The VojoDeyl Trio performs Czech folk music

• Event Date: Sunday, August 26, 2018
• Time: 1:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Performance

The VojoDeyl Trio (Radim Vojtek, Martin Deyl and Karolina Magdelena Kupczyk) from the Czech Republic will be offering a sampling of Czech folk music from their homeland at several venues during an August visit to Illinois this year. The trio will perform at the Pilsen Fest in Chicago on 18 & 19 August, and will then spend a week in Mahomet, to learn firsthand what life in America’s heartland is like. While here, they will bring a little of their own culture to our community. Their visit in Mahomet is being hosted by Trudy & Gary Matthews, Debra & Dennis Kimme, and the Matt DiFanis Family, who are arranging several opportunities for local families to hear them perform.

The idea for the Trio’s visit was born when their host families from Mahomet visited the Czech Republic last year and had an opportunity to hear Radim perform during a visit to the Jan Deyl Conservatory and Secondary School for the Visually Impaired in Prague. Radim, who is blind, so impressed his American guests with his multiple talents (voice, piano & violin), that an invitation was later initiated via the Czech Consulate in Chicago to bring his trio to the U.S. Following acceptance of the invitation, representatives of the T. G. Masaryk Czech School in Chicago facilitated arrangements for their visit, including their performance at the Pilsen Fest event.

Radim is from the small village of Boršice u Blatnice in the Czech Republic. Although blind since birth, he has studied music since he was 4, starting with the flute and graduating to the piano at age 5. He obtained his secondary school education at the Jan Deyl Conservatory, where he also studied piano and piano tuning, violin and voice. He has been performing in public since childhood, and at age 11, he received the most outstanding talent award at a music festival for blind children from the Czech Radio Foundation. He has won numerous other music competitions, and has also recorded and toured with Aneta Langerová, a popular Czech pop star. In addition to performing professionally, he now teaches piano and violin in the Primary School of Music in his home town.

Martin is from the village of Hulk, about 4 miles from Radim’s home. He and Radim are childhood friends, who have frequently performed together at folklore festivals, as well as for weddings and private parties. Martin has been playing guitar and winning music awards since elementary school. During his boyhood years, he also sang and danced in a children’s folk group that performed at many international festivals. In high school, he founded his own band, which won a regional competition of high school bands. Martin graduated from the Prague Conservatory where he studied bass and guitar. Currently, Martin teaches guitar at a Music School in Uherské Hradiště.

Karolina is from Jaworzynka on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. She is currently an Erasmus (European exchange program) student at the Comenius University in Bratislava, where she is studying the Slovakian language. She has studied both violin and viola and now plays the viola in the Trio.

Radim and Martin first met Karolina at a folk festival in Hungary in 2014 and the three have performed together on various occasions since. When Radim was approached about performing in the U.S., he proposed coming with his friends Martin and Karolina, and the VojoDeyl trio was born. A sample (external link) of their folk music can be found on YouTube.

This event is cosponsored by the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music.