Eternal Seekers
Lenka Dusilová, Beata Hlavenková and Clarinet Factory, formed together under the name Eternal Seekers, created a unique project full of harmonical melodies influenced by jazz, folk and minimalist music. Czech poet Bogdan Trojak provided most of the lyrics, others come from authors like František Halas, Václav Kvapil or Martin Rous.
Lenka Dusilová, several times over the winner of the Czech annual Anděl awards, is by no means accustomed to stagnation or repetition of things done before. She has evolved into an outstanding phenomenon of the Czech music scene: from her launching pad as a rock and pop star, she has been progressing to a highly individual expression uninhibitedly absorbing impulses coming from the widest variety of styles as well as extra-musical experiences. The project entitled Eternal Seekers, on which she collaborates closely with Clarinet Factory and with Beata Hlavenková, represents yet another relevant stage of her pursuit.
Her most mature recording so far is the genre-defying album, Mezi světy (2006), featuring Czech and American musicians (including the drummer Scott Amendola, who has played with Madeleine Peyroux and Bill Frisell). In 2007, Lenka made a U.S. tour (during which she also played alongside the icon of modern country music, Emmylou Harris), and back on the Czech scene, she became engaged in an unpublicized process of teaming up with the members of the postjazz outfit, Vertigo Quintet. Shortly before that, she guest-appeared in traditional songs on new tracks recorded by the band Čechomor, and still felt echoes of her previous unconstrained work with the theatre group Continuo, which had tested out her qualities as a singer-songwriter and a spontaneous performer.
With Eternal Seekers she is delivering a surprising yet thoroughly natural synthesis of all these earlier inspirations. This time out, Dusilová turned for texts primarily to Bogdan Trojak, a poet, and winner of the Jiří Orten Prize and the Magnesia Litera annual literary award. Apart from that, the programme also draws – surprisingly for some – on other, fairly disparate sources of inspiration: namely, the poetry of František Halas, plus a song, never recorded, with which then fifteen-year-old Lenka Dusilová embarked on her career with the Prague rock outfit Sluníčko. With Eternal Seekers Lenka Dusilová is bringing a fresh proof of her work’s innermost qualities: boldness, suggestive force, and accessibility.
Clarinet Factory: Jindřich Pavliš, Luděk Boura, Vojtěch Nýdl and Petr “Pepino” Valášek formed the Czech Clarinet Quartet over a decade ago, while they were still students of Prague’s Academy of Music. Some time later, they changed the ensemble’s name to Clarinet Factory. “We don’t want to be just interpreters and clarinettists,” says Jindra Pavliš about the quartet’s aspirations: “With classical music or jazz we are interpreters, but when it comes down to improvisations and new crossover projects, we are also directly involved in the creative project. Previously we’d play clarinets and do arrangements, whereas now we’ve been tending increasingly towards improvisation, composition, performance on other instruments, and singing. Our ambition is to be an ensemble that has a message to convey. We’d hate to become a museum!”
Clarinet Factory can tackle jazz, crossover music, ethnic inspirations, minimalism, electronic music, and multimedia projects involving light, as well as visual and threedimensional elements. The electronic composition Orlík (from the CD Ozvěny z kamene) brought the quartet victory in the instrumental category of the International Songwriting Competition in Nashville, Tennessee (awarded by a jury comprised of, among others, Tom Waits, Jerry Lee Lewis and Robert Smith of The Cure). Its members don’t hesitate to experiment, to explore uncharted areas, and to harness their invention to the spirit of the global trend towards symbiosis between genres. The quartet has worked with vocalist Jana Koubková or with composer Zbyněk Matějů, and on a regular basis with its permanent collaborator, percussionist Alan Vitouš.
In one of its latest moments of triumph coupled with sheer delight, Clarinet Factory appeared in a joint improvisation with the legendary vocalist Bobby McFerrin before the packed auditorium of Prague’s Congress Centre, at a Strings of O2 concert in May 2008.
Beata Hlavenková studied composition at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava. She then pursued her schooling at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where she took a degree in composition, jazz composition and orchestration. She leads her own trio, with drummer Pavel Bady Zbořil, Jiří Slavíček or Roman Vícha, and alternating double-bass players Rastislav Uhrík and Tomáš Liška. Her current and past projects have included involvement in Jaromír Honzák’s S’aight a Face of the Bass. She has an affinity for modern electro-acoustic jazz drawing on a broad spectrum of style inspirations, and manifests spontaneous ambition in her quest of an individual compositional idiom.
She joined forces with the formations S’aight and Vergigo for a common appearance at the prestigious international jazz festival in Montreux (2005). Following the success of their presentation there, the outfits decided to work together on a permanent basis, under the name Open Sextet. As such, they have since appeared with protagonists of the international jazz scene, the trumpet player Ingrid Jensen, and the sax player Rich Perry.
“Beata brings into the Eternal Seekers collective the intellectual element,” says Lenka Dusilová. “She’s a most sensitive composer, and at the same time she knows how to steer us firmly and effectively towards her idea. Thanks to her, we… how to put it... we don’t waste time.” Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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