Saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and visual artist Marcel Barta entered the Czech jazz and improvisation scene while still a student and has since become one of it's core members. He is a founding member of the electro-jazz quintet MUFF, the cult jazz sextet Vertigo and the duo DoMa Ensemble. Besides collaborating with many foremost artists from different genres on the home and international scene, he has been dedicating himself to composition, writing scenic music for the theatre company Farma v jeskyni (Farm in the Cave), among otherprojects. He is the recipient of multiple Czech Music Academy Awards in the jazz category, having also been nominated for the same award on a number of occasions. While Episodes from the Spinning Ball is the first recording to feature Barta's work exclusively, the eponymous composition is his first piece for a large ensemble. As composer and arranger he has taken part in dozens of projects and recordings, many of which were released by the label Animal Music. The new album brings a recording of a concert performance featuring the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, which took place as part of the jazz-symphonic crossover series New Horizons in February 2025 in the DOX+Multifunction Hall in Prague. Composed on a commission from the orchestra, the work formally resembles a suite in three parts. It is performed, however, as a continuous flow of music. In the author's own words, the piece "is an attempt to evoke a story that reflects my own planetary experience. The rotating ball in the title is a geoid, the shape of our own planet." Combining composed music with improvisation, the piece bears traces of Barta's original style, known for example from his work for Vertigo or Muff. It is rooted in jazz and contemporary classical music and unfolds like an elaborate story in which densely composed soundscapes interweave with delicate melodies and fine-grained instrumentation and whereorder coexists with improvisation and melancholy passages alternate with psychedelia and humour. The jazz band in the recording features, alongside Marcel Barta himself, trombonist stepan Janousek, keyboardist and synth player Vojtech Prochazka, double bassist Milos Klapsteand drummer Jan Chalupa. The whole jazz-symphonic ensemble is conducted by Bastien Stil who has had ample experience leading crossover projects.

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.

Saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and visual artist Marcel Barta entered the Czech jazz and improvisation scene while still a student and has since become one of it's core members. He is a founding member of the electro-jazz quintet MUFF, the cult jazz sextet Vertigo and the duo DoMa Ensemble. Besides collaborating with many foremost artists from different genres on the home and international scene, he has been dedicating himself to composition, writing scenic music for the theatre company Farma v jeskyni (Farm in the Cave), among otherprojects. He is the recipient of multiple Czech Music Academy Awards in the jazz category, having also been nominated for the same award on a number of occasions. While Episodes from the Spinning Ball is the first recording to feature Barta's work exclusively, the eponymous composition is his first piece for a large ensemble. As composer and arranger he has taken part in dozens of projects and recordings, many of which were released by the label Animal Music. The new album brings a recording of a concert performance featuring the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, which took place as part of the jazz-symphonic crossover series New Horizons in February 2025 in the DOX+Multifunction Hall in Prague. Composed on a commission from the orchestra, the work formally resembles a suite in three parts. It is performed, however, as a continuous flow of music. In the author's own words, the piece "is an attempt to evoke a story that reflects my own planetary experience. The rotating ball in the title is a geoid, the shape of our own planet." Combining composed music with improvisation, the piece bears traces of Barta's original style, known for example from his work for Vertigo or Muff. It is rooted in jazz and contemporary classical music and unfolds like an elaborate story in which densely composed soundscapes interweave with delicate melodies and fine-grained instrumentation and whereorder coexists with improvisation and melancholy passages alternate with psychedelia and humour. The jazz band in the recording features, alongside Marcel Barta himself, trombonist stepan Janousek, keyboardist and synth player Vojtech Prochazka, double bassist Milos Klapsteand drummer Jan Chalupa. The whole jazz-symphonic ensemble is conducted by Bastien Stil who has had ample experience leading crossover projects.

Singer, cellist and songwriter Dorota Barova releases a new album entitled Pisen pro Mi (Song for Mi). Following the success of her two previous albums, Iluzja (Illusion, 2018), which received the prestigious Czech Music Academy Award for Jazz Album of the Year, and Dotyk (Touch, 2021), which was nominated for the same award, Barova brings an album featuring eight new songs, all of which have been composed by herself and recorded together with Barova's long-term collaborators, guitarist Miroslav Chyska and bass player Milos Klapste, who are joined by Jan Krejca on Baroque lute as a guest. Pisen pro Mi is characterized by the same original style, sound and intimate tender atmosphere as the previous recordings, the major difference, however, is that here, Barova sings in Czech. Coming from a bilingual family from the Czecho-Polish borderland, Polish seemed a natural choice for her on the previous two albums, regardless of whether writing her own lyrics or setting to music poems by Polish authors. This time round, she decided to work with texts of her close friend, Czech artist, musician and poet Michaela Vejnarova, who passed in 2023: "As soon as I got hold of her notebooks full of sketches and texts, I knew I wanted to record an album that'd include not only her poems as lyrics, but reproductions of her paintings as well. I chose seven poems which reflect her inner world of dreams, her kindness and witty cunningness. The album's title comes from an eponymous song, which is my tribute to Mi and the only song on the album that I sing in Polish," says Dorota Barova. Besides her solo career, Barova has participated in many other projects. She is a regular member of Aneta Langerova's band and the Czech-and-Slovak jazz formation Vertigo, with who she has received several Czech Music Academy Awards. With Jan Valik she forms the Polomy duo and is also member of the Tellemarkk trio, together with Pavel Hrub� and Tomas Reindl. With Andrea Konstankiewicz, she formed the cello duo Tara Fuki (between 2000 and 2022) and she previously performed in the rock project Tugriki, founded by members of Korben Dallas. Thanks not only to her rich experience in pop, rock, jazz and experimental music, but also her unmistakable velvety voice and original approach to composition and arrangement, Dorota Barova has been one of the most remarkable presences on the Czech alternative-pop scene.

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 Kor�n 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.

The second album of the collection "Zdenek Liska Archives" brings music from Frantisek Vlacil's films Fire on Potato Fields (1976) and The Legend of the Silver Fir (1973). Both recordings come from Liska's private audio-tape archive. These are the only two examples of the extensive collaboration of Zdenek Liska with Frantisek Vlacil that have been found in his archive. However, they mark a new trajectory in Vlacil's filmmaking, echoed in the Liska's approach to the film score. Film critic Petr Gajdosik, author of the album's liner notes, says: "If, up until then, Vlacil had mostly been focusing on historical material and stories from a distant past, he now worked with motifs and emotions gleaned from the present moment, and asks as pay close attention to his characters' inner experience. This development has it's parallel in Liska's scores. Compared to their previous collaborations, these are more limited in scale and free of any ambition to create meaning, while at the same time they correspond with the dramatic and visual conception of the films and induce contemplation."

Petr Ostrouchov's music from the film zelary (2003) is being released for the first time as a purely musical soundtrack without dialogues, in a newly mixed and arranged version. The film, directed by Ondrej Trojan, won two Czech Lions (Czech and Television Academy Award) and a number of nominations, including the most prestigious one - an Oscar nomination for the best foreign language film. Although almost 22 years have passed since it's release and the composer had been considering the idea of ?releasing the score on vinyl for some time, the final impetus for the album's release was this year's departure of the legendary film conductor Mario Klemens, who had participated in number of film soundtracks and who also conducted the orchestra during the recording of the music for the film zelary; the album is dedicated to his memory. Petr Ostrouchov received his first (out of eight) nomination for the Czech Lion award and the award for best music from the festival in Karachi, Pakistan. "zelary was only the second feature film with my music and a very important one for me. As a beginner and amateur, I composed and arranged music for the orchestra and had the opportunity to work with conductor Mario Klemens. Moreover, the film resonated very well, it received an Oscar nomination, I received my first nomination for the Czech Lion Award and Viera Langerova brought me the award for best music from the festival in Karachi, Pakistan, where I "beat" Alexandre Desplat and John Williams in my category, both these facts seemed absurd to me. The soundtrack was released on CD 22 years ago, the music was interwoven with dialogues from the film, as was usual back then, and the CD has long since been unavailable. The idea of ?releasing the music from zelary in newly mixed versions and in a different way has matured for many years, the film has certainly not been forgotten, on the contrary, it still has it's audiences and the "music from zelary" has opened many doors for me. I compiled the recordings into a more or less fluid flow of music, without dialogues, with only a few folk songs of great female ensemble from the Beskid Mountains called Grunik," says Petr Ostrouchov about the album's release.

In 2025, PMP is proud to release Trillium X, a sixth opera by Anthony Braxton, on the occasion of his 80th Birthday. A limited deluxe 8-CD box set including both, a live recording of the world premiere in Prague, a studio recording realized at the famous Darmstadt Summer Course, a 6-hour of exclusive audio-visual materials documented a complete world premiere, documentary film In the Garden of Trillium X, and in-depth conversation between Anthony Braxton, Swiss conductor Roland Dahinden and German writer and Braxton's scholar Timo Hoyer. Braxton spent five years working on his opus magnum. He has been significantly involved in all Trillium performances, including this one. He has accompanied the rehearsals from the very beginning. However, the leading man in charge was Roland Dahinden, his long-time fellow from Wesleyan University. Dahinden and incredible PMP Orchestra represent the ongoing generational change in creative music. "X is a dream-logical world unto itself, a place to get lost in for a handful of hours, like Wagner, but strictly according to Braxton-ian rules of order and exploration." - Josef Woodard, DownBeat, 5-stars

String Serenades by Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) and Josef Suk (1874-1935) have become a stable part of the repertoire of Czech chamber string orchestras, providing them with an opportunity to prove their performing mastery, and are very popular with the listeners. This album is a re-edition of the recordings by the Czech Chamber Orchestra from 1994 (Dvorak) and 2000 (Suk) that were released in 2001 by WALDMANN label. Along with it's re-release on CD by Animal Music it is now being released also on streaming platforms for the first time. "In their pieces, Dvorak and Suk both drew on the older form of classical serenade, a kind of musical diversion in the best sense of the word, a form that reached the peak of it's popularity a century earlier as it was performed for the entertainment of the musicians and their music-loving audiences alike," says the musicologist Vaclav Holecek in the album's liner notes. This recording was made at a time when the Czech Chamber Orchestra performed under the leadership of the conductor, violinist and composer Ondrej Kukal (b. 1964). During his tenure, the orchestra was experiencing it's heyday. Interpretatively and dramaturgically, he followed the principles of the orchestra's founder, Vaclav Talich, who founded the orchestra in 1945 with some of his best students from the Prague Conservatory. Thanks to it's rigorous rehearsal routine and precise as well as enthusiastic approach to performance, the orchestra soon won a renown on the Czechoslovak stages and abroad, and collaborated, under Talich's baton, with foremost international soloists, including Pierre Fournier, Germaine Leroux, and others. The initial phase of the orchestra's promising career came to an end in 1948, when the Czechoslovak Communist regime banned Vaclav Talich from performing in public. In 1958, Josef Vlach (1923-1988), the first violin of the original Czech Chamber Orchestra and Talich's student and collaborator decided to revive his teacher's initiative. Under Vlach's leadership, the ensemble appeared on stages in Czechoslovakia, across Europe, Asia and America, and was a regular guest at prestigious festivals, including the Prague Spring Festival and the Salzburg Festival. Collaborations with soloists included Henry Szeryng, Yehudi Menuhin, Leonid Kogan, Ivan Moravec, and Josef Suk, to name just a few. After Josef Vlach's demise, the Czech Chamber Orchestra performed on irregular basis for some time. Nevertheless, the new first violin, Vlach's daughter, violinist Jana Vlachova took over the artistic leadership of the orchestra and also followed in the steps of her father and Vaclav Talich before him. Vlachova invited artists of her own generation into collaboration, among them the conductor, violinist and composer Ondrej Kukal (b. 1964) who became the orchestra's next leader. Under his leadership between 1993 and 2003, the Czech Chamber Orchestra maintained a regular concert calendar once again. After Ondrej Kukal gradually curtailed his conducting career due to a serious illness (he currently dedicates himself fully to composition), the conductor Andreas Sebastian Weiser collaborated with the orchestra. Today, the Czech Chamber Orchestra performs on special occasions only.

Vladimir Misik is back with a new album, Vteriny, mesice a roky (Moments, Months and Years). The album is Misik's third collaboration with the producer Petr Ostrouchov and follows the prize-winning projects, Jednou te potkam (Once, I Will Meet You; 2019) and Nocni obraz (Night Image; 2021). The album is comprised of fifteen new songs, with lyrics by Vladimir Misik and Michael zantovsk�, songs based on poems by Jan Skacel, Jiri Dedecek and Frantisek Gellner, and one text tailored directly for Misik by Tomas Belko, a one-time fellow band-member of Ostrouchov in Sto zvirat. In the studio, Misik surrounded himself by ten musicians, with the Blue Shadows quartet at the core, which also performed on the previous recordings, featuring Josef stepanek and Petr Ostrouchov on the guitar, Matej Belko on the bass guitar and Martin Novak on the drums. The other players include pianist Jan Steinsdorfer and Hammond organist Ondrej Pivec (now living in the USA), who both were involved on the album Nocni obraz as well, guitarist Lukas Martinek, double bassist Tomas Liska and two special international guests - the Cuban-American percussionist Michito Sanchez and the British performer on the pedal steel guitar B.J. Cole - who both have featured in projects of illustrious colleagues such as Sting, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Depeche Mode, Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor, David Gilmour, R.E.M., Bjork, Stevie Wonder, and others. The album is released on CD and as a 2LP and includes a comprehensive booklet with studio session photos and the lyrics.

Trobairitz (female troubadours) is a cycle of songs for women's choir and ensemble, written by the contemporary Czech composer and pianist Michal Nejtek for the Tiburtina Ensemble based on the texts of medieval troubadours who lived and composed at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries in Occitania. Barbora Kabatkova, the artistic director of the Tiburtina Ensemble, encountered the troubadours' poetry years ago while working on another project. The hitherto unknown world of female poets fascinated her and inspired her to study further, and after receiving an offer from the director of the Prague Spring festival to premiere a new full-length work with her ensemble, she did not hesitate to revive the forgotten world of female troubadours. In the short historical period of the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, women in the area of ?today's southern France enjoyed an unprecedented freedom and rights, and it is from the period of 1180 and 1230 that most of the poems of medieval troubadours survive. Although they were most likely originally set to music, as was the custom at the time, troubadour poems survive without music, with one exception. On this recording, they therefore appear in a new, contemporary musical form and offer the listener the opportunity to look into the world of medieval female poets, into the feelings, wishes and desires that they express in their texts, albeit tender and warm, often more directly and concretely than men. Four poems are sung on the recording in Occitan and four in Czech translation. The Tiburtina Ensemble is accompanied by leading period instrument players of international renown - Marco Ambrosini (nyckelharp), Margit ubellacker (dulcimer) and Catalina Vicens (organetto), and one of the most sought-after Czech drummers, Martin Novak. The 50-minute long work premiered in 2022 at the Prague Spring Festival and is being released in it's world premiere on this recording.

Vladimir Misik is back with a new album, Vteriny, mesice a roky (Moments, Months and Years). The album is Misik's third collaboration with the producer Petr Ostrouchov and follows the prize-winning projects, Jednou te potkam (Once, I Will Meet You; 2019) and Nocni obraz (Night Image; 2021). The album is comprised of fifteen new songs, with lyrics by Vladimir Misik and Michael zantovsk�, songs based on poems by Jan Skacel, Jiri Dedecek and Frantisek Gellner, and one text tailored directly for Misik by Tomas Belko, a one-time fellow band-member of Ostrouchov in Sto zvirat. In the studio, Misik surrounded himself by ten musicians, with the Blue Shadows quartet at the core, which also performed on the previous recordings, featuring Josef stepanek and Petr Ostrouchov on the guitar, Matej Belko on the bass guitar and Martin Novak on the drums. The other players include pianist Jan Steinsdorfer and Hammond organist Ondrej Pivec (now living in the USA), who both were involved on the album Nocni obraz as well, guitarist Lukas Martinek, double bassist Tomas Liska and two special international guests - the Cuban-American percussionist Michito Sanchez and the British performer on the pedal steel guitar B.J. Cole - who both have featured in projects of illustrious colleagues such as Sting, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Depeche Mode, Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor, David Gilmour, R.E.M., Bjork, Stevie Wonder, and others. The album is released on CD and as a 2LP and includes a comprehensive booklet with studio session photos and the lyrics.

The jazz quartet 2in2out was founded by saxophonist Nela Dusova and guitarist Jan Lacina, who are also the authors of the band's modern jazz repertoire. The duo invited drummer Adam Sikora and now also Slovak double bassist Peter Korman. In recent years, 2in2out has managed to develop from an originally student project into one of the most interesting Czech jazz acts. In 2024, the quartet will release it's debut album, Living Stories. The album was created in collaboration with long-time bandmates, double bassist Klara Pudlakova and drummer Adam Sikora. Living Stories presents a view of the world through the eyes of two jazz artists and authors with different aesthetic approaches, yet united in their musical narrative. "What I appreciate most about 2in2out's compositions are the original ideas, interesting formal solutions and also the overlapping of content, which is far from always commonplace in modern jazz today, and I would dare to say that it is often lacking." David Doruzka, leading Czech guitarist and pedagogue

Czech trumpeter Jiri Kotaca and Swedish pianist Alf Carlsson release a new album with their band, featuring nine of their own original compositions. Besides being firmly rooted in the tradition of modern jazz, the album, entitled Our Stories, draws on various other styles by which the individual players swear, including jazz rock, modern mainstream, pop, and Scandinavian lyricism. Alf Carlsson and Jiri Kotaca, both respected musical personalities, first met in Rotterdam and then during Alf's visit to the Czech Republic, which eventually turned into a short common tour and later into a proper band as the two leaders were joined by two of the most sought-after jazz Slovak musicians of the youngest generation - double bassist and bass guitarist Peter Korman and drummer Kristian Kuruc. The band has been performing in this line up ever since. The new album, which is published five years after their critically acclaimed debut Journeys, will be introduced on a tour including Czechia, Slovakia and other countries. Eager listeners can get a tasting of the album and listen in advance to Alf �s piece Alf �s Groove, which is now being released on all digital platforms, and to Relief by Jiri Kotaca, which will be available as of 10 May.

The new album of double bassist and composer Jaromir Honzak is a live recording of an eight-part suite for jazz quintet and orchestra performed by the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra and Honzak's all-stars Czech jazz quintet, composed of David Doruzka (guitar), Lubos Soukup (saxophone, clarinet), Vit Kristan (piano, rhodes), Martin Novak (drums, percussion). The suite was performed within the concert series of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra "New Horizons" which combines jazz and symphonic music. The suite entitled "Blues of a String Hanging in the Wind" was written by Jaromir Honzak and based on the composition of the same name, which he created back in 2008 for a string and jazz quartet on the occasion of a special Jazz concert at the Rudolfinum. A year later, it appeared on Honzak's studio album "Little Things" (Animal Music, 2009). Tomas S�kora, pianist, composer, arranger and curator of the New Horizons programme, was in charge of the arrangements for the orchestra. Jaromir Honzak says about the piece: "I have never been drawn to a large cast in music before, I have always been a type of chamber musician. So here I said to myself that I will try to think as "chamberly" as possible when working for a symphony orchestra. As usual, I first decided to learn from listening to similar works, or even to study some scores, but in the end my usual routine prevailed, based rather on my intuition. Our subsequent cooperation with Tomas was very efficient and pleasant. Tomas was great not only as an unusually skilled and fast orchestrator, but also as an empathetic and helpful assistant." Jaromir Honzak gave the individual parts suitable names that are meant to help the listeners grasp the music. The atmosphere and storytelling of the album, which arises when listening to the music, is also evoked by the artwork of the Japanese artist Kotone Utsunomiya, which she created specifically for this album. The author of the graphic design is Andrea Vacovska from Studio Najbrt.