Vladimír Merta "80"

A jubilee concert celebrating Vladimír Merta's eightieth birthday - one of the most distinctive figures in Czech singer-songwriter tradition. He will be accompanied on stage by guitarist and pianist Ondřej Fencl.

Merta has conceived the evening as both a musical retrospective and a living journey through time: from Dylan-inspired beginnings through folk and Jewish influences to improvised expeditions at the boundaries of serious music. The setlist centres on iconic songs from the 1970s and 1980s - including Astrolog, Harmonie, Chtít chytit vítr, Vzdálené výstřely, K pětadvaceti, and Začouzené sklíčko, alternating between piano and Ondřej Fencl's second guitar accompaniment.

The Merta-Fencl collaboration actually began by accident. "Ondřej sent me an email saying he wanted to send me a record by his band Hromosvod. I confused him with someone else and replied: come by Kaštanu in the evening, I have a concert there, join me," Merta recalls from spring 2011. "We played for an hour without rehearsal. That can only happen to Dylan. Or to me." From that evening grew a collaboration lasting nearly fifteen years and encompassing over three hundred concerts.