Protější země – Opposite Land
Trio Opposite Land
Jiří Durman - wind instruments
Růžena Hejná - vocal
Alexandr Krestovský - guitar, percussion, declamation, vocal
The Opposite Land trio was founded in 1996 by Jiří Durman and Alexandr Krestovsky as a duo, where different musical experiences were melted in an unbounded musical expression loosely based on an East European musical tradition with a considerable emphasis on improvisation. After common musical starts in the first half of seventies influenced mainly by the jazz avantgarde, Jiří Durman was fully involved in free improvised music while Alexandr Krestovský switched later to early music and since eighties has been singing medieval and rennaissance vocal polyphony music.
Their first public appearance was in 1996 on a Jazz festival in Karlovy Vary. Since 1998 Durman - Krestovsky duo has been working with different poetical texts from the Central and East European cultural region in original languages (J.Skácel, I. Blatný, Fr. Listopad, O.Mandelštam, N.Gumilyov, D.Kiš, B.Hamvás, A.Kusniewicz, A.Miran, Romanian folk ballads etc.) and improvised parts of the music - composed mainly by J.Durman - has been conforming more to the structure and poetics of the text. The duo participated on several festivals organized by Hermit Foundation (1999 Plasy monastery), Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art (2000 Cimelice Castle), Serpens Artistic Association etc.
In 2003 Ružena Hejná, a soprano singer, joined the duo and together with the international team of visual artists they realized a multimedia performance “The Dream Hunters”, based on the novel “Dictionary of the Chazars” by Serbian writer Milorad Pavic. The project was sponsored by the Open Society Fund, the Town Council of Prague, the Jewish Community Prague.
In 2004 The Opposite Land trio presented a project named “The Danube”, based on the book by Italian writer Claudio Magris. The music performance and narration were accompanied by the projection of images created on computer by Edita Vološčuková from Slovakia, a participant of the “Dream Hunters” project. In 2005 and 2006 The Opposite Land presented a performance based on the poems by Czech poets Ivan Blatný, Jan Skácel and František Listopad. The performance is accompanied by the projection of the photographs created by Jiří Ernest, a student of the Film and TV School of Prague Art Academy.
At the beginning of March 2007 the Czech Centre in Moscow invited the Opposite Land trio to participate in the festival of arts of the Central European countries "M@narchia" where “The Danube” project was presented. In June 2007 the trio presented a multimedia performance based on the poem “Crack” by the contemporary Czech poet Miloslav Topinka.
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