Sunday Music Show | All stories

Czech composer Petr Malásek is celebrating his 65th birthday. The legendary pianist has composed music for nearly 200 movies, TV series and theatre plays. His repertoire ranges from jazz to classical and popular music.

Ida Kelarová is a singer, musician and choirmaster who performs some of the best Romany music to come out of the Czech Republic. Paradoxically it was years before she discovered her Romany roots and drew inspiration from Roma culture and music. Today this legacy has become an important part of her life and she works hard to help talented Romany children living in excluded localities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Waldemar Matuška, without question one of the most gifted Czech popular singers of the modern era, passed away 10 years ago this month, on May 30, 2009. Born Vladimír Matuška in Košice, Slovakia, he grew up in Prague and started out as an actor with the legendary theatre company Semafor, before making an impact in movies such as If a Thousand Clarinets and All My Good Countrymen.

Today’s Sunday Music Show is dedicated to singer, actor and dancer Jiří Korn – a triple threat, as they say in show business – born in Prague seventy years ago this May. The consummate marquee performer began his professional musical career back in the swinging sixties as a member of Rebels.

The 64th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest is set to start on May 14th in Israel. Forty-one countries are sending bands to Tel-Aviv. Representing the Czechs is the indie-pop band Lake Malawi, whose frontman, Albert Černý, is known as one of the most talented young Czech pop musicians.

The well-known Czech musician Ivan Hlas is celebrating his 65th birthday. The singer, songwriter and guitarist has been a fixture on the domestic music scene for over five decades. He started performing in the late 1960s with his friends from the Prague neighbourhood of Hanspaulka and enjoyed the biggest popularity in the 1990s, after receiving the Czech Lion for Best Original Score for Jan Hřebejk`s film The Big Beat or Šakalí Léta.

The country’s leading orchestras came together on Tuesday this week to perform a charity concert in aid of the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The concert took place at Prague’s Rudolfinum. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia and the ensembles of the National Theater and the State Opera performed Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, under the baton of Tomáš Netopil, the guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.

Our Easter Sunday music show is dedicated to an album called Studánko Rubínko or Ruby Well by the band Hradišťan, one of the country’s most respected performers of folk music. The album, intended for children and their parents, includes songs, nursery rhymes, poems and carols, connected with spring time and Easter.

Lazer Viking are very much the brainchild of Jakub Kaifosz, who also records with Wild Tides and is a Radio Wave DJ. Following Radical Karaoke (2015) and Flesh Cadillac (2016, in collaboration with Sabreheart), Lazer Viking have just released their wonderful third LP, Drag, on which Kaifosz is now backed by a band. The new collection again showcases the Prague musician’s topnotch songwriting, excellent vocals and guitar-playing and – with song titles such as Hum and Rattle and The Last Waltz – deep immersion in pop culture.

On the eve of International Roma Day, Radio Prague is featuring music by some of the country’s best Romany singers.