Other

Man does not live by classical music alone, as the Epoque Quartet, consisting of violinists David Pokorný, Vladimír Klánský, violist Vladimír Kroupa and cellist Vít Petrášek has been convincing us for twenty years already. For their Saturday concert, staged as part of the Concentus Moraviae festival, which took place in the foyer of the Pasáž theatre in Třebíč, the musicians also invited bass clarinettist Petr Valášek, pianist Karel Košárek and percussionist Oleg Sokolov. The programme of the evening consisted entirely of works by contemporary authors flirting in their compositions not only with musical minimalism, but also with jazz and other popular genres.  more

The title of this album is deceiving. Although the group Šarivary uses the Czech phonetic transcription of the French expressions charivari and mélange, it is not composed of any Czechs. The quartet that got together in Brno is headed by French singer, flutist and accordionist Aude Martin and American guitarist and singer Chris Coleman. Besides them, the band is formed by Swedish trumpeter Christopher Strandh and Slovak bass guitar player Tomáš Ulahel. The band's music is as colourful as its motley ethnic composition.  more

On the last day of May, the Dominikánské Square in Brno came to life with music, singing and dancing. At half past two in the afternoon, the programme of the nationwide happening of primary artistic schools ZUŠ started under the patronage of the Magdalena Kožená Endowment Fund by announcing the results of the "TO JE talent"competition. The participants did not only come to pick up with prizes. Several of the award-winning singers and musicians proved this. For example, Lucie Sedláčková with the song by Ewa Farná Měls mě vůbec rád [Did You Love Me At All?] attracted an ever growing crowd of listeners, while singer and pianist Veronika Vávrová did the same with the ballad Million Reasons by Lady Gaga.  more

A farewell was bidden to a great figure of Moravian culture took place in the Basilica of Old Brno on Thursday 30 May at 11 a.m. Not that culture that flows around us every day in magazines and the media, but culture called independent, alternative, underground, and in the person of the deceased, moreover interwoven with spiritual radicalism and Christian tradition. Jaroslav Erik Frič died aged 69 years on 24 May 2019 after a severe illness, but mentally active until his last days.  more

The Brno group Hrozně slowly approach forty years of age – they started to give concerts in 1982. After several cassettes and unofficial recordings, they released a CD with their debut album Už není čas [There Is No Time Left] in 2013. Their new album named Ticho [Silence], which the band was working on over the last two years in the Indies studio, brings a surprise with its cleaner sound and clearly audible tension in the structure of the songs.  more

On May 17-19, the film festival on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Masaryk University came with some extraordinarily interesting screenings, reminiscent of important personalities from the university's history. The first of them had, in addition to the relationship with natural science, also the merit of studying folk songs. Professor Vladimír Úlehla (1888 – 1947) was commemorated by an impressive show by his great-granddaughter Julia Ulehla on Friday 17 May.  more

This year’s eighteenth JazzFest Brno will exceptionally not close with a concert, but rather a unique (though not unusual for world festivals) series of musical and dance workshops, centred on children. On Saturday 4 May, in the pleasant environment of Café Práh, near Vaňkovka, the children students will be taken on board by the significant young personalities of the jazz scene: Beata Hlavenková (pianist and composition lecturer), Dano Šoltis (leader of the drum class) and the multi-instrumentalists Jiří Slavík and Marian Friedl (conductors of Wandering on Jazz Paths), who will be accompanied by Kateřina Hanzlíková with the Tancohraní lectures. With the exception of composition, where it is necessary for the participants to be older than twelve, all the other “classes” are open to everyone, including the youngest. We asked the co-author of the idea of the children’s workshop and director of JazzFest Brno, Vilém Spilka, for further information.  more

This year's JazzFestBrno festival had several highlights – of course, it depended on each visitor's personal taste, their expectations, and of course on how many shows they managed to visit. For the author of this article, one of the highlights the evening with bassist Stanley Clark on 23 April, varied in genre and arrangement,  as well as the last but one concert of the festival, the performance of "the other" Avishai Cohen in the Husa na provázku Theatre on 28 April. It was a musically pure essence of jazz with a message – imperative, heartbreaking and poetic.  more

One of the musical highlights of last week was the concert of the Malina Brothers with two unique guest musicians, Kateřina García and Charlie McCoy in the Sono Centre in Brno. And because the performance was recorded on a professional video for the band’s first live DVD, the evening itself was extraordinary both in its length and quality.  more