Sunday Music Show | All stories

In today’s edition of our Sunday Music Show we listen to more than 20 years of “avant-punk” band Už Jsme Doma. Though the band has gone through countless transformations in that time, it still remains one of the most innovative sounds on the Czech music scene and a heavy influence for new generations of Czech artists.

This week’s Sunday Music Show is devoted to a musician going by the name of Xindl X –a musician who combines rap, folk, hip hop, jazz and blues as the mood takes him; a musician whose lyrics are laced with irony and who says he writes protest songs which portray a world without God, morals or love -a world of scumbags of the generation X.

In today’s Sunday Music Show we look at the work of living jazz legend Emil Viklický, for whom 2011 began with a Presidential Medal of Merit and ended with the release of two new albums. In the second part of an interview begun on our December 16th Arts programme, we began by asking the pianist if he remembers the first time he ever sat down to a piano.

In today’s Sunday Music Show we will feature the greatest hits by the Czech pop-music composer Karel Mareš who died last month at the age of 84. A composer, lyricists, pianist, screenplay writer, theatre and film director, theatre manager as well as an occasional actor, this inconspicuous “man at the back” had a significant influence on the development of Czech popular music of the 1960s.

Berenika Kohoutová is a name you are probably going to hear more and more in the coming months and years. Here a successful actress, there a rising star of the Czech music scene, the talented 20-year-old is making a good name for herself both on TV and in appearances on stages around Europe, formerly with the ska ensemble Disco Balls and now with her own project Femme Plastique.

This week’s Sunday Music Show is devoted to one of the country’s most prominent jazz artists –flutist Jiří Stivín. The 68-year-old musician, who is reputed to be able to play on a blade of grass, says the feel for jazz is something you are born with and some of the best renditions come from children who are as yet unspoiled by the constraints of a music education.

In Sunday Music Show today, we’ll be listening to the music of Michael Kocáb. A distinct and versatile musician, Michael Kocáb also has a record as a human right activist who played a significant part in the Velvet Revolution.

In this week’s edition of the Sunday Music Show well be focussing on music in Czech film – rock and pop hits from the 1960s up to the Noughties. Everything from more recent films like Rebelové (Rebels) to family classics like Saxana and S tebou mě baví svět – sure to be fired up on the DVD or re-watched on TV during the upcoming holiday season.

This week’s Sunday Music Show is dedicated to the late Czech film-score composer Zdeněk Liška who was recently rewarded posthumously by the Culture Ministry for his outstanding contribution to Czech cinema. An extremely prolific composer, between the 1950s and 1980s Zdeněk Liška wrote the scores to some 500 feature films, television series and documentaries.

In this edition of Sunday Music Show, Peter Smith plays hits from chart topping Czech artists including 4Life and Kristof. There is also a chance to hear the vocal talents of Helena Vondrackova's less famous niece, Lucie.