July 25th – August 4th 2024
Litomyšl and Prague
Concerts
- St. Barbara’s Cathedral in Kutná Hora – August 2nd 2024, 19:00
- Bethlehem Chapel in Prague – August 3rd 2024, 18:00
Repertoire
Orchestra
- Vítězslava Kaprálová – Suita Rustica, Op. 19
- Bedřich Smetana – Vltava (from My Fatherland)
Choir
- Petr Eben – Cantico Delle Creature
- Zdeněk Lukáš – Pater Noster
- Klement Slavický – Madrigals, 4. Milostný
- Bohuslav Martinů – Czech Madrigals – VI. We Love Each Other in Secret
- Leoš Janáček – The Wild Duck
- Josef Suk – Three Songs for Mixed Choir, Op. 19 – Stasa the Witch
Tutti
- Vítězslav Novák – Two Ballads on Moravian Folk Poetry, Op. 19
- Antonín Dvořák – Te Deum, Op. 103
Conductors
Tomáš Stanček
Tomáš graduated from the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava in the conducting class of Jaromir Javůrka and later went on to study at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. During his professional career he has worked with a variety of Czech orchestras, such as the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, the PKF Prague Philharmonia or the Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc, and also the Silesian Theatre in Opava, and has taken part in a number of conducting seminars throughout the country. In 2016 he made his debut at the International Music festival Janáčkův máj and became the permanent conductor for the winner’s concert of the International Young Composer’s Competition Generace. As well as working with orchestras, he also has an interest in choral music. From 2018 on, he is a member of the National Information and Advising Centre for Culture and Amateur Artistic Activities’ committee for middle school choir music. He regularly takes part in choir seminars as lecturer and repetiteur, and leads a number of vocal ensembles at the Janáček Conservatory, where he is also the conductor of the opera studio. We are looking forward to having him conduct the orchestral and joined pieces of this year’s EMSOC.
Jakub Pikla
Jakub studied conducting at the conservatory in Pardubice, and afterwards graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he studied orchestral, choral and opera conducting and music direction. During his studies he also spent time abroad at the Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm. In 2022 he became choirmaster of the Kühn Choir of Prague, one of the largest and most acclaimed of the country, through which he regularly works in close collaboration with notable ensembles, such as the Czech National Opera or the FOK Prague Symphony Orchestra. This year in the Czech Republic Jakub will oversee the choir rehearsals and performance.
Organizing committee
Kristýna Krulíková
Right now Kristýna is already working as a ophthalmologist, but she was lucky enough to discover EMSOC already during her first year of medicine. From that time on, she cannot imagine a better way to spend the summer and believes it to be one of the best things that life has sent her way. It has enriched her not only as a violinist, but also as a physician and enthusiastic traveller and has brought many people into her life that have since become her friends for life. All of this was a huge motivation for her, when together with her friends she decided to take on this project for 2024 and organise it in the Czech Republic.
Jan Venc
Honza is now a 6th year medical student. When he grows up, he wants to be an internal medicine doctor. Apart from that, he’s an enthusiastic singer, who won’t hear a bad word against the Doubravan choir in his hometown Chotěboř, but also enjoys singing in the Kühn Choir in Prague, or with friends around the campfire. With fondness he remembers the music school in Chotěboř, and from time to time he will also play the saxophone. Through EMSOC he finally found friends, who love music as much as he does, and spend their days buried in music sheets as well as medical textbooks.
Kateřina Vencová
Katka is working in her 5th year in the internal medicine department in a regional hospital. The work can be exhausting at times, but since her childhood the best relaxation for her has always been music. After many years, it was EMSOC that brought her back to singing in a choir, and showed her the most enthusiastic group of people that you could imagine. One such “musical holiday” means motivation and a blast of energy for the whole next year, and that’s something you want to experience over and over again.
Richard Boček
This is Richard. Richard likes music and also medicine – mostly trombone and neurology that is. Perhaps you might think this a strange combination but, as he puts it, there is a buyer for all kinds of goods, after all. It was EMSOC that, after the exhausting first years of medicine, brought Richard back to a dusty instrument case and made him start to very loudly play his trombone again! And he didn’t stop until he found a whole heap of great friends from all over Europe who, as he realised, were feeling the same way as him.
How beautiful!
Kateřina Kupská
Katka is professionally working in the infectious disease department and, unprofessionally, often found singing – often in a choir, and even more often in the kitchen. She experienced EMSOC for the first time in 2019 in Granada, where she realised that the project’s atmosphere was even more contagious than her medical specialty, and that she had to come back the next year. And the next. And so she has been coming back to a different corner of Europe every year, not only for the music and the different countries and cultures but also for the friends she can no longer imagine her life without.
Charity
The sum collected through a voluntary entrance fee will be donated to the non-profit organisation ALSA z.s., which brings together patients and professionals interested in and working with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)- a neurological disease, causing the degeneration of the cells controlling the body’s muscles. Patients with this condition gradually lose the ability to move parts of their bodies, until eventually only eye movement remains possible, all while remaining alert and retaining all of their mental capacity. ALSA not only organises educational campaigns and fundraisers for their clients, but also provides individual support in the form of home consultations with experts, renting out mobility aids and equipment, financial support and more.
For more information check their website at: https://www.zsalsa.cz/en
Applications
Do you want to be part of this unique experience?
The applications are open until February 15th 2024!
Join us now! https://www.emsoc2024.cz/application