Brno Music Friendly City

News

During the summer, Brno's streets, squares, courtyards and courtyards will be abuzz with the Brno Music Marathon 2025 festival. This year for the tenth time. To be held at the beginning of August, this multi-genre festival will offer four days packed with musical discoveries, powerful emotions and prominent names from around the world. You can look forward to a selection of world music, jazz, folk, acoustic and experimental music from more than ten countries.  more

The motto of this year's ProART Festival is Transform_Heal_Through_Art. The international workshop festival of dance, music, acting, photography and other performing arts for professionals and the general public combines daytime art workshops with an evening programme. The Brno leg of the festival will take place at the Villa Engelsmann.  more

The St. John Passion by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt will open the 32nd Easter Festival of Sacred Music this Sunday. The renowned French ensemble Les Traversées Baroques, which specialises in the enlightened interpretation of Baroque music, will also be visiting the festival for the first time.  more

This year will see the fourth annual Ženfest pod třešní open-air music festival, which will once again take place in Trchova Zahrada garden near the Svitava River in the district of Brno-Maloměřice and Obřany. The garden will set the stage for the music of various female artists. The festival is hosted by singer-songwriter Martina Trchová, this year nominated for an Anděl Award for her album 90 % štěstí.  more

From 8 to 11 April 2025, Pesaro, Italy, will host the annual International Meeting of UNESCO Cities of Music. This city, known as the birthplace of Gioacchino Rossini, was, like Brno, included in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2017.  more

During April and May, Brno's Metro Music Bar will host several exceptional names from the world scene - British soul singer Mica Millar, guitar legend Neil Zaza and charismatic rocker Marco Mendoza, who has played with Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy and The Dead Daisies.  more

This year sees Brno City Theatre continue its tradition of festive Easter concerts. This time, the latest symphonic work by composer Zdenek Merta will be performed, accompanied by poems by Petr Štěpán and complemented by Zora Jandová's paintings and sculptures by Pavel Tasovský.  more

Flautist Michaela Koudelková has launched a Hithit campaign to raise funds for the release of her first CD featuring sonatas by G. F. Handel and A. Corelli on the renowned SUPRAPHON label. The project will showcase the virtuosity of Czech musical artists. The choice of repertoire is also unique, as it is almost unheard of performed on the recorder.  more

One of the world's finest cellists and one of the 20th century's most challenging symphonies. This is the programme of Schumann and Shostakovich, a concert the Brno Philharmonic has been preparing for this week. Steven Isserlis is coming to Brno to perform Robert Schumann' s Cello Concertomore

In mid-June, the Brno City Theatre will be hosting a festival showcase of professional theatre entitled Dokořán (Open Doors for) Musical Theatre, the only festival dedicated to presenting contemporary musical theatre works. The festival's dramaturgs have compiled a selection of ten of the most interesting productions representing the best currently on offer on stages at home and abroad. The show will be complemented by an exhibition marking 80 years of the Brno City Theatre, as well as a concert by Meteor from Prague.  more

Feature articles

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

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

After almost thirty years, Brno has replaced the German capital Berlin as the main centre of the European panel of radio music publicists World Music Charts Europe (WMCE). From Berlin public radio, where the founder of this platform, Johannes Theurer, worked until 30 November 2020, the centre of WMCE's  activities is moving to the Brno headquarters of Radio Proglas. Milan Tesař, one of its two current Czech members and head of the music section of Proglas, became the new secretary of the panel starting from 1 December.  more

The Czech Radio Brno folklore section decided that it did not want to idle during the isolation that affected almost the entire world. In addition to "home" broadcasting taking place directly at editors' homes, it also announced a challenge. Listeners can now submit their music recordings to the radio editors; these recordings will eventually be broadcast on air.  more

Due to the impact of extraordinary measures taken because of the Covid-19 pandemic on stakeholders of the cultural and creative industries in Brno, Brno leaders and the Department of Culture of the Brno City Municipality are working intensively on a set of precautions for minimizing the damages. At the same time, communication is conducted on all levels of public administration, predominantly in collaboration with the Institut umění – Divadelní ústav [Arts and Theatre Institute], which is  mapping the situation on the nationwide level. Until 22 March 2020 you can help assess the current situation by means of an online survey (the link is provided below). Further steps will be taken according to the results of the survey.  more

As a UNESCO-listed city of music, Brno has had four festival days full of music and dance. Tens of concerts and performances with hundreds of performers took place at twenty-two music venues. Music in the streets sounded on every corner, but most attention this year was attracted by four rooms by the artist Kateřina Šedá, in which artists of different genres and nationalities took turns. Another attraction was the performances of the British Motionhouse and No Fit State Circus, who repeatedly enchanted the Náměstí Svobody Square with their acrobatic pieces and breathtaking performances. Two large stages were also set up – Dominik Stage on Dominikánské Square and Django Stage on Malinovského Square, on which appeared artists such as Jana Kirschner, Monika Bagárová, minus123minutes or Jan P. Muchow & The Antagonists. Traditionally, the festival was accompanied by the sound of barrel organs whose players met in Brno as part of their 10th international meeting. This year, singer and multi-instrumentalist Tinatin Tsereteli (Hannover) and violinist Nicola Manzan (Bologna) as artists from UNESCO partner cities of music also premiered at the Brno Music Marathon. The atmosphere of the festival is captured in the video below.  more

In the course of four days the Brno Music Marathon offered some 150 concerts with more than 500 participants. The festival brought together local artists and guests from abroad. The Jazz Evening in the Sono Centre opened with Brno’s Marek Kotača Trio, followed by Yaron Herman from Israel and Kenny Garrett from the USA, while on the stage at Špilberk Castle the local hip-hop legends Chaozz and the crossover and world music Dog Eat Dog got the audience moving. The Adicts from England together with the Prague group The Fialky took care of the rock evening at Fléda, while in the Sono Centre it was the Dutch Physical Graffiti paying tribute to Led Zeppelin. Brno was full of rock, with the British alt-J also performing on Sunday evening.  more

An interview between Kateřina Bajo, the main coordinator for the membership of Prague as a city of literature in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and David Dittrich, main coordinator for the membership of Brno as a city of music in the same network. The UNESCO Creative Cities Network was set up in 2004 and its main aim is to support cooperation and international cooperation and creativity. Now it brings together 180 member cities from 72 countries from around the world. The cities fall into 7 creative areas – literature, music, design, film, gastronomy, traditional crafts and media. A city applying for membership in the network has to fulfil very strict criteria, and it must be supported not only by the commission of experts but also by all the member cities.  more

Brno is now one of the 180 cities from around the world that belongs to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Only some three dozen of these are focused on music. After Prague it is the second city in the Czech Republic to be accepted into this network. The awarded title recognises the work of artists, people working in culture, the diversity of genres and cooperation with the surrounding region.  more

The unique event ZUŠ Open will present on Tuesday May 30 up to a thousand musical, dance, theatre and artistic performances in 280 Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian towns and cities. Brno also will have an exceptionally rich programme tomorrow, culminating in a joint vocal performance of children with Magdalena Kožená on Moravian Square and a celebratory concert of the Mozart’s Children Festival in Besední dům together with the Brno Philharmonic. The Brno event is part of Brno’s candidacy for the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of music.  more