One on One | All stories

I first met John Tregellas just after the Velvet Revolution, when we both started working for Radio Prague at a time of huge changes in Czech society. At the time neither of us suspected that nearly two decades later we would both still be here. These days, John, who grew up in the English county of Devon, runs a successful business organizing tours in Central Europe for choirs and orchestras from all over the world. Speaking near perfect Czech, he says that he now feels every bit at home in Prague as he does in his native Britain. I went to see

The Czech hockey team failed to grab a medal at this year’s World Championship in Switzerland after being eliminated by Sweden in the quarter finals. The disappointment came despite the fact that the Czech line-up included several stars of the NHL, arguably the best hockey competition in the world. One of the players who joined the Czech squad in Switzerland is Patrik Eliáš, the forward of the New Jersey Devils and our guest in this week’s edition of One on One.

The Catalonian musician Jordi Savall has been a major force in the promotion of early music for some forty years now and has been the key figure in bringing some ancient instruments out of the museum and back to the stage, particularly the viola da gamba. One of the star performers of this year’s Prague Spring International Music Festival, Mr Savall and his three ensembles have recorded well over a hundred records and scored a number of films, including the acclaimed 1995 film All the Mornings of the World, which won him a César award, the French

At least in terms of the musicians he has played with George Mraz (born Jiří Mraz in Písek, south Bohemia in 1944) may well be the most successful Czech in the history of jazz. Indeed, the list of people the acoustic bass maestro has accompanied reads like something of a Who’s Who of jazz, including Dizzie Gillespie, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Chet Baker and Charles Mingus. Incredibly, George Mraz has appeared on over 1,000 albums. When the New York-based musician was in Prague recently, we discussed his beginnings in jazz, as a teenager.

The south Moravian town of Mikulov, formerly also known by its German name Nikolsburg, is a popular tourist destination where people go to admire its beautiful architecture, the local wine, and its historic sights, including a Jewish cemetery and a synagogue. In the past, the town was home to a large Jewish community that accounted for nearly a half of the town’s population, and had as many as 12 synagogues around its Jewish quarter. Our very distinguished guest in this edition of One on One is the Grand Rebbe of Nikolsburg, Rabbi Yosef Lebovits.

My guest for One on One this week is British director and singer Michael Sarne, who is perhaps best known for his number one hit in the early 1960s “Come Outside” featuring the late Eastenders actor Wendy Richards. Since then Sarne, has also worked extensively as a film director. His most notable pictures include the swinging-sixties romp Joanna, which was nominated for a Golden Globe, and the highly controversial, sexually explicit adaptation of the Gore Vidal novel Myra Breckenridge. As an actor, Sarne has also made numerous appearances on hit

In this week’s edition of One on One we talk to the artist, sculptor, painter, musician and actor Jaroslav Róna. In the 1980s, he was one of the founders of the art group Tvrdohlaví, or The Stubborn but today, he is perhaps best known as the author of the Franz Kafka Monument in Prague’s Old Town. I talked to Jaroslav Róna in his studio and asked him was why he decided to base the highly acclaimed Kafka memorial on his short story, Description of One Struggle.

Czech bluegrass has a long tradition going back to the 1960s but it took several more decades before it was acknowledged in the land of its origin, the United States. Our guest in this edition of One on One is Robert Křesťan, the banjoist, lead singer and the founder of a bluegrass legend, the band Druhá Tráva, formed in the early 1990s. Their latest album Dylanovky, features songs by Bob Dylan translated into Czech by Robert Křesťan, and he and his band set the scene before the public speech of the US President, Barack Obama at Prague Castle earlier

Pre-war Prague with its multi-national and multi-cultural environment has inspired many scholars and writers who explore the life of Czechs, Germans and Jews in the city of a hundred spires before it was swept away by the two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Our guest in this edition of One on One is Professor Peter Demetz, the author of Prague in Black and Gold, Stage: Prague, and other works. Mr Demetz was born in Prague in the 1920s to a German and Jewish family but left the country after the communist takeover of 1948 and later became

Igor Klimeš recently came home after spending a year as the deputy leader of the civilian part of the first Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in war-torn Afghanistan. As a project manager, he oversaw a raft of activities, including the rebuilding of schools and hospitals and the construction of a dam. When we met in Prague, I asked Igor if he had worked on any projects in Afghanistan of which he was particularly proud.