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The Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) organises the prestigious International Leoš Janáček Competition in Brno every year. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the flute and clarinet competition. The final rounds of the competition in both disciplines will take place at the Besední dům, where the competitors will be accompanied by the Czech Virtuosi orchestra conducted by Vít Spilka and the Ensemble Opera Diversa orchestra conducted by Gabriela Tardonová.  more

The Brno Culture Newsletter presents an overview of what is happening in the city’s theatres, clubs, summer festivals and other cultural events in Brno.  more

The Brno Philharmonic will embark on its 69th season this Sunday. With this concert, principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies will begin his seventh year at the helm of the orchestra. The programme commemorates the anniversaries of two giants of the Romantic era: the founder of Czech national music, Bedřich Smetana, and the prominent Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner, born 200 years ago this year.  more

Today, to the strains of the first movement of Janáček's Confidential Letters, the contract with the contractor of the Janáček Cultural Centre was officially signed at the New Town Hall.  more

The 20th annual festival will, as always, take place in Brno. Spectators will be treated to a spectacular clown show in the "sea" on Moravské náměstí to open the festival, and a subsequent weekend programme in Björnson's Orchard. The programme includes performances, art forms, new circus, puppets and classic drama and concerts.  more

The Brno Culture Newsletter presents an overview of what is happening in the city’s theatres, clubs, summer festivals and other cultural events in Brno.  more

The anniversary of the birth of composer Leoš Janáček, who would now be 170 years old, is fast approaching. The Janáček Brno festival, the Janáček Opera NdB and TIC Brno are organising a full-day birthday celebration, which will include a concert, an opera screening, a glimpse into the secrets of Janáček’s opera Jenůfa, with presentations, a programme for children and much more.  more

The last weekend of the holiday season will see Brno hosting the 3rd international festival of Jewish culture. The festival will feature some important and lesser-known artists such as Franz Kafka, Hugo and Pavel Haas, Ernst Wiesner, Arnold Schöenberg, Helga Hošková, conductor Alexander Liebreich, photographer Jindřich Štreit and Petr Bureš, and will give an insight into their life stories. The programme will offer more than 110 diverse attractions, more than 50 personalities and ensembles from the Czech Republic and abroad, and many kilometres of walks to explore some notable places and find out more about prominent figures from the Jewish community in Brno. ŠTETL FEST is the Czech Republic’s largest festival of Jewish culture.  more

The eighth annual multi-genre In the Middle (Uprostřed) festival has just launched in the centre of Brno. It starts today and runs for two full months, featuring dozens of open-air performances, concerts and other art forms. The entire programme is completely free of charge to attend.  more

The Ibérica Festival will kick off with the traditional gala concert in the courtyard of Špilberk Castle. The festival, which brings together Spanish, Latin American, Czech and Slovak artistes, will again this year offer a programme packed with concerts, creative workshops, theatre and lectures about Cuba by Tomáš Hanák. The opening night will feature a performance by Spanish Roma singer and pianist Diego Amador and dancer Cristina Aguilera. They will be joined by singer Miguel Lavi and guitarist David Caro.  more

Feature articles

Baladas da Luta, Fighting Ballads, is the title of the sixth album by Brazilian singer Mariana Da Cruz and her Swiss-Brazilian band Da Cruz. It is a combination of modern music that combines Latin American tradition and contemporary electronic elements with strong lyrics. In them, the author fights for women’s rights, stands up against dictatorships and specifically criticizes the atmosphere that has evolved in Brazil under the now former authoritarian President Bolsonaro. Da Cruz performed at Brasil Fest Brno in August 2023. We revisit this festival with an interview conducted following their concert at Zelný trh. Singer Mariana Da Cruz and keyboard player and producer Ane Hebeisn, performing as Ane H, responded to our questions. more

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

The Brno Philharmonic’s headquarters and one of Brno’s most important historical and cultural landmarks – the Besední dům – celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. Exactly on 3 April 1873, when the auditorium (great hall) of the building designed by architect Theophil von Hansen, author of the famous Musikverein in Vienna, was ceremonially opened, this magnificent building became the centre of Brno’s culture and its distinctive artistic life. A century and a half later – on Monday 1 May 2023 – an afternoon gathering and a subsequent concert entitled When Smetana First Played in Brno. . . will launch a series of concerts that pay tribute to unique milestones in the city’s cultural history.  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

La Cantiga de la Serena is a trio from southern Italy, focusing on the music of the Mediterranean, seen as a bridge between the West and the East. The ensemble's repertoire consists of medieval dances and songs, sacred songs including pilgrim songs, medieval secular songs, and songs of the Sephardic Jews who had to leave what is now Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century. In 2021, the group released its third and most recent album to date, La Mar, and in the summer of 2022 performed in Brno at the Maraton Hudby festival. You can even recall the concert thanks to this interview. Our questions are answered by Fabrizio Piepoli, who sings and plays the Italian battente chitarra, as well as Giorgia Santoro, who plays a variety of flutes and whistles, including the Indian bansuri and Irish tin whistle, and the Celtic harp. Finally, the third member is Adolfo La Volpe, who plays the Arabic lute, classical guitar and Irish bouzouki.  more

Last year’s album Morytáty a romance by Brno singer-songwriter and TV dramaturge Ivo Cicvárek scores points in annual polls beyond the pure folk genre. Ivo recorded his big project with his renamed band, which he now calls Živo, and a number of guests. In the interview he explains what is behind the songs of the album and talks about his future plans.  more

Naloučany is a small village on the Oslava River in the Vysočina region. The village has its own photographer, and his portraits of the village locals have found their way to the American Library of Congress and have become part of the largest collection of this medium since its beginnings. This is naturally a source of pride for nearly two hundred of the village’s inhabitants. That’s why they all joined forces to give their native photographer an event that would be remembered not only by them and by the photographer himself, but also by all the other visitors who took the trip through the snowy rolling landscape to the village’s community centre.  more

Noam Vazana, performing under the name Nani, is an Israeli singer who performs songs in the Jewish language Ladino. For her 2017 album “Andalusian Brew”, she collected folk songs, some of which she heard as a child from her grandmother. In 2021, she recorded her first original album of songs in Ladino, entitled “Ke Haber”. In autumn 2022, she performed in Brno at the Music Lab club in a duo with Brno percussionist Jakub Škrha. The following interview was conducted before the concert.  more

Martin Kyšperský and Aleš Pilgr recently celebrated twenty years of cooperation in the Květy (Flowers) group. While the bandmates and instruments around them have changed over the two decades, the two have remained a constant force in one of Brno's most essential bands of the century. This constant force, however, has been a dynamic one, as the two protagonists alternate between different instruments and approaches. Martin switches from the guitar to other instruments, and Aleš has gone from being a drummer to a double bassist and will be a drummer again from 2023. This context is then also important for understanding the new album Duo, which Kyšperský and Pilgr recorded as, well, a duo.  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


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Upcoming events

HM...

09/10/24, 20:00 / Kabinet múz (The Cabinet of Muses)

F͢R͢E͢E͢ ͢F͢O͢R͢M͢S͢

09/10/24, 20:00 / Ponava Cafe

Obyvatelé cihlového domu

10/10/24, 20:00 / Ponava Cafe

Random Choices | The Tails | Čihy

11/10/24, 18:00 / Alterna

Duo Zoufalec a Lachtan

12/10/24, 20:00

Behind the Door

13/10/24, 20:00 / Alterna

KVĚTY (HRAJÍ ALBUM BÍLÉ VČELY)

13/10/24, 20:00 / Kabinet múz (The Cabinet of Muses)

THE BODY & DIS FIG (USA/DE) + JAN TOMÁŠ

14/10/24, 20:00 / Kabinet múz (The Cabinet of Muses)


Listening Guide: Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta
with Jakub Hrůša
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