Ondřej Adámek

Ondřej Adámek, born in Prague in 1979, is a Czech composer and conductor who has lived in Berlin since 2010, when he arrived there as a guest of the DAAD artists’ programme. He studied composition at the Academy of Music in Prague and then at the Paris Conservatoire, graduating in 2007. Long stays abroad have left clear marks on his music: he has drawn on Japanese Noh and Bunraku theatre, on flamenco, and on what he heard in India and Bali. His scores combine driving rhythm with a fascination for breath, speech and unusual ways of producing sound, and he has built an instrument of his own, the air-driven Airmachine. In 2018 he founded the vocal ensemble N.E.S.E.V.E.N., and he has conducted his own stage works, among them Seven Stones at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. His concert works include the violin concerto Follow Me, written for Isabelle Faust, and Where are You?, an orchestral song cycle for Magdalena Kožená.