Czech-American Radim Zenkl founded a musical duo with Ondra Kozák as his European concert project. Listeners can look forward to compositions and songs from the two players’ own works, complemented by bluegrass, swing, Celtic, and “world music” songs in peculiar arrangements. Both musicians are vocalists and multi-instrumentalists and their performances will also impress with less common combinations of string and wind instruments.
Radim Zenkl
Born in Opava, in the 1980s he was active in the Ostrava groups Athabasca and Rozkol. In 1985 he founded and led the band Tyrkys, which won the Porta finals in 1988. Since the summer of 1989, he has been active in the USA, where in 1992 he won the prestigious all-American mandolin competition with international participation Winfield Mandolin Championship. He has recorded eight CDs, collaborated as a studio player on more than 60 CDs, and invented a special mandolin technique in which the instrument sounds like two instruments simultaneously. He has collaborated in concert and studio with players of new acoustic music such as Béla Fleck, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Mike Marshall, Jerry Douglas, Stanley Jordan, and others. During a visit to Ireland in 1999, he also began playing traditional Irish whistles other flutes from around the world.
Ondra Kozák
is a multi-instrumentalist (guitar, violin, mandolin, bass, dobro), singer, composer, music lecturer, director, and organizer. He is mainly involved in acoustic music: bluegrass, folk, new acoustic. As a guitarist, he has recorded two solo albums (Ataman, 2014; Overtones, 2019) and won the title “Guitarist of the Year” 5 times in the Bluegrass Association of the Czech Republic poll. He has participated in more than 20 studio albums with various bands, with which he won the prestigious competition for European Band of the Year at the French La Roche Bluegrass Festival 4 times. On various occasions, he has collaborated with important personalities of the world music scene, such as Mike Marshall, Dan Crary, Tony Furtado, Beppe Gambetta, Dale Ann Bradley, Steve Gulley, Cia Cherryholmes, Mike Compton, etc. He organizes music workshops, produces a podcast for musicians, founded an online music workshop, and is the author of several educational publications.