Swedish spring, Czech summer

First of all, I should not forget one of the main moments of my studies at KMH, I have successfully completed my bachelor's program and got the Bachelor’s degree "Bachelor in Music". Nevertheless, I clearly feel that this milestone is just an imaginary bounce to the next study period at the KMH, partly because I was admitted to the Master’s program after passing the entrance examinations, and then also because I started very promising projects and collaborations during the last months of this academic year, which I can develop in the next year.

So I will take it one by one. It seems that my cooperation with Swedish cellist Johannes Ryden is of utmost importance. I can say with pleasure that we have been able to make some interesting concerts, both school and out-of-school ones. After our last mutual school concert, we have been asked to play even at private events, and I am delighted that our music and this combination, accordion and cello, which is not so common in Sweden, are appreciated among the people. As a duo, we also played on my bachelor’s recital. We are constantly expanding our repertoire and we will definitely want to participate in one of the biggest Swedish competitions "Ung och Lovande" - "Young and Promising" in the next academic year. This competition got my attention first because, as one of the main aspects, the jury judges not only the music itself, but also the oral presentation and the overall impression from performing on the stage, which in this case is just as important as the play itself. The second advantage of this competition is fact that instead of a high cash prize, the winners get a concert tour of Sweden, which is definitely better and more interesting speaking for myself, because the money from one competition is spent, but the connections from the concerts remain. And we have already started compiling a repertoire for this competition.

As another and very interesting point of my cooperation with Johannes, I also would like to mention our project (2) DUO - two musicians and two dancers. This project is based on a fusion of music and dance, because with two dancers we have made up an original program where our music is connected with their dance. We prepared and rehearsed this project for two months and I am happy that our work is starting to pay off. With this project, we first performed at the Swedish Cultural Night in Kulturhuset which is the main cultural house in Stockholm. But most importantly, we have done two concerts in the building of the former nuclear reactor “Reaktorhallen”, the very first reactor in Sweden. It was incredibly interesting to play in this environment where one can barely get to, and it was also nice to show this environment to the audience. On top of that, this hall has an exceptional atmosphere and one of the best acoustics I have ever played in, even better than most of churches. I think that our project worked out well in this environment. To our joy, more than one hundred people came there, which is not so bad for the first big and absolutely independent project. In the autumn we want to continue with this project to reach more people in Stockholm. There are also some dance competitions that we can take part in, but time will show.

Besides these, but also others, chamber music projects, I also work hard on my solo play. As I mentioned earlier, I had my bachelor's concert in April, as well as many other solo performances, such as the concert at the annual meeting of the Swedish Accordion Association, where I also was giving an interview to "Dragspelsnytt" magazine.

So this is how I spent a part of the spring in Sweden. Surely, I could find many more things to write about, but to move on, I shall finally explain why I used "Czech summer" in the title of this post. It is because during my studies at KMH, I accumulated a tremendous amount of creative energy which I want to transform in two new solo albums by the end of this summer. Above that, I am also into making music videos that are nowadays indispensable part of the portfolio of professional musicians. That's why “Czech summer”, because the program for this summer is more or less about work for me. But I cannot imagine that I would spend time doing something more fulfilling, besides playing concerts, than doing these creative activities which keep me motivated every day. And I strongly believe that all my plans for this summer will be fulfilled, and before I jump in studying and playing in Sweden again, I will create a lot of new recordings and music videos. By the way, if you, as a reader of this blog, are interested also in my music, I would like to invite you to my homepage "milanrehak.com" where you can find some of my recordings and videos. See you then and wonderful summer to everyone!