Music of today: Ostravská banda in Ireland

Publikováno: 1.10.2024

On October 7th, the Ostravská banda will travel to Cork, Ireland, where they will play two concerts: one in collaboration with University College Cork (October 11), the main partner of the project, and the other (October 13) with Guesthouse Projects, a creative initiative focused on artistic experimentation and interdisciplinarity. The concerts will feature a total of 16 pieces presenting contemporary music by artists from the Czech Republic and Ireland, but also Germany and the United States. The tour will include a networking session

between musicians of Ostravská banda and Irish players, as well as presentations by Czech composers in Cork and their dialogue with local students and members of the independent music scene. Martin Smolka and Luboš Mrkvička, leading composers and teachers at the HAMU (Music Academy) in Prague will share their experience, and composer Petr Kotík will be conductor and dramaturge of the concerts. Ostravská banda’s tour to Ireland and collaboration with the local university and music community is supported by the National Recovery Plan and the Statutory City of Ostrava.

Ostravská banda with special guests:

This concert trip to Cork, Ireland follows last year's successful tour of Ostravská banda in New York and the presentation of Czech composers in the USA. The top soloists, who form an international chamber orchestra, will connect Czech music to music from Western Europe and the USA in their programmes. Ostravská banda was founded in 2005 by Petr Kotík for the Ostrava Days festival and other projects by the Ostrava Centre for New Music, and its players are able to quickly master even the most complicated scores. Thanks to its top level of performance and progressive programmes, Ostravská banda has also gained recognition on international stages. For instance, the ensemble has performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Berlin's Akademie der Künste, and Cologne and Vienna's Konzerthaus. Ostravská banda has also visited prestigious festivals such as Madrid's Musicadhoy and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England. Ostravská banda has continuously asserted itself as one of the key orchestras of contemporary music, not only regularly presenting new works but also contributing to international creative dialogue.

The music of Czech living composers will be joined in its unusual presentation by contemporary European work; represented by the German composer Isabel Mundry, whose solo violin piece will be performed by the concert master of the Ostravská banda, the American violinist Conrad Harris. Representatives of the Irish school will also take part: there will be works by Danny McCarthy, Karen Power and Donnchadh MacAodha (former resident of the Ostrava Days Institute).

The connection of Czech music to the American scene is embodied by the personality of Czech-American Petr Kotik, who has lived and worked in the United States since the late 1960s. Before that, he met John Cage in Prague, who visited the Czechoslovak capital as part of the world tour of Merce Cunningham's band. In 1964, Cage and Kotík performed together in Vienna, Prague and Warsaw. Rudolf Komorous, one of the founders of Musica Viva Pragensis and Kotík's colleague from the 1960s, also left Czechoslovakia and has been a major figure on the Canadian music scene for the past few decades, becoming one of the most influential educators on Canada's west coast. Other "American" influences that have played a major role in the creative work of Peter Kotík and the festivals and ensembles he founded include Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, George Brecht, and the late Phill Niblock. All of these names will be represented at the Ostravská banda's Irish concerts.

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