MUSHROOMS: ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM – PART 2

performance length: min
a lecture & advise
The meeting with Václav Hálek - the music composer and mycology entusiast. A live rendition of a number of his songs inspired by mushrooms will be supplemented with a lecture, slide show and identification of
mushrooms brought to the theatre (by you).


“All of this is a display of the beauty and diversity of nature, in which there are no scales of value, everything is true, no matter its looks.” The author of this declaration is Václav Hálek, graduate of the Prague Academy of Music and member of the Czech Mycological Society. Composer of a number of concerts and film scores, he only became famous in 2003 when the company Fontana published his “Musical Atlas of Mushrooms”. Individual specimens of mushrooms inspired him to write mostly one-voice compositions – some of which will be performed live during the lecture. It will also feature a slide show, discussion and identification of mushrooms brought to the theatre. If you want to know what mushrooms you pick, bring them with you!

The meeting with Václav Hálek is organized by HANDA GOTE research & development group. In spring 2008 its members embarked on a project examining various aspects of the mushroom phenomenon. In the preparatory phase the group decided to share some of its inspirational sources with the public. In April they invited the director and script writer Vít Janeček to introduce the screening of his film essay Fungus. Pencilled in for September is a lecture by the music composer Martin Smolka on the life and art of his colleague and mycology enthusiast in USA – John Cage.

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The first night of the project Mushrooms will take place on November 20, 2008.