Other
News
The ArtBar club in Brno hosts another Funky Night. Funky Chicken, Brass Avenue and Michael V of J.A.R, called Helicopter will appear. The event will feature well-known funky hits as well as completely new ones; the concerts will be accompanied by video projections and a light show. more
International Dance Day has been celebrated every year around the world since 1982. In Brno, dancers will celebrate it at the piazzetta in front of the Janáček Theatre. The programme includes dance classes, performances by the NdB Ballet and the Brno Dance Conservatory. more
Cotatcha Orchestra is giving a concert to mark the 120th anniversary of birth of the big band giant Duke Ellington. The orchestra will appear in Brno's HaDivadlo together with the Swiss vocalist Géraldine Schnyder. more
Miloš Štědroň on the topic: Milan and Ludvík Kundera about Janáček
In his lecture, Miloš Štědroň will present Ludvík Kundera as Janáček's assistant and expert in his work. Milan Kundera will be shown as the author of the respected book Můj Janáček [My Janáček]. The lecture will take place in the Moravian Regional Library. The event is an accompanying programme to an exhibition about the translations of Milan Kundera’s works. more
The Bonjour Brno Festival Enters its 25th Season
The festival of French and francophone culture this year celebrates its 25th birthday. During the month of April Bonjour Brno will be presenting Brno with artistic productions directly from France and events inspired by the culture of the francophone countries. The programme includes concerts, films, plays, exhibitions, literary events, gastronomy and street art. There will also be the traditional Le Rendez-vous, a pétanque tournament and a children’s programme. This year’s motto is Tradition in the Move. more
Symposium: Art, Music, Management Returns to Brno’s JAMU
After two years the Symposium: Art | Music | Management is returning to Brno’s JAMU (Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts). Three days in April will be given over to debate, new ideas and exchanging of contacts between professionals, teachers and students. The 7th Symposium promises more than thirty lecturers from four countries and an accompanying programme. This time the symposium focuses on the education of artistic, and primarily music managers. more
Flamenco Seminar with Cristina Aguilera
The dancer Cristina Aguilera from Granada will be heading to Brno. Aside from a concert in Besední dům there will also be an opportunity to attend her two days of dance courses. The courses are divided into three levels. more
Clarinettist and Grammy holder Oran Etkin will perform as part of the Mladí ladí jazz [Young People Tune Jazz] in the Stará Pekárna music club in Brno. The guests of the concert will be Peter Korman, Tibor Žida, Michael Grombiřík, Dušan Čermák and Roman Horváth. For the next day, Etkin is preparing a music workshop for children, which will take place using his own entertaining teaching method called Timbalooloo. more
Nevermore & Kosmonaut: Last concert with projection in the planetarium
The observatory at Kraví hora will welcome the Brno music group Nevermore & Kosmonaut. As part of the concert, there will be songs from their latest album Bleděmodré město [Pale Blue City], which won this year's nomination for the Anděl Awards. The evening will be accompanied by video projection on the entire planetarium dome and an exhibition of photographs by David Konečný. more
The Fast Food Orchestra is a perennial star of the Czech Republic’s ska-punk and reggae scene. This year, it will celebrate its 20 years of existence with a series of spring concerts, and will also perform at the Fléda music club. Featured guests appearing in the concert will be Su-shu, Dr. Kary and a number of additional musicians who have gone through this band in the past. more
Feature articles
Filip Míšek and Ema Brabcová have worked together for as many as twenty years already. They met each other back in 1999 in the group Roe-Deer, as part of which they created their own project called Khoiba. Under this name they released their albums Nice Traps (2004) and Mellow Drama (2007), shone on the domestic scene and drew attention to themselves in neighbouring Germany, but then each of the protagonists set out on their own paths – Filip came up with the solo project Dikolson and Ema was active first in the group Luno and later became part of The Antagonists under the leadership of Jan P. Muchow. Only in January 2019 did the resurrected Khoiba draw attention to itself – first with the single Log and two months later with the album Khoiba. As part of an intensive spring concert the duo is also coming to perform in Brno. The concert will take place in Kabinet múz on 24 April and supporting Khoiba will be Jan Boroš with Čáry života [Life Lines], this year’s winner of the Apollo award. more
In an almost four-hour long programme, both audience and performers celebrated the 80th birthday of Horňácko folk legend Martin Hrbáč in Veselí nad Moravou. The concert that took place on Sunday 24 March, and was not only historic in its length but more importantly in the range of folk legends appearing on stage. more
The JAZZFESTBRNO Festival is expanding this year with the new Tension programme line, which will feature musicians on the borderline between jazz and electronic music. One of the performers who will appear on 28 March in the Praha space in Brno will be the Czech-Ukrainian duo Zabelov Group, which has recently released a new album called Eg. This interview with Roman Zabelov (accordion, voice, piano, organ, harp…) and Jan Šikl (drums, trumpet, guitar, percussion…) was done in a Prague café just before a rehearsal of the band.
Evenings of the cycle named Music Stocktaking of the Brno-based orchestra Ensemble Opera Diversa regularly bring to light various half-forgotten works by Czech composers. This Tuesday's concert in the concert hall of the Convent of Merciful Brother [Konvent Milosrdných bratří] became a commemorative tribute to the anniversary of the tragic years 1939 and 1969. Violinist Milan Paľa and pianists Kristýna Znamenáčková and Lucie Pokorná performed alongside the orchestra. The performance was conducted by the permanent conductor of the orchestra Gabriela Tardonová. more
Bára Zmeková is releasing her new album called LUNAVES these days. She will officially present it in Brno as well. The launch of the album will take place in the Kabinet múz on Tuesday 19 March. more
The ensemble Šafrán from Moravian Slovakia is already a traditional organiser of the Brno “fašank“. This event, in the spirit of folk traditions, always takes place on Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and it marks the beginning of Christian fasting. Its roots go back to the pagan times, but it is now part of Christian feasts almost all over the world. Marches of masks in various regions of Moravia are called končiny, masopust, fašanek or, for example, šibřinky. Its ensemble parallel in Brno tries to stick to the folk pattern. It begins with a parade in Náměstí svobody Square. This year it continued through the Alfa Mall to the market building at the Cabbage Market. The end of the programme was performed by the ensemble Lučina, which showed the audience the so-called burial of a double bass. It is a custom consisting in a staged burial of this musical instrument, symbolising the end of entertainment, calming down and preparing for Easter. more
"In the past, old people used to be as old as we allegedly are today" sings Slávek Janoušek in his song Alzheimer and Parkinson. The songwriter, who celebrated his 65th birthday last September, found aging as an extremely powerful theme for his new album. Tohle je vzkaz [This Is a Message] is an album not only about incrementing years of age, but also about how we increasingly appreciate our families and our roots as we “grow old“. Although we can find very strong moments in all Janoušek's albums, Tohle je vzkaz can be perceived as the third part of the trilogy of his most powerful recordings – Kdo to zavinil [Whose Fault Is It] (1988), Tancuj a zpívej [Dance and Sing] (1997) and Tohle je vzkaz [This Is a Message] (2018). more
The web portal Brno – Music Friendly City is celebrating its sixth birthday. As a symbolic present to our readers we are bringing you the first of our regular monthly contributions from the Brno dramatist, writer and screenwriter Milan Uhde. He will be sharing his memories and thoughts as well as descriptions of current events in the field of culture in Brno. His theme today is the Janáček Brno festival. more
A concert organised for an exceptional event took place on Thursday at ZUŠ PhDr. Zbyňka Mrkose (a primary school specialising in music) in Brno’s Židenice district. The event was given the title Cimbálový kolaudační concert (A Cimbalom Commissioning Concert. What exactly was being commissioned? From the title it was evident the main star of the programme was a cimbalom. This big instrument with its velvet tones was not the centre of attention by accident. The item being commissioned was a new cimbalom for the musical inventory of the previously mentioned music school. The manufacturer of the instrument was the Brno company of Všianský. The actual maker Pavel Všianský, a famous musician, also personally took part, telling the participants something about the construction of this instrument. more
The Brno singer and artist Dáša Ubrová has sung with a group, performs with a big-band and is close to chanson, jazz and rock. Her album, named simply after her, is important to her and not only because it is her solo debut. It is the first time she has written all the lyrics herself. The music is mainly created by her “court co-workers” and album producers, the pianist Vojtěch Svatoš and the guitarist Pavel Šmíd. more
