene’s dramaturge Milan Tesář has prepared an exclusive evening – the stage will feature the female vocal ensemble Saucējas from Latvia, the southern Italian acoustic trio La Cantiga de la Serena, and the Polish group Warsaw Village Band, whose latest album was the second best world recording for the whole of 2021. The scene was created in cooperation with World Music Charts Europe.

The festival will also feature performances by Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocărlia, Hungary’s Botos Family, Slovakia’s <Michal Noga Band, Poland’s MØW Band, Ester Kočičková and her Moody Cat Band, AG Flek, the well-known Roma band Kalé, Soul Ožil, Dušan Vančura’s Antikvartet, and Barbara Maria Willi and friends.

The creative Brno ensemble Hausopera will present the last of a trilogy of operas connected with important functionalist monuments of Brno. The venue of the opera “Eternal Miss Pale or Operatic Uncertainty for the Masses” will be the Zemanova kavárna Café. Other popular stages include the Endless Organ in the Jesuit Church, the Pianostaffet in the Alfa Passage, and the ZUŠ Open.

The art troupe Blackout Paradox will bring a new-circus performance, Nautilus. It will use shadowplay and acrobatics to transport the audience into a world of science fiction literature. The performance was prepared by Maraton together with its partner festival Na prknech, pavžbě i trávě. This open-air theater festival will offer a program especially for children, but for adults as well. With the Nautilus performance, the Brno Music Marathon will end and the Na prknech, pavžbě i trávě festival will begin.

Marathon of Music Brno is a key musical event of the city of Brno as part of its membership in the UNESCO Network of Creative Cities in the field of music. One of the reasons for the city’s inclusion in this prestigious network was Brno’s exceptionally varied and high quality music offer, which the festival also presents on purpose. In this context, the festival will also focus on cooperation with Brno’s creative industries and ecology. Visitors can buy tickets for the concerts in the GoOut network. The selected performances and the festival’s busker line can be visited free of charge.

Maraton hudby Brno/ photo festival archive

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