Exoticism in the Brno metropolis

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

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

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

The Brno Dances and Sings Association and TIC Brno organised the 49th annual Brno Dances and Sings show on 6 June. The programme, concentrated into a single day, was busier than in previous years. The subtitle Year of Folklore Ensembles was borrowed from the project of the same name organised by the Brno UNESCO City of Music Office.  more

A year ago we would have found an Asian market in the New Synagogue in Velké Meziříčí. However, the town decided to buy the building and has started to make more fitting and dignified use of it. On Wednesday 5 June, during the ongoing Concentus Moraviae festival, audiences could visit this heritage site and enjoy a chamber concert by singer and violinist Iva Bittová and her women's choir Babačka, featuring musicians Jakub Jedlinský (accordion) and Pavel Fischer (violin).  more

The evening concert by Ensemble Opera Diversa entitled The Face of Water, which took place on 4 June outdoors in the atrium of the Moravian Library in Brno, was preceded by a morning discussion between Professor Miloš Štědron and Associate Professor Vladimír Maňas from the Institute of Musicology at Masaryk University. They both enjoyed an engaging talk on the theme of water in art (from Gregorian chant to the early 20th century), concluding with a sample of the edition and the playing of a recording of Janáček's symphony The Danube. The concert, conducted by Gabriela Tardonová and inspired by the theme of water, featured one world and three Czech premières. Harpist Dominika Kvardová appeared as a soloist.  more

Like other music festivals, the 29th annual Concentus Moraviae International Music Festival has not only had to reflect the fact that it is the Year of Czech Music, but also the unique 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, the founder of modern Czech music. The dramaturgy of this year’s festival, which has just launched, is in the spirit of "Metamorphoses: Czech Smetana!". The first festival concert, which took place on 31 May at the Kyjov Municipal Cultural Centre, gave a hint of the direction the rest of the festival's dramaturgy will take. The organisers of the show decided to explore Smetana's work from a fresh angle and to work not only with the music, but also with the audience’s expectations. The opening evening saw a performance of Smetana's famous String Quartet No. 1 in E minor From My Life, but in an arrangement for a symphony orchestra penned by conductor and pianist George Szell. Smetana's work was complemented by the world première of the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra "Sadunkertoja" by Finnish composer, conductor and artist in residence at the 29th annual festival, Olli Mustonen, commissioned especially for the festival. Mustonen also conducted the Prague Philharmonia's performance of the two works. Danish flautist Janne Thomsen performed as soloist.  more