The Holy Night

Hana Blažíková is an exceptional figure on the Czech and international early music scene. She graduated from the Prague Conservatory, where she studied under Jiří Kotouč.
Currently, the singer specialises in the interpretation of mostly Baroque, Renaissance and Medieval repertoire and performs solo with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including Collegium Vocale Gent, Gli Angeli Genève, Bach Collegium Japan, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Pygmalion, Nederlandse Bachvereniging, La Cetra, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Collegium Marianum, Tiburtina Ensemble, Collegium 1704 and Cappella Mariana.
 
Hana Blažíková appears at major international festivals, such as the Prague Spring, the Edinburgh International Festival, Salzburger Festspiele, Oude Muziek Utrecht, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Resonanzen (Vienna), the Summer Festivities of Early Music, Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, Chopin i jego Europa, Festival de Saintes, Bachfest Leipzig and Concentus Moraviae.
 
She has also sung works by Bach with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Bamberger Symphoniker under the baton of Herbert Blomstedt. Her collaboration with the Bach Collegium Japan took her to New York’s Carnegie Hall. Since 2015, she has worked closely with the renowned cornetto player Bruce Dickey, with whom she has toured several times in North America, Australia and Tasmania.
 
In 2017, she performed in all three of Monteverdi’s operas under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner and sang in leading opera and concert houses in both Europe and the USA.
 
Hana Blažíková also plays the Gothic and Romanesque harp. She appeared on more than forty CD recordings.

Ondřej Holub was a member of the Kühn Children’s Choir and the Pueri Gaudentes Boys’ Choir in his early youth, thanks to which he became a child soloist at the Prague State Opera in a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He first studied classical singing privately with Lenka Pištěcká, then at the Prague Conservatory with Valentin Prolat, and later developed his singing skills with Jiří Kotouč.
 
Since 2019, he has been collaborating with the Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704, performing both as a soloist and as an ensemble singer, for example, singing the tenor part in Bach’s Mass in B minor in Vézelay, France. Ondřej Holub also regularly works with the Ensemble Damian, with whom he has performed in the operas La contesa de’ numi by Leonardo Vinci (Marte) and L’Amor non há legge by Antonio Caldara (Tirsi). Both of these pieces were staged at the Olomouc Baroque Festival, and Caldara’s opera was performed three times at Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival in Nové Hrady castle (in 2018). As a soloist, Ondřej Holub regularly collaborates with a number of ensembles and orchestras (the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra). He has been an ensemble singer in most of the leading Czech early music ensembles – Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, Cappella Mariana, Collegium Marianum, Ensemble Inégal, Czech Ensemble Baroque, Musica Florea, and Victoria Ensemble.
 
Between 2013 and 2019, he was a member of the Martinů Voices chamber choir, one of the outstanding interpreters of 20^th century and contemporary music. He regularly participates in prestigious national and international festivals. In 2007, he founded the male vocal quintet Rudolfvoice with former members of the Pueri Gaudentes Boys’ Choir and performed with them at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Ondřej Holub cooperates with the Prague Philharmonic Choir on an external basis and joined it on stage for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in Carnegie Hall in New York to mark the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia.

Czech bass singer Jaromír Nosek graduated from the Faculty of Education of the Charles University in Prague, the Prague Conservatory (Prof. Jiří Kotouč) and from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Prof. Roman Janál and Prof. Katarína Bachmannová). He has received scholarships for educational stays at Dartington International Summer School, at Accademia Chigiana in Siena and at Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome.

He has been collaborating with renowned Czech and foreign orchestras and vocal ensembles, such as Collegium 1704, Cappella Mariana, Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Concerto Palatino, Gli Angeli Geneve, La Venexiana, Wrocław Baroque Ensemble, Doulce Mémoire and Lautten Compagney. His soloist career includes the cooperation with conductors such as Václav Luks, José Cura, Stefano Montanari, Rudolf Lutz, or Christophe Rousset. Jaromír has performed at a number of international festivals, including the Prague Spring, Salzburger Festspiele, Festival d’Ambronay, Settimana Musicale Senese, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Bach Festival Montréal, Festival del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México, etc.

As an opera singer, he has performed both home and abroad; he had the lead role in Antonio Vivaldi’s serenata La Senna Festeggiante, and the opera audience might have seen him in a number of other roles: Claudio Monteverdi’s Caronte (L’Orfeo) and Seneca (L’incoronazione di Poppea), Ortensio in Antonio Caldara’s L’Amor non ha legge, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Il Commendatore (Don Giovanni) and Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte).

He has contributed to the recording of over 40 CD’s, a number of which has been nominated or has received prestigious international prizes, such as Choc du Monde de la Musique or ICMA (International classical music awards).

In 2020 Jaromír founded the ANMOEN chamber music ensemble that specializes in the interpretation and sensitive interconnection between early baroque and contemporary music.

Since it was founded in 1997, the Prague ensemble Collegium Marianum has focused on presenting the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially by composers who were born or active in central Europe. One of the few professional ensembles specializing in this field in the Czech Republic, Collegium Marianum not only gives musical performances, but regularly also stages scenic projects.
 
The ensemble works under the artistic leadership of the traverso player Jana Semerádová who also regularly appears as a soloist with some of the eminent European orchestras. Her active research together with her study of Baroque gesture, declamation and dance, has enabled Semerádová to broaden the profile of the Collegium Marianum ensemble and present multi-genre projects featuring Baroque dance and theater. Her unique, thematic programming has resulted in a number of modern-day premieres of historical music presented each year. The ensemble has collaborated with renowned European conductors, soloists, directors, and choreographers such as Andrew Parrott, Hana Blažíková, Damien Guillon, Peter Kooij, Sergio Azzolini, François Fernandez, Simona Houda-Šaturová, Benjamin Lazar, Jean-Denis Monory, and Gudrun Skamletz.
 
Collegium Marianum has received critical acclaim both at home and abroad. The ensemble has appeared extensively on the Czech Radio and TV as well as on the radio abroad. It regularly performs at music festivals and on prestigious stages both in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, including Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Bachfest Leipzig, Potsdam Festspiele, Mitte Europa, Festival de Sablé, Bolzano Festival, Palau Música Barcelona, Pražské jaro, or Concentus Moraviae.
 
In 2008 the ensemble started a successful collaboration with the Supraphon label. Within the “Music from Eighteenth-Century Prague” series it has launched eight recordings with music by both well-known and lesser-known composers including J.D. Zelenka, F. Jiránek, J.J.I. Brentner and J.A. Sehling.

Flautist Jana Semerádová is a graduate of the Prague Conservatory, the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University (Theory and Practice of Early Music), and the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, the Netherlands. She is also a laureate of the Magdeburg and Munich international competitions.
 
Jana Semerádová is the artistic director of Collegium Marianum and programming director of the concert cycle Baroque Soirées and the international music festival Summer Festivities of Early Music. She undertakes intensive archival research both at home and abroad and is engaged in ongoing study of Baroque gesture, declamation and dance. Many of her unique programmes are built around the interconnection of music and drama. Under her direction, Collegium Marianum stages several modern premieres each year. Jana Semerádová has a number of CDs to her name; her recordings with Collegium Marianum are featured as part of the successful series “Music from Eighteenth-Century Prague” on the Supraphon label, for which she has also recorded her two signature CDs “Solo for the King” and “Chaconne for the Princess“.
 
Jana Semerádová has performed at leading European concert venues and festivals (such as Bachfest Leipzig, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, Innsbrucker Festwochen, Händel-Festspiele Halle, Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, Festival de Sablé, the Prague Spring festival, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, the Konzerthaus in Vienna and Berlin, Vratislavia Cantans a Palau de la Música Catalana), collaborated as a soloist with artists including Magdalena Kožená, Sergio Azzolini, Alfredo Bernardini, and Enrico Onofri, and regularly performs with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Il suonar parlante, Wrocławska Orkiestra Barokowa, Orkiestra Historyczna and Ars Antiqua Austria.
 
In 2015 she received her habilitation degree as an associate professor of flute from the Faculty of Music and Dance at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2019 she was awarded the prize of the Prague Group of the Society for Arts and Sciences.