oBCOvaning with the SPIRIT of Václav Havel

"...The main thing is that the whole family sings!" - HAVEL, Václav: "The Whole Family Sings", HRÁDEČEK, MONDAY 25 AUGUST 1975, unpaginated

The annual pre-Christmas gathering of BCO listeners and friends in Brno's Tuřany takes place alternately in the prayer house and the sports hall. This year's 15th evening is dedicated to Václav Havel - on the occasion of his unattained ninetieth birthday and the 15th anniversary of his death.

In 1975, Czechoslovak television began broadcasting the competition "The Whole Family Sings". Although the programme was broadcast live, it starkly highlighted the greyness of official culture at the time - and it was precisely this that Havel responded to with a text delivered in August 1975 at Hrádeček. Havel was mistaken: even contemporary media entertainment is scarcely more sophisticated. Perhaps there is another way - and so BCO approached Jiří Hradil to compose excerpts from Havel's speeches as a song cycle for BCO and various singers. The second part of Havel's work will be represented by a musical setting of his experimental poems "Anticodes", which Petr Kofroň is writing for BCO.

At the end of the evening, Miloslav Kabeláč's "Play with the Nativity" will be heard for the fifth time.

Programme:
- Petr Hromádka - "Underground" (2024) 18'
- Petr Kofroň - "Anticodes" to texts by Václav Havel - BCO commission
- Jiří Hradil - songs to texts of Václav Havel's speeches - BCO commission
- Jan Jakub Ryba - "Fugue" (Šnajdr)
- Miloslav Kabeláč - "Play with the Nativity"