Lenka Dusilová and Cotatcha Orchestra perform live for the first time in Brno

22 September 2022, 1:00
Lenka Dusilová and Cotatcha Orchestra perform live for the first time in Brno

Singer and musician Lenka Dusilová will perform live for the first time ever with the big band Cotatcha Orchestra. Their joint concert will take place at the Husa na provázku Theater. The nine-time winner of the Anděl Award and the sixteen-member ensemble led by trumpeter Jiří Kotača will present both original novelties written for their joint project and some compositions from their award-winning album Bigbandová elektronika.

“Cotatcha Orchestra is a contemporary, very fresh big band with great playing erudition, strong original repertoire and they like to flirt with electronics. They have a desire to transcend the classical genre, and this is very appealing to me,” says Lenka Dusilová. “Working with them gives me the opportunity to combine my voice and energy with the beautiful color of wind instruments and the whole musical body of the big band. A bonus is the confidence that I can be partly present at the beginning of some of the joint compositions, which were written during a joint live session with Jiří Kotača and Martin Konvička last year. I’m curious to see what compositions some of the musical ideas and phrases will turn into and what the whole thing will sound like in the end. I have no doubt that it will be incredible.” Jiří Kotača says, happy to return the compliments. “Lenka is one of the most interesting musicians on the Czech scene. I really like her genre openness and the fact that she isn’t stuck in one style, but is constantly evolving musically. I like working with such inspiring musicians.”

The concert in Brno will feature new compositions that are the result of their joint work. The basic ideas come from a jam session with Lenka Dusilová, pianist Martin Konvička, and trumpeter and bandleader Jiří Kotača. Both of them then took care of finalizing the compositions and arrangements for the whole orchestra. “There will be several fresh new compositions created especially for this project and also some compositions from the Bigbandová elektronika album. Amongst others, Billy’s Pilgrimage, the single in which Lenka was first introduced to us. Lenka will mainly sing, but also play a little guitar,” says Jiří Kotača about the unique performance. The joint concert is planned for 9 October at 19:30 at the Husa na provázku Theater.

The Cotatcha Orchestra big band, known for its original projects, started a collaboration with Lenka Dusilová on the award-winning debut Bigbandová elektronika, which received a nomination for the Anděl 2020 Award and won the Czech Jazz Harvest poll. Jiří Kotača got the idea to collaborate with Lenka in 2018, when he was waiting in a café in Riga for a rehearsal with the Euroradio Jazz Orchestra. “I enjoy crossing genres and I wanted to take one of my projects a little bit outside the usual jazz boxes. It seemed to me that Lenka likes this kind of music and I could imagine her voice in our own work, which I think was confirmed during the first collaboration. I also wanted to add vocals that would fit well in my own work, and I think that worked out well. We like to play with sound and electronics, that’s also an important link,” explains Jiří Kotača the reasons why he turned to Lenka Dusilová. “Three years ago, Jiří Kotača approached me saying that he liked my musical energy and that he would like to connect me with the musical world of the Cotatcha Orchestra. It was a very big compliment to me. It’s a big challenge, these are amazing musicians with their own vision and it’s an honor to be a small part of their plan. Such a rare offer is not to be refused,” adds Lenka Dusilová. The first meeting resulted in a guest appearance on the album Bigbandová elektronika in the song Billy’s Pilgrimage and a guest appearance on a concert recording for Czech Television. “And since the corona came again in the winter of 2021, we found time for a jam session together, which led to musical ideas that we are still developing and writing songs from,” adds Jiří Kotača.

Photo: Tomáš Škoda

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