ABOUT (ME)
Since I was young I was impressed by medieval history and though being non musical child, somehow latently also by historical music. However, I constantly resisted to my mother's repeatedly expressed wishes to join piano classes, because my bearers were brave ice hockey players, who - as I was persuaded - did not show any signs of musical practice. In my 15 I started to play guitar, mainly folk music in order to get more attention from my female schoolmates ;-] After some time I had realised, that playing itself is not the matter of success really and a bit shocked by that fact I turned to classical guitar under influence of our neighbour, who was highly evaluated for his classical guitar playing. I remember the impression I had when he played Bach's e minor Bouree and from that time the historical music together with e-guitar plaing in our illegal (1988) punk band were main areas of my musical interest. In 1995 I have recorded from the radio the 1993 concert of Toyohiko Satoh in Brussels, which was very nice tour through the lute renasissance and baroque history. Shortly after I had joined the military service, where in free whiles I tried during endless night watches to transcribe the lute music from Satoh's recording, namely Weiss' L'Infidele. However, technical limitations of the classical giutar brought me to a deep concern about this is the right way to go, so when being back in civil life I have decided to start with lute playing. I have started privatly to study the renaissance lute with Rudolf Merinsky in Prague, but shortly after, under influence of Brian Wright on the summer course in Valtice, I converted to baroque lute, which I play until today. It is absolutely necessary to give here big thanks to Michaela and David Freeman, who after 1989 brought a bunch of early instruments from England to Czech and rented them for a really funny tribute to us hopeless music lovers having empty pockets and no hope to get their own instrument soon. I started to collect the materials about Czech Lute music and also extended my playing to French music and had few lessons with Sigrun Richter. In 1998 I had joined early music consort Collegium Proprium from Kutna Hora, which disappeared during the time, but we have renewed it in 2012 under the new name of Cuthna Antiqua.
Cuthna Antiqua and vocal early music ensemble Cantica both from Kutna Hora
In the same year I have opened the website lute.cz dedicated to Czech lute music.
Also, in 2012 during an ocasional visit by luthier Jiri Cepelak I had very interesting experience, which had truly somehow supernatural character, I felt deeply enlightened and knew, that I shall build the historical instruments. I did not take long and I started. It was a bit tough, because my knowledge of instrument making was nearly zero, the only thing I knew was how the instruments should be like and also as a young guy I was involved in models making. Having such a weak base, I have decided to join the Lutherie Highschool in Cheb, area, which has instrument building tradition going back to 17th century. The highschool, one of the only five lutherie highschools in Europe, offers individual study.
Lutherie highschool in Cheb
With my crafting supervisor Stepan Gubran in Lutherie Highschool workshop
Before the entrance examination in January 2013 I was able to make and bring there a Preston late 18th century guitar, which plan is being gratefully shared by Makoto Tsuruta on his website. The highschool director was quite surprised seeing instrument being crafted with lack of knowledge and tooling and him being big baroque fan he decided I would be allowed to dedicate my study solely to the early instruments.
First instrument - Preston guitar of Makoto Tsuruta
Since 2013 I am teaching playing the lute and in March 2013 I started to play viola da gamba with Jakub Michl and it was very clear to me, that being wide-ranged person, I cannot stay in making of just stringed instruments. Apart from vihuela of Quito I started to build also bass viol at the highschool with support of Petr Vavrous and also spinet with a great supervision of Ernest Miller in order to satisfy our ensemble's need of keyboard instrument. In April 2014 I have received first orders for early instruments. In 2018 I finished my lutherie study and became professional builder of early music instruments.