Vít Spilka

Vít Spilka is a leading Czech clarinettist, teacher and conductor. He comes from a family with a long history of involvement in music. He is a graduate of the Brno Conservatoire and the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (clarinet) and Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (conducting). He spent study stays at Academia Chigiana in Siena and Trinity College of Music in London. He has won leading awards in several competitions of musical interpretation. From 1987 to 1997 he was solo bass clarinettist with the Brno Philharmonic, playing under leading conductors from the Czech Republic and abroad. He has also performed as a soloist with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra and the Brno Chamber Orchestra. He has given many recitals in the Czech Republic and abroad (e.g., in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada and Poland). He is also active in the field of contemporary music interpretation, having given premiere performances of many compositions and made recordings for Czech Radio and CD. Vít Spilka has appeared as a soloist and a member of a chamber ensemble at many leading festivals, such as Prague Spring, Prague Premieres, Moravian Autumn, the Janáček Festival, the Janáček and Luhačovice Festival, the Forfest Festival (Kroměříž), Concentus Moraviae, An Exhibition of New Music (Brno) and Encounters of New Music Plus, and on several CD recordings. Since 1987 he has been a member of the Brno Wind Quintet, which has given concerts in Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, France and Sweden. Since 2012 he has been the artistic director of the Janáček Ensemble which has given concerts in Czech Republic, France and China. For many years he has conducted larger chamber ensembles and orchestras (e.g., JAMU Wind Harmony, Ensemble Opera Diversa, the Janaček Ensemble, Czech North Filharmonic, Czech Virtuosi Orchestra, Prague Philharmonia). He has conducted many concerts at home and abroad, including at the Mozart Ways festival, the 2010 Janáček Festival and the 2011 Forfest Festival in Kroměříž, for the Brno Philharmonic’s Jeunesses Musicales, and as part of an exchange programme between JAMU and Trinity College of Music in London. Having debuted with the Brno Philharmonic in 2012, in 2013 he conducted the world premiere of an instrumented version of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Disappeared at the Janáček Festival at the University of North Texas (concerts in Brno and Denton, USA). In the same year he recorded CD “Klein, Spilka, Zouhar, Haas” with Ensemble Opera Diversa. Since 1993 Vít Spilka has been a teacher at the Music Faculty of JAMU; in 2003 he was made an Associate Professor. He is also active as a teacher beyond the Music Faculty; he has taught on many courses of interpretation at home and abroad, at the Clarinet Festival in Žirovnice and Prague Clarinet Days. Within the Erasmus programme for international mobility he has given lectures at universities in Amsterdam, Helsinki, London, Cardiff, Malmö, Karlsruhe and Wroclav. Many of Vít Spilka’s pupils have been accepted on courses of study abroad and have come to fill posts in leading orchestras in the Czech Republic and abroad. From 2008 to 2012 Vít Spilka was Dean of the Faculty of Music of JAMU and from 2018 to 2022 vice–rector of Janáček Academy of Performing arts.