Board of Directors

Vít Zouhar (*1966) is a composer, musicologist, professor of music, and vice-president at Palacky University Olomouc. He is the author and co-author of six operas (including L´Arianna, La Dafne, Coronide, Torso and Echo) and more than sixty orchestral (including Puerta del Sol, Close Encounters of those Wild at Heart) and chamber works, sound installations and music games (including Arcadi, GArdenME, Tastes, Plain, EUOUA).  His music is generally placed in the context of minimalism and postmodernism. Many of his compositions have been commissioned by prestigious institutions and ensembles such as the National Theater Prague, Prague Spring, Terezín Music Foundation, Berg Orchestra and Ensemble Damian, and are regularly performed and recorded in Europe. Zouhar´s theater works have been in the repertoire of National Theatre Prague (Radúz and Mahulena,  Monsigneur de Pourcegnac), National Theatre Brno (La Dafne, Noci Dnem, Opening of the Springs by Alfréd Radok), Ensemble Damian (Coronide, Torso, Saeculum Coronatum, L´Arianna) and opera povera (Echo). As composer in residence Zouhar served at the IEM Graz and at the Werkstadt Graz and won various prestigious awards. In 2001 he co-founded the Slyšet jinak (Different Hearing) program, focused on new ways to encourage music education and group composing. He has published five books on music (including Composing in the Classroom - with Ivo Medek and Jaromír Synek; Dear Friend. Bohuslav Martinů’s Letters to Zdeněk Zouhar; Dear friend Bureš: Bohuslav Martinů´s letters to Miloslav Bureš - with Gabriela Coufalová; Postmodern Music? German Debate at the End of the 20th Century). Zouhar reconstructed the original version of Poeme electronique by Edgard Varese for IEM-CUBE Graz and has contributed to The Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition (Bureš Cantatas).

Photo: Anne LeBaron

Jiří Gemrot (born 15 April 1957 in Prague) is a Czech composer, radio executive, and a record producer. Since 1990 he has been director in chief of Czech Radio in Prague. As a composer, his music has been performed by all of the Czech Republic's major orchestras.

Gemrot studied at the Prague Conservatory from 1972–1976 where he was a pupil of Ema Doležalová and Jan Zdeněk Bartoš. He then entered the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where he studied under Jiří Pauer through 1981. From 1982–1986 he was a music director for Czech Radio and since 1986 he has been a record producer for Panton Records. He has also worked as a music director for Czechoslovak Television.

Doc. MgA. Ivo Kahánek, Ph.D. is considered one of the best Czech pianists of the present day. The undisputed winner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition in 2004 regularly works with pre-eminent Czech and international orchestras and musicians. In 2007 he performed for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where he joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek for a rendition of Piano Concerto No. 4 (Incantations) by Bohuslav Martinů. Ivo Kahánek repeated the concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle in 2014. His album (Janáček – Martinů – Kabeláč) received the best possible rating in specialised international music magazines – Classics Today (USA), Le Monde de la Musique (France), and Fanfare (USA). Ivo Kahánek is a graduate of the Janáček Conservatoire in Ostrava in the class of Mgr. Marta Toaderová and of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the class of prof. Ivan Klánský.

Michal Novenko studied composition, the organ, music theory and conducting at the Prague Conservatory and at the Academy of Performing Arts, where he graduated as conductor with the 6th Symphony by Bohuslav Martinů.

He is the author of chamber, orchestra and organ compositions. As an organist he gives concerts in most European countries and in Israel and the United States (e.g. Festivals in Sion, Arezzo, Onndle, Philadelphia etc.). He is a professor at the Prague Conservatoire and often is invited abroad to work as a lecturer and a jury member of organ competitions. Recordings of historical organs are mainly represented in his extensive discography. He actively and intensively presents Czech organ compositions.