Zuzana Lapčíková | en

Was born on March 16, 1968 in Zlin in Eastern Moravia (Slovácko), where she lives with her family. She has been playing the cimbalom, dancing and singing since her early childhood. Thanks to the family background, she fell in love with the Moravian folklore song and music. She studied the cimbalom at the Brno Conservatory and ethnology/musicology at the Masaryk University in Brno, won numerous international competitions and performed at many international festivals. She played and recorded with innumerable folklore ensembles, Brno Radio Orchestra of Folklore Instruments, various chamber and philharmonic orchestras (Prague Chamber Philharmonic, Virtuosi di Praga, State Philharmonic Brno, Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Zlín, Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc, Hradec Králové Philharmonic), and recorded over 30 albums. For seventeen years, she led the folklore music and dance ensemble Včelaran in Bílovice near Uherské Hradiště. The ensemble received two Laureate Awards from the Strážnice International Folklore Festival (1991, 1996) and made several TV shows and CD recordings. Zuzana dealt intensively with folklore dance, choreography and its theater stage presentation. She recorded the music of the prominent Brno musicologist prof. Miloš Štědroň and, together with Ida Kellarová, participated in a unique merging of female voices from different genres of music. Since 1992, she has been choosing songs, arranging and playing/singing in the Ad Lib Moravia Trio, an open group of musicians around the internationally renowned jazz pianist and composer Emil Viklický. In 2000, she traveled to new York to record (with Viklický and Billy Hart) the George Mraz album for the Milestone records entitled "Morava", which received warm critical acclaim in the jazz circles, landing fifth in the prestigious Jazztitude poll of the ten best albums of the year 2001. In 2002, she appeared with Emil Viklický at the Prague Spring festival as a guest of George Mraz, and she performed with the other members of the George Mraz Quartet (Richie Beirach, Rich Perry and Lewis Nash). In 2000, she met the up-and-coming young bass player Josef Fečo, and they began to develop an intensive musical collaboration. Her collaboration with the violinist Petr Růžička dates back to the conservatory years. He is a graduate of the chamber music class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (CNSMP), he studied musicology at La Sorbonne and he lives and works in Paris. They worked together on several musical and theater projects. Owing to her openness toward various musical inspirations, Zuzana Lapčíková crossed the borders of the folklore genre and entered the field of art music (baroque, contemporary - from chamber ensembles to philharmonics) and cross-genre music (jazz, contemporary music). In 2002, she was approached by the Municipal Theater Zlín to compose music for the drama Valašské remazúry. In 2005, she put together a new version of her multi-genre show " Ej, hora…" for the Municipal Theater Brno, and then she took the show to the Kennedy Center in Washington and, for the international music festival Moravian Autumn in Brno, she created an independent concert performance based on the Moravian Folklore music, within the program cycle entitled "Vox populi". In 2005, she was asked by the National Theater in Brno to create, together with the ballet soloist and choreographer Hana Litterová, an original musical/dance ballet show. Zuzana seized the opportunity as a story/script writer and music composer. The new show " Balady - Juliána" is currently being rehearsed. .