LENKA DUSILOVÁ, a six-time winner of the Czech Music Academy Awards, is one of the most original presences on the Czech music scene. Nine years after the release of her previous solo album and six years after she recorded her last album with Baromantika, LENKA DUSILOVÁ comes with a new long-awaited album, REKA (“River”), which introduces a new sound, a new team of musical partners and a number of personal themes. The album originated in collaboration with the producer PETR OSTROUCHOV who had also initiated, for example, the successful award-winning album of Vladimír Mišík, „Jednou te potkám“ from last year. The sound has been significantly determined by the presence of the beat maker and electronic wizard AID KID (a member, among others, of Zvíre jménem podzim and the Kittchen project, the latter in collaboration with Jakub König). Multiple layers of sound have been created by mixing experienced performers from various genres, including jazz, pop and electronic music. In one of the tracks, LENKA DUSILOVÁ has been joined by MONIKA NACEVA and IVA BITTOVÁ with whom she has appeared recently. The overall sound of the album is characterized by the variety and density of sounds, moods and effects, including sound-on-sound looping and vocal layering. “The title of the album – simply RIVER (REKA) – metaphorically reflects the dynamism and fluid characteristics of a system which is influenced by its surroundings – the terrain, weather and natural and human-induced events in the landscape. This is what all “rivers” have in common and what makes them unique as well,” explains LENKA DUSILOVÁ.

The previous album of the leading Czech big band Concept Art Orchestra received the Andel Award in 2015 for the best jazz album of the year. The recording entitled The Prague Six featured the work of six Czech important young authors: the band s conductor and trumpeter tepánka Balcarová, saxophonist Lubo Soukup, pianists Vít Kri tan, Martin Brunner and Tomá Sýkora, and trombonist Jan Jirucha junior. The same six authors are behind this new album entitled Grown-up Christmas. The programme has been performed several times in concert and comprises originally arranged Christmas carols and songs loosely inspired by Christmas (for example poems by Czech poets Jan Skácel and Frána rámek). Concept Art Orchestra has invited singers Dan Bárta, Markéta Foukalová and Milan Cimfe to collaborate on the project. Although the binding theme for all the compositions is, indeed, Christmas, this is not a classical seasonal recording which only has a potential to enhance the Christmas atmosphere, but will bring joy throughout the year.

Two years after the release of the album "Early Music", which received the Andel Award, Jaromír Honzak comes with a new album, entitled "Hard to Understand". The musicians whom the renowned double bassist has brought together for this recording form an all-star team: David Doružka on the guitar, Vít Krištan on the piano, Luboš Soukup on the saxophone and Martin Novak on the drums. Outside the jazz scene, Honzak is recognized as a long-term partner of the Eben Brothers and Iva Bittova, in the world of jazz, he is respected as a founding figure in modern jazz education and a guru of the young and middle generation. Albums featuring his authored music have won the prestigious "Andel Award" for the jazz album of the year (he is the holder of five of the awards!) and they have all been important events. Honzak's contemplative, sophisticated yet generally accessible and uncomplicated music has always fascinated the audience.

This year, the outstanding Czech pianist and composer Karel Ruicka (19402016) would celebrate his eightieth birthday. To mark this occasion, Animal Music releases, four years after the artists death, the last album recorded by Ruicka in 2010, which never came out during his lifetime. The recent discovery of the recording amounts to coming upon a precious treasure. In it, Ruicka returns to the sphere of solo-piano recording in which he first excelled in his album Zahrada radosti (The Garden of Joy) in 1981. Garden of Silence presents an astounding medley of moods in pensive and playful pieces by Ruicka which confirm his remarkable gift for melodies and his reputation as an unsurpassable performer and improviser.

100 YEARS or, "The Country at One Hundred" is a large suite, a collective work of the Prague Six, the composers concentrated around the Concept Art Orchestra big band. The composition originated as a tribute to the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 2018 and consists of six parts in which the authors allude to various periods in the history of the Czechoslovak and later Czech Republic, with originality and energy typical of the big band. Štepánka Balcarová, Jan Jirucha, Luboš Soukup, Martin Brunner, Tomáš Sýkora and Vít Krištan each have authored one of the six movements in which they make full use of all the orchestration possibilities offered by a big band, expanding these with non-traditional instruments such as Ondes Martenot, the chimes or Moog synthetizer. The individual compositions also include sensitive references to period music and samples and citations from political speeches. The fourth movement, dedicated to the period of the so-called normalization in the 1970s and 1980s and based on the motives of a song by The Plastic People of the Universe, features a special guest, the saxophonist Vratislav Brabenec. This, already third recording by Concept Art Orchestra on the Animal Music label confirms the indisputable place of the band (the holder of the 2015 Andel Award for the best jazz album of the year) on the current big-band scene and testifies to their capacity to create original works rooted in the current musical and historical context as well as perform them to the highest professional standards.

Jirí Bárta (*1964) is one of the top cellists of his generation and his busy concert career has included collaborations with leading musicians and orchestras around the world. He also boasts an extensive recording catalogue of some thirty solo and chamber albums and is the founder and artistic director of the International Music Festival Kutná Hora. Terezie Fialová (*1984) is one of the most talented young Czech pianists and a sought-after chamber partner of many leading Czech and international soloists. Both Bárta and Fialová are laureates of various international awards. In this new album, they bring a studio recording and a focused and riveting performance of Beethoven’s complete sonatas for piano and cello. As they say of the album’s origin, it was, “paradoxically, precisely thanks to the many months of a stalled concert life that we found the time to get together and withdraw into the studio in order to record this wonderful and rewarding music by Ludwig van Beethoven.”