King Crimson band members to perform musical marathon in Brno

Members of one of the most influential bands in rock history, the British King Crimson, will present The Crimson Marathon project, created exclusively for the Czech festival Prague Music Performance, at Brno’s Sono Centre. The aim of the project, created with the consent of the group’s founder Robert Fripp, is to present the individual members of King Crimson through their own projects and through the work of the group itself.

Formed in 1968, King Crimson were one of the most inspiring exponents of progressive rock in the 1970s, yet their influence didn’t wane in the decades that followed. The innovative approach that King Crimson always consistently applied in their work has inspired countless global music icons, including Talking Heads, David Bowie and Nick Cave. “The bands tu:NER, StickMen and David Cross Band will play at the autumn music marathon associated with the band that Jimi Hendrix called the best in the world,” said Jan Bartoš, director of Prague Music Performance, adding that these bands include musicians who worked on two seminal King Crimson albums celebrating anniversaries in 2023. “Fifty years ago, Larks’ Tongues In Aspic was the band’s breakthrough recording, while the band’s last studio album, The Power to Believe, was released twenty years ago.” To mark the occasion of the autumn concerts (in Brno and Prague) of musicians associated with King Crimson, Prague Music Platform is also releasing a long-awaited Czech translation of a book by British journalist Sid Smith on the band’s history. The Brno concert is planned for 29 November at 20:00 in Brno’s Sono Centre.

King Crimson was one of the leading progressive rock bands of the 1970s, but over the following decades the band’s work blended influences from the most varied musical styles, from psychedelic rock through jazz, folk and heavy metal to electronic and classical music. The band formed in 1968 and a year later gave a triumphant performance alongside the Rolling Stones at a concert in Hyde Park in front of 650,000 people. Their 1969 début album In the Court of the Crimson King is still considered one of the most important albums in rock history. Jimi Hendrix soon described King Crimson as “the best band in the world.” The band used frequent personnel changes to modify the instrumentation and alter their sound. The innovative approach that King Crimson always consistently applied in their work has inspired countless global music icons, including Talking Heads, David Bowie and Nick Cave. Over the course of its existence, the band’s ever-changing line-up has included more than two dozen extraordinary musicians who worked in parallel with John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, Frank Zappa, Brian Eno and many others. The musicians who have passed through King Crimson have collectively recorded an estimated 1,500+ albums.