I have been commissioned by the Roulette Emerging Artist Commission Program with support of the Jerome Foundation to write a new piece. The date of the concert was set on Wednesday April 12, 2017, and I am going to write a large piece which will be performed during my portrait concert during the music series Roulette NEW + ADVENTUROUS.
Moreover! This autumn, I have been nominated on Herb Alpert Awards in Arts in category of music for year 2017.
The inter-species music continued…after the last year bird poetic album And Vex the Nightingale, the OHIO CICADA TOUR is coming up on Terra Nova Music!
David Rothenberg – clarinet, iPad
Lucie Vítková – accordion, harmonica, voice, hichiriki
and hundreds of thousands of cicadas!
Now, also available online (6 tracks only).
June 21, 2016, we played with birds of Brooklyn Botanic Garden during the dawn and dusk as part of Make Music Day New York. The group consisted of David Rothenberg (clarinet, electronics), Charlie Raugh (guitar), Steve Scholle (shakuhachi), Hank Roberts (violincello) and myself on accordion, hichiriki, voice and objects.
The event was reviewed in The New York Times and in ECM Reviews.
The music was released on New York based label Terra Nova Music. Available as Inside the Bird Chorus: Live at the Botanic Garden.
Earlier that spring, we decided to find a brood of seventeen years old cicadas in Ohio and to do three days field work while playing long daily sessions with them and a final concert at the Bath Nature Preserve. The short movie Cicada Music in Ohio made out of the tour was filmed by Matthew Aidekman and edited by Umru Rothenberg. The latest news: it was accepted into the Short Pole London International Film Festival, Barcelona Planet Film Festival and to the Ethnografilm 2017 in Paris.
You can watch the movie here:
I have been chosen for the emerging artist program called the Thomas M. Messer Bohemian Creative Hub housed at Czech Center New York. During the spring 2016, I prepared a workshop about composition, everyday life and listening and also composed new piece Optional for American ensemble Interference which was premiered at the ballroom of Bohemian National Hall.
CCNY also screened a feature documentary movie about my work and life entitled “Accept” as part of the Eurasian Film Festival held in the CCNY cinema. More about the movie here.
In summer, I participated on the Rooftop Ciné-Concert Series, where we played introduction set with the NYC Constellation Ensemble. In the second part of the evening I provided the inspired soundtrack to the silent film: Golem.
My move to New York started with a concert on February 9, 2016:
To celebrate the release of the archival CD The Kitchen Improvises: 1976–1983 on Orange Mountain Music, composer George Lewis curates an evening of performances by Thomas Buckner (voice), Earl Howard (saxophones and electronics), Oliver Lake (saxophones), Lewis (electronics, trombone), Michael Lytle (clarinets), Miya Masaoka (koto and electronics), Ikue Mori (electronics), Andrea Parkins (accordion, objects, electronics), and Lucie Vítková (accordion and voice), inspired by that flowering of hybridity on the downtown New York music scene.
On May 9, 2016, I was part of the concert at Bohemian National with premiere of my piece Places to Meet for violin duo String Noise of Pauline Kim Harris, Konrad Harris and myself on accordion. At the end of the evening, I played an improvisation set with members of S.E.M. ensemble, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell.
The event was reviewed at The Guardian.
Prior to the concert, as authors, we were interviewed at the Columbia University radio WKCR 89.9FM.
Let me introduce our new release of music poetic on Terra Nova Music label run by New York based musician and philosopher David Rothenberg.
One night, one bird, one tree, one spot by the Spree River in Berlin – a virtuoso nightingale perched in his tree at midnight.
There we stood, Lucie singing, David on clarinet and iPad sampling the bird and playing synth sounds he thought the bird might like.
One piece, one take, no editing, just live. What two people and one bird can do.
I am happy to announce a release of my new album Chorals through the Prague label Signals from Arkaim.
I have been composing these chorals for about one year for different occasions, though mainly for friends so that we could play together. Therefore each piece was recorded in a different location and under a different circumstance, bringing with it its own unique experience.
You can download or listen to it here.
For the Reflektor series no. 5, I was challenged to create new piece on a theme: “Interplay of Sound and Performance”. It was a great opportunity to evolve my accordion and tap dance skills into one homogenic piece and to perform it in front of the huge crowd of people at the venue West Germany along Christiane Hommelsheim and Malte Giesen.
Big thanks to Stella Veloce, Anaïs Héraud and Katie Dunbar for great organising and promoting.
The peak of the spring season for me was the festival about improvisation Vs. Interpretation, presented by the Agosto Foundation in Prague space NOD. I was on the program with my solo set Ideas and Techniques (accordion, harmonica, voice) and was part of the conference with the paper about Christian Wolff´s music and improvisation. Over five days (16 – 20th July 2014) I met and heard great music theorists and improvisers such as Pauline Oliveros, George E. Lewis, Iva Bittová, Markus Popp, Joëlle Léandre, Annie Gosfield, Phill Niblock and Petr Kotík.
It was a great honour to be drawn during the performance by my favourite American artist Morgan O´Hara.
Documentation at: https://agosto-foundation.org/vsinterpretationkeynotes/.
OSA (Ochranný svaz autorský) is a Czech equivalent of the organisations such as BMI, ASCAP, SOZA, GEMA, PRS or BUMA.
Last Wednesday, I was awarded as The Most Successful Young Author of Classic Music for 2013. The event took place at the Hybernia Theater in Prague on 18th June 2014.
Photo by Petra Kateřina Bučková
The Czech Television made a short report (see from 8´30´´):