Jazz Courtyard: Ghana Dance Ensemble, Jiří Slavík and JAMU Students

18 June 2018, 5:00
Jazz Courtyard: Ghana Dance Ensemble, Jiří Slavík and JAMU Students

The third year of Jazz Courtyard is once more taking place in Prague and Brno. The event is taking place in cooperation with the jazz departments of Prague’s HAMU (Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts) and Brno’s JAMU (Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts). In the courtyard of Brno’s Old Town Hall there will be performances from student ensembles as well as long-term original running projects by selected students. The culmination of the evening will be the concert of the African group Ghana Dance Ensemble. The event is supported by the festivals JazzFestBrno, Tanec Praha and KoresponDance. Entry is free.

There will be performances on stage by talented students and teachers themselves who are among the top Czech jazz musicians. The double bass player and five times Anděl award-winner Jaromír Honzák will be performing in the Steve Swallow Ensemble and will be paying tribute to the legendary bassist and composer whose name he has also borrowed for his group. Jazz arrangements of works by the Icelandic Björk will be performed by the multi-instrumentalist and Anděl award-winner Jiří Slavík.

The last part of the evening will be given over to a joint ensemble of students from both departments and the African group Ghana Dance Ensemble. “African culture takes many forms and even in one country such as Ghana there are dozens of ethnic groups with their own inseparable music and dance traditions,” says Slavík, who has himself visited the country. Musicians from the Ghana Dance Ensemble under his leadership are for the second time getting together with jazz students in a workshop producing an energetic joint programme. The programme of Jazz Courtyard also offers concerts by students such as Marek Kotača, Ondřej Zámečník and Peter Korman, who are already active in the jazz scene.

The event will take place on 21 June from 3 p.m. in the courtyard of the Old Town Hall, Radnická 11.

Jiří Slavík/ photo Martin Zeman

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