Lenka Dusilová

Lenka Dusilová (born December 28, 1975) is a Czech Angel Award-winning singer-songwriter. Dusilová began her professional career in 1988, joining the world-renowned children's choir Bambini di Praga at the age of 13. Earlier she enjoyed her family band RSP with her mother and brother. They did own folk music which was set on old Czech and Polish poetry. During the '90s, Dusilová was a member of several groups, most notably Lucie, the Czech Republic's biggest pop-rock band, playing guitar and singing on several CDs. The band opened for the 1995 Rolling Stones show in Prague's Strahov Stadium. From 1991 to 1995 she was leader of the rock band Sluníčko (Little Tiny Sun), which released an eponymous CD in 1994, won the Marlboro Rock '94 competition, and opened the Open Air Gampell music festival in Switzerland. Dusilová was nominated for the 1994 "Discovery of the Year" Angel Award. After Sluníčko she formed Pusa (Kiss/Mouth) with two members of Lucie. Their song "Muka" (Wheels of Desire) was nominated for an Angel Award in 1996. She and Lucie's David Koller also collaborated on the soundtracks for two films, and several of her recent songs have been included on film soundtracks. Dusilová won the Angel Award as best female vocalist in 2000. She has been voted best female vocalist every year since 2000 by readers of the premier Czech music magazine, Report. She performs and records with her band, Secret Service. Since 2000 Dusilová, in addition to her solo work, has recorded and performed with the Czech Republic's preeminent folk-rock band, Čechomor. She appeared on the band's breakthrough album, "Proměny" (Transformations) produced by punkster-turned-classical-composer Jaz Coleman, who characterized her as "a great talent". Coleman merged Czechomor's electrified traditional sound with the rich symphonic power of the Czech Philharmonic Collegium. Dusilová's duet with Czechomor's Franta Cerny of the CD's title song was a fixture on the Czech charts for months in 2001 and won the Angel Award as song of the year. The "Proměny" CD went multiple platinum and won the Angel for album of the year. Dusilová records for Universal Music, tours regularly in the Czech Republic, and appears on stages throughout Europe. Her earlier solo efforts, "Lenka Dusilová" and "Spatřit světlo světa" also achieved gold record status, and the single "Pro Tebe" (For You) from her debut CD spent eight weeks in the IFPI Top 20. [edit] 2005: Mezi Světy / Between Worlds Lenka Dusilová (2008) Her latest 2005 CD "Mezi Světy" (Between Worlds) took the Czech music world by storm and reached gold record status within weeks of its release. "Mezi Svety" won the 2006 Czech Academy of Music Angel Award (the Czech Grammy) for best rock album and Lenka herself won as best female vocalist. The CD was produced by U.S. wunderkind Ben Yonas at Coast Recorders in San Francisco and New York with Dusilová and guitarist Martin Ledvina as co-producers. Backing them up on the CD were renowned San Francisco session musicians Jon Evans (bass) and Scott Amendola (drums). [edit] 2006 - 2008 Last two years Dusilová has been touring across United States with her American band and simultaneously she crossed the Czech country with her Czech band which join Czech top musicians Beata Hlavenkova, Peter Binder or Rasto Uhrik and Danko Soltis from Vertigo Quintet. She also performed and recorded with other bands like "Vertigo Quintet" ( CD "Live u Staré Paní") or Czech songwritter/poet "Jan Burian" (CD's "Dívčí Válka", "Muži jsou křehcí").. 2008 - 2010 Lenka`s the new project entitled Eternal Seekers, on which she collaborates closely with Clarinet Factory and with Beata Hlavenková, represents yet another relevant stage of her pursuit. Her most mature recording so far is the genre-defying album, Mezi světy (2006), featuring Czech and American musicians (including the drummer Scott Amendola, who has played with Madeleine Peyroux and Bill Frisell). In 2007, Lenka made a U.S. tour (during which she also played alongside the icon of modern country music, Emmylou Harris), and back on the Czech scene, she became engaged in an unpublicized process of teaming up with the members of the postjazz outfit, Vertigo Quintet. Shortly before that, she guest-appeared in traditional songs on new tracks recorded by the band Čechomor, and still felt echoes of her previous unconstrained work with the theatre group Continuo, which had tested out her qualities as a singer-songwriter and a spontaneous performer. With Eternal Seekers she is delivering a surprising yet thoroughly natural synthesis of all these earlier inspirations. This time out, Dusilová turned for texts primarily to Bogdan Trojak, a poet, and winner of the Jiří Orten Prize and the Magnesia Litera annual literary award. Apart from that, the programme also draws – surprisingly for some – on other, fairly disparate sources of inspiration: namely, the poetry of František Halas, plus a song, never recorded, with which then fifteen-year-old Lenka Dusilová embarked on her career with the Prague rock outfit Sluníčko. With Eternal Seekers Lenka Dusilová is bringing a fresh proof of her work’s innermost qualities: boldness, suggestive force, and accessibility.