Congratulations to the Cold Mountain Band, a semi-finalist in TV 4’s Sweden’s Got Talent (Talang 2010). Info: www.coldmountainband.se
The G-2 Bluegrass Band will be touring in the U.S. for four months, beginning June 8. Dates will include the Fathers Day Bluegrass Festival at Grass Valley, Calif., Nashville’s Station Inn and IBMM’s River of Music Party (ROMP) in Owensboro, Ky. The Swedish bluegrass band will be touring in support of their new release, Untapped Routes. Info: www.g2bluegrassband.com
IBMA member Lilly Pavlak, a Czech journalist living in Switzerland, reports the Spring Festival Willisau, the biggest indoor bluegrass festival in Switzerland, took place May 1 at the Farmer Museum Burgrain near Willisau, drawing a capacity crowd. Headliners included the Kathy Kallick Band and Uncle Earl from the U.S., Red Grass and Viper Central from Canada, Sacred Sound of Grass from Germany, Bluegrass Cwrkot from the Czech Republic and a young Swiss band called Moon Rise. The event is produced annually by Bruno Steffen.
Czech band, The New Section, opened up the show for the Kruger Brothers—the Swiss trio who now reside in North Carolina—in Prague March 30. The April 7 performance by Robert Krestan & Druha Trava in Brno was the last one for their bass player, Petr Sury, who is departing the band to work on other projects. Tomas Liska will take over the position as bass player in the popular Czech band. The bluegrass mini-festival U Kuritku took place April 10-11 in Luka nad Jihlavou, Czech Republic. Performers included The Giant Mountains Band from south Bohemia, Jewelci from southern Moravia, and Czech band, Monogram, who presented songs from their new album, Hit the Road. The Giant Mountains Band also won the Jamboree Band Contest April 17 in Sloupnice at the Old Rebel Pub.
A benefit concert was organized by luthier Rosta Capek at the Lucerna Hall in Prague on April 18, in honor of the 25th anniversary of his company, Capek Instruments. Proceeds went to the Jan Deyl Conservatory for blind music students, which is celebrating 100 years in 2010. Headliners included the Petr Brandejs Band, Vojta Zicha, Ondra Ruml, Radim Zenkl and Pavlina Jisova & Friends, among others. Czech television star, Marek Eben, called Marko Cermak onstage in honor of his 70th birthday. Cermak, the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award recipient known as the father of the five-string banjo in the Czech Republic and the organizer of two influential bluegrass bands in the ‘60s, The Greenhorns and White Stars, was presented with a small scale “travel banjo” built by Rosta Capek.
Monogram, from the Czech Republic, appeared at an album release party hosted for them April 19 at the Gong Theatre in Prague. Band members thanked the important women in their lives—their mothers, who enabled them to learn to play their instruments, and their wives, who support their music now. Misa Leicht of the Czech bluegrass band, Cop, then came onstage with a bottle of champagne and christened the new CD.