Artists

Concept Art Orchestra (CAO) is a Czech non-commercial jazz orchestra unique in its focus on the interpretation of contemporary Czech compositions. Participation of prominent Czech jazz musicians, regular guest performances of foreign players from Germany and Austria, and media cooperation with the Czech Radio helps meet the main goal of the orchestra: CAO aims at top-notch interpretation, documentation and subsequent promotion of contemporary Czech big band music. As its repertoire is very diverse, music critics have been placing its genre somewhere between jazz, world music and classical music.

The band got the Anděl Music Award for its album The Prague Six (2015) in the jazz category. The album also placed first in the poll of the Czech jazz publicists and promoters called the Czech Jazz Harvest 2015.

The jazz quintet Inner Spaces was founded in 2009 at the Katowice Jazz Academy where all the band members studied at that time. Inner Spaces focuses on the interpretation of original compositions influenced by contemporary Polish, Czech and Scandinavian jazz music. The band performs on Czech and Polish stages but has also played at festivals in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Vienna, Graz and other European cities.

Inner Spaces has so far released three albums. The first album was released in 2010 in cooperation with the Polish magazine Jazz Forum. The second album Light Year featuring the guitar player David Dorůžka got the Anděl Music Award in 2013. The band is currently performing the repertoire from the third album Jarní released by the label Amplión.

The youngest music project of Štěpánka Balcarová, performing from 2022. The quartet consisting of Polish and Czech jazz players is currently performing with the program Emotions. The eight compositions fundamentally reflect basic human emotions such as joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation.

The album Life and Happiness of Julian Tuwim (Animal Music, 2017) features nine musicalized poems of the well-known Polish poet Julian Tuwim. All of the compositions were written by Štěpánka Balcarová and interpreted by the Polish singer Małgorzata Hutek. The international jazz septet performs just this program and features the best Czech and Polish jazz musicians.