Smile
Bless this House
Lullaby
Over the Hill
He Never Sleeps
Sweet Georgia
Biggest Part of Me
Just in time

no intermission

The American sextet Take 6 belongs to the absolute top among vocal groups. The concerts of this phenomenal ensemble are always an exceptional experience for the listeners. Their show is based on the harmony of six male vocals, the compositions do not lack arrangement inventiveness and perfect intonation as well as rhythmical playfulness, originality, and last but not least unusual spiritual depth. The members of the ensemble originally transform the modern style of the Christian gospel using soul, jazz, funk, R&B and pop. Take 6 holds a number of prestigious awards (10 Grammy Awards, 10 Dove Awards, Soul Train Award and others). The group belongs to the most admired a capella ensembles in the world. It has travelled all around the world with its program and it has cooperated with a number of artists throughout genres – e.g. Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston and many more. In Český Krumlov the ensemble will perform with the accompaniment of the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice under the baton of Jan Kučera.

Conductor, composer and pianist Jan Kučera belongs to the most versatile Czech artists. He studied composing at the Prague Conservatory under the leadership of Bohuslav Řehoř and conducting under the leadership of Miriam Němcová and Miroslav Košler. He continued his studies in conducting at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Vladimír Válek. As a composer he is involved in many fields and writes symphonic, chamber and song compositions and he also has over thirty pieces of incidental music for productions of Prague and regional theatres to his credit. As a conductor he cooperates with leading Czech orchestras in the long term, above all with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK. He is also active in the field of opera. He staged his comic opera Red Mary (in Czech “Rudá Marie”), based on the cult radio series Tlučhořovi by authors Oldřich Kaiser and Jiří Lábus on the New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague. In January 2016 he staged the opera La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini at the National Theatre. He is the author of the ballets The Three Musketeers and The Taming of the Shrew. He also conducted the project Wanted with Dagmar Pecková and the production of the epic stage format of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. Since the 2015/2016 season Jan Kučera has had an engagement with the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra as its chief conductor.

The first records of concerts by the Teplice Orchestra date from 1828, but the official date of its founding is regarded as the 14^th April 1838. At the end of the 19^th century the orchestra had over 90 members and among its conductors were renowned personalities, such as Felix von Weingartner, Richard Strauss and Siegfried Wagner. Since 1997 it has been led by the Canadian conductor Charles Olivieri-Munroe. In the last ten years the orchestra’s activities at home and abroad have markedly intensified. This season the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice will perform over one hundred and forty concerts, out of which forty are abroad in countries such as Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain and Switzerland. Among the cities the Philharmonic will visit are important European centres: Munich, Berlin, Basel, Paris, Valencia. In the autumn of 2013 the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice went on concert tour to Asia, visiting Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. Among its audiences in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia and in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, were members of royal families. Some of the best contemporary artists come to Teplice to perform with the orchestra, among them Misha Maisky, Sharon Kam and Shlomo Mintz. The orchestra gets invited to prestigious music festivals at home and abroad: to the Prague Spring, Janáček’s May, Janáček’s Hukvaldy, theTerezín Festival of Forbidden Music, Český Krumlov Festival and Ema Destinnová Festival. The Teplice Philharmonic also runs every May and June the Ludwig van Beethoven Music Festival, founded in 1964; it now spreads over the whole of the North Bohemian region.