Meditatio

Since 2005 baritone Tomáš Král has appeared with many of the best-known European ensembles, including Collegium Vocale Gent, La Venexiana, Vox Luminis, Holland Baroque, B’Rock Orchestra, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra, Collegium 1704, Collegium Marianum, and Musica Florea.

 

In a new collaboration with Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion, he performed several of Bach’s cantatas and the role of Jesus in the St John Passion.

 

Other highlights of the season included concert tours of Handel’s Israel in Egypt and Bach’s Mass in B minor with Collegium 1704 and Purcell’s Hail! Bright Cecilia at the Konzerthaus in Vienna with Le Poème Harmonique. Tomáš started a new collaboration with Dunedin Consort celebrating the work of Bach including the Matthäus-Passion conducted by Trevor Pinnock and other cantatas conducted by John Butt.

 

His many recordings include such rarities as the Missa Votiva and the Lamentationes by the great Bohemian master Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bach’s Mass in B minor with Collegium 1704, and Leoš Janáček’s Moravian Folk Songs.

Vojtěch Semerád is a graduate of the Prague Conservatory, the Faculty of Pedagogy of Charles University in Prague (Choirmastering), and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris (Baroque violin with François Fernandez). He is a finalist of the Telemann-Wettbewerb International Competition in Magdeburg. He has been trained as a singer since 2010 throughout private lessons (with teachers such as Chantal Santon Jeffery, Peter Kooij, Poppy Holden) and many masterclasses.   As a solo singer, Vojtěch Semerád is invited by renowned ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Ensemble Correspondances, Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, Vox Luminis, or Huelgas Ensemble, with whom he performs at major international venues and festivals such as Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Park Avenue Armory New York, Logan Center Chicago, Concertgebouw Rotterdam, Wigmore Hall London, Palau de la Música Barcelona, etc. He has taken part in several opera productions, and has recently sung the role of Acis in Georg Friedrich Handel’s Acis and Galatea, the role of Atys in Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys, the role of Pythonisse in David et Jonathas and Histoires Sacrés by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, or The Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell. He is regularly invited as the Evangelist in passions and oratorios by Johann Sebastian Bach.   Vojtěch Semerád is the artistic director of the vocal ensemble Cappella Mariana, with which he performs forgotten works of vocal polyphony of Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque era. Today the ensemble is regularly invited to the prestigious festivals, a.o. Oude Muziek Utrecht, MAfestival Brugge, Voices of Passion Leuven, Laus Polyphoniae Antwerpen, Klangvokal Dortmund, Prague Spring, Innsbrucker Festwochen, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, and Concentus Moraviae.   As a violinist, Vojtěch Semerád is a permanent member of the Collegium Marianum ensemble and also performs in multi-genre and original musical projects.   He has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, Naïve, Harmonia Mundi, Passacaille and Supraphon, in total more than 30 recordings, and also regularly records for Czech Radio. Vojtěch Semerád is also a researcher, focusing on the discovery of 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century vocal music in Central Europe.

Ondřej Holub was a member of the Kühn Children’s Choir and the Pueri Gaudentes Boys’ Choir in his early youth, thanks to which he became a child soloist at the Prague State Opera in a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He first studied classical singing privately with Lenka Pištěcká, then at the Prague Conservatory with Valentin Prolat, and later developed his singing skills with Jiří Kotouč.   Since 2019, he has been collaborating with the Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704, performing both as a soloist and as an ensemble singer, for example, singing the tenor part in Bach’s Mass in B minor in Vézelay, France. Ondřej Holub also regularly works with the Ensemble Damian, with whom he has performed in the operas La contesa de’ numi by Leonardo Vinci (Marte) and L’Amor non há legge by Antonio Caldara (Tirsi). Both of these pieces were staged at the Olomouc Baroque Festival, and Caldara’s opera was performed three times at Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival in Nové Hrady castle (in 2018). As a soloist, Ondřej Holub regularly collaborates with a number of ensembles and orchestras (the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra). He has been an ensemble singer in most of the leading Czech early music ensembles – Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, Cappella Mariana, Collegium Marianum, Ensemble Inégal, Czech Ensemble Baroque, Musica Florea, and Victoria Ensemble.   Between 2013 and 2019, he was a member of the Martinů Voices chamber choir, one of the outstanding interpreters of 20^th century and contemporary music. He regularly participates in prestigious national and international festivals. In 2007, he founded the male vocal quintet Rudolfvoice with former members of the Pueri Gaudentes Boys’ Choir and performed with them at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Ondřej Holub cooperates with the Prague Philharmonic Choir on an external basis and joined it on stage for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in Carnegie Hall in New York to mark the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia.