The story of me standing permanently with a hairbrush in front of my face as a microphone, preparing for a career of a singer, goes as far back as I can remember, into deep childhood. However, music went through my childhood rather from a distance. I remember only the next period at elementary school where I spent a lot of free time with a friend of mine in the toilets where our voices echoed beautifully against the sheet-metal door and high ceilings. I tirelessly sang the tenor parts from a famous czech fairy-tale “The Incredibly Sad Princess” or tried to imitate Pavarotti singing Nessun dorma.
At high school, my vocal expression started to be cultivated a little bit by the school choir and unforgettable Marco Ivanović, who, still a student himself, conducted us and inspired. In the third year, I started studying solo singing with a friend of mine at an elementary school of arts and a year later, I had no better idea than to enrol for popular singing entrance examinations at a conservatory. Singing was the main thing that made sense for me; it gave me room for expression and inspired me. After a short start with “Babylon” band, I sang with a schoolmate in a chanson duet called “BETEBENE”; I love recalling the gospel quintet of “Joy Disease”. My important milestones included participation in a school performance of the Russian rock opera of “Juno and Avos” and the five-voice Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame conducted by Pavla Fendrichová (Ježková). I have always been fond of multiple-voice singing. After that period, I experienced twelve dry years in terms of singing during which I stayed at home with my three children and rediscovered the world through their eyes, which was amazing. We had a home school and apart from regular Sunday services, I sang only now and then in one-off events or prepared a solo concert, which always exhausted me for a couple of more years. 🙂
However, the children have grown a little and have found their own ways. And so I have started to look for my own path, which, eventually, always turns back to music. Music fills me with life and joy. Music unites me with people and the indefinable space between Heaven and Earth.
Currently, I most frequently sing with “Deše” (a music group composed of singers, a guitar, a keyboard, a double bass, an accordion, a clarinet, and a violin); we play psalms set to music by Klára Jíchová, dressed in a modern coat. You can hear me at shows performed by Jan Bružeňák, a folk singer, composer and poet. My love for multiple-voice singing is currently directed at “Bezhlásek”, a choir composed of teachers and parents of Hlásek School, where we try to face five-voice challenges, most frequently sang by Pentatonix. My studies of singing at the Complete Vocal Institute in Amsterdam this year were a great challenge, inspiration, joy and a step forward for me.
I think that singing is a talent given to me by God. Sometimes I lament that the talent is buried very deep; I have been trying to dig it out slowly since my studies at Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory, using my own zig-zag path. I know there is a lot of work before me but at the same time, I feel very grateful for everything I could have learnt and experienced through music and its interpretation and for everyone I have met while performing music. I have loads of duties and interests but music is an inseparable part of my life. It creates and transforms my EGO in a unique way.