The album Excursin Animato is a live recording of a unique project that Irena and Vojtech Havel, and the experimental-ambient duo Kora et le Mechanix, performed at the Alternativa Festival in 2006, created specifically for this festival. Here, the Havel couple for the first time combined their fragile, meditative music with electronics, which they had purposefully avoided until then (and even after). The album Excursin Animato is dedicated to the memory of the exceptional musician Vojtech Havel, who died a year ago. He and his wife Irena had been working together since the 1970s, recording a number of albums that mixed elements of European minimalism with Baroque and Eastern traditions. The depth and unpretentiousness of their expression have won them loyal fans at home and abroad and inspired many artists across genres. For their latest album Four Hands (Animal Music, 2024), they received the Czech Music Academy Award. The duo Kora et le Mechanix, formed by Michal Korán and Filip Homola, is celebrating 20 years of existence this year. They have established themselves as one of the most interesting electronic ambient projects in our country. The starting point of the collaboration with the Havel couple was their debut album Excursin (2006). The electronic compositions of Kora et le Mechanix (electronics, sampler, synthesizer, vocoder) are combined with the fragile world of acoustic music of Irena and Vojtech Havel (viola da gamba, cello, piano, and Tibetan bowls). The album Excursin also has a remix version, Excursin Forte (2007), featuring some of the most remarkable artists of the Czech and Slovak electronic scene. Excursin Animato thus concludes this trilogy.

Krasa Quartet, a young ensemble specializing in music by Jewish authors from the Terezin Ghetto, are releasing their debut album, with compositions by Hans Krasa, Erwin Schulhoff and Karel Ancerl. Krasa's Theme with Variations and his String Quartet, Schulhoff's Divertimento for String Quartet and Ancerl's Two Student Fugues all come from early stages of these composers' careers, before the political events in the aftermath of the First World War drastically affected their lives. In 2012, four young musicians who met during their studies at the Prague Conservatory decided to found their own ensemble. The members of Krasa Quartet - Marie Forestova, sarka Petrikova (first violin), Jan Paloucek (second violin) and Daniel Menhart - were then of similar age as these authors would have been while working on their early compositions. Now, having gained experience performing at festivals in Czechia and abroad and participating in master classes (Pavel Haas Quartet, Hagen Quartet), the quartet are relaesing their debut album. Besides quartet classics, such as, for example, works by Ludwig van Beethoven, the ensemble's repertoire encompasses 20th-century music, with special emphasis on works of Hans Krasa and other Terezin authors. Krasa Quartet regularly collaborate with foremost instrumentalists, including pianists Jan Bartos and Marek Kozak, as well as with choirs and dance ensembles. For several years, the ensemble performed as part of the ballet production Vertigo at the National Theatre in Prague.