Folk & Country

News

The annual meeting of UNESCO Cities of Music is currently taking place in Norrköping, Sweden. The host city is the cultural capital of the Östergötland region, 130 kilometres south of Stockholm. Like Brno, Norrköping has been a UNESCO Creative Cities Network City of Music since 2017.  more

The TrutnOFF BrnoON festival has been part of the Brno summer since 2020. This year, bands such as Julian Marley & The Uprising, The Subways, The Sisters of Mercy, Monkey Business, and Reef will perform in Pisárky. The festival starts today and runs until Sunday.  more

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.  more

The culture newsletter details what’s on in Brno, the latest news and opportunities in culture.   more

As the designated UNESCO City of Music, Brno is all set to be filled with harmonious sounds of music once again. Hundreds of musicians will perform in the city over the four days of the festival, with dozens of concerts scheduled that shall make the squares, streets and concert halls resound with music. Encompassing a variety of genres, this year’s Brno Music Marathon will take place in mid-August, just like before, and it’s going to be one of the few public events to happen this year. The line-up includes Lenka Dusilová, Juwana Jenkins, Sisa Feher, Fanfara Transilvania, Malalata, Circus Brothers, Horňácká cimbálová muzika Petra Mičky (the Horňácko Cimbalom Band of Petr Mička), Javory and a host of others. Street “rooms” by Kateřina Šedá is not absent from it, either.  more

The Brno Cultural Newsletter provides an overview of events and changes that concern theatres, clubs, festivals and cultural events in Brno in the coming period.  more

For the fifth time already, the centre of Brno will be transformed into one big music stage. From Thursday to Sunday, the multi-genre Brno Music Marathon festival will take place here. The programme will surely please  fans of rock, pop, groove, dance music, opera, folk, ethno, world music, classics or musicals. Brno is the only UNESCO City of Music to welcome 300 musicians in our country, among others, for example, Magdalena Kožená, Katarína Knechtová or Jan Bendig. You also should not miss Pianoštafeta, The Endless Organ and concerts in street rooms of Kateřina Šedá.  more

The world celebration of music, known as  Fête de la Musique, will be held on this particular day of 21 June. The current situation does not allow for mass celebrations in the form of concerts, happenings and performances in the streets of UNESCO Music Cities. That is why this year's celebrations of music will take place in the form of an online concert. Today's virtual music festival, which starts at 12:00, is jointly held by more than 20 cities from all around the world. You can watch the concert on the Facebook page UNESCO Cities of Music and on YouTube.  more

A series of six concerts will take place in the compound of ​​the former Řečkovice brewery. One of them will be an evening called Pocta Petru Skoumalovi [Tribute to Petr Skoumal], featuring Jaroslav Olin Nejezchleba and Malý Bobr.  more

The multi-genre Brno Music Marathon festival is about to enter its fourth season. In August, Brno will have four days full of music that will sound in the city squares, in the festival rooms of Kateřina Šedá, and traditionally in the Alfa pasáž shopping mall. The genre representation in the programme ranges from groove, dance and Romani music through opera, folklore, world music, classics and musicals. Performers will include Pavel Fischer & Jakub Jedlinský, VUS Ondráš with a project by Jiří Slavík, the Indigo Quartet, Monika Načeva, the Epoque Quartet and many others.  more

Feature articles

The Brno-based singer-songwriter Yana recorded her first album Journey of the Soul in Dublin, Ireland, and invited a number of top Irish musicians to join her in the studio. more

Singer-songwriter Martina Trchová, winner of the Anděl award for her album Holobyt, recently disbanded her band and now performs mainly as a soloist. She is slowly working on a new album and is also focusing on visual arts. Her new book Babi, will soon be published, and she’ll also be holding another festival in the Obřany district of Brno.  more

Lidověk is the first solo album by Matěj Metoděj Štrunc, a young actor, singer and musician originally from Brno, frontman of the band Ateliér, and son of dulcimer player Dalibor and violinist Katerina Štrunc from the bands Cimbal Classic and Javory. The apple really did not fall far from the tree, but at the same time it came closer to other trees and colored itself with original colors.  more

American singer-songwriter Leyla McCalla is claiming her Haitian roots. She lives in Louisiana and connects the traditional musical genres of the U.S. South with the culture of the island where her ancestors came from. On Tuesday, 27 July, we will be able to hear her voice and songs live at the festival of Folkové prázdniny (Folk Holidays) in Náměšt' nad Oslavou.  more

When the term “world music” is mentioned, most people probably think of Indian Bollywood music or African rhythms. But the genre also includes music from Europe. I talked about it with Milan Tesař, head of the music editorial department of Radio Proglas and now also secretary of the World Music Charts Europe. Interesting performers from Europe are now being invited by Milan to the world music scene at the Marathon Music Festival Brno. In addition, we discussed Proglas, his work as an expert supervisor of the Ceny Anděl (Anděl Awards) competition, the quality of Czech music and its experience with dramaturgy.  more

“It’s absolutely perfect, I play it all the time and it plays in my head all the time,” commented Matěj H., a music studies graduate and Brno politician. In another Facebook debate, a musical editor with a pen name of Max B. depicts it to be “totally horrible stuff.” Few domestic albums recorded in 2020 received such varied responses as Folk Swings, a collection of what were initially contemporary folk songs, re-arranged to become big-band pieces and performed by B-Side Band with Josef Buchta as the bandmaster.  more

Two years after the monothematic album Bleděmodré město (Pale Blue City), for which the Brno-based group Nevermore & Kosmonaut received a nomination for the genre-specific Anděl Award, the band released a new album with a mysterious name XCR-9. The subheading Písně do rakety (Songs for a Space Shuttle) reveal more. While on the last album we walked through the streets of the city of Brno together with Michal Šimíček and his band, this time the singer-songwriter, who has been using the nickname Kosmonaut for years, is taking us on a fictitious journey into space.  more

The album Folk Swings of the Brno-based B-Side Band is being vividly discussed on social networks. Can a big band take the liberty of to playing the "sacred" songs of Czech folk? And what if these compositions are sung along with the band directly by their authors such as Jaromír Nohavica, Vlasta Redl or Slávek Janoušek? However, while the above might have been able to have their say concerning the arrangements, Karel Kryl, Zuzana Navarová or Wabi Ryvola could no longer make any comments regarding the makeovers of their songs… We talked to Petr Kovařík and Pavel Zlámal, members of the orchestra, about how the album was created, why Ryvola's song 'Tereza' sounds like a Cuban dance, and why 'Podvod' ('Scam') by Honza Nedvěd is played only as an instrumental piece. The two guys have actually created new arrangements for widely famed as well as less well-known folk songs, which now appear on this album.  more

Tiché lodi ('Silent Ships') is not a band, but a project of the guitarist and singer René Müller, who lives in Brno. While he recorded his previous album Časy vody ('Times of Water' – 2015) working together with Roman Cipísek Cerman, his former colleague from the band Hynkovy zámky ('Hynek's Locks'), Müller is now appearing all by himself on the new album – as writer of the music and lyrics, guitarist and singer, or – in his case more precisely – narrator.  more

Oldřich Veselý, a Brno-based singer, composer and keyboard player, died in January 2018. In February 2019, the 10th Brno Beatfest, dedicated to his memory, took place in the Semilasso music hall. And a year later, a CD recording of this concert was released under the title Malý princ [The Little Prince], complemented by several bonus items.  more


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Upcoming events

Thom Artway + Martin Harich (SK)

21/03/24, 20:30 / Metro Music Bar

Thom Artway + Martin Harich (SK)

21/03/24, 20:30 / Metro Music Bar

Martina Trchová and Polovičná porcia /SK/

23/03/24, 19:00 / Old Bakery Music Cafe (Stará Pekárna)


Listening Guide: Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta
with Jakub Hrůša
  more