Back in 2007, you could hardly
escape the unbelievable story of a young Czech musician, Markéta Irglová: she
started playing the piano at the age of seven; at thirteen, she met Glen
Hansard with whom she later shot the low-budget, yet highly acclaimed film Once. In February 2008, nearly
twenty-years-old, Markéta was at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood accepting an
Oscar for Best Original Song.
After the collaborative project with
Hansard, The Swell Season, announced
its hiatus in 2010, Markéta began working on her first solo album, Anar, released in 2011. Its follow-up Muna (Sept 23, 2014), thematically a lot
different, straying from human relationships to the question of a higher being,
had been finished for a while but the release date had been postponed due to Markéta's
pregnancy. Now a year old, little Árveig has been on her very first tour. Markéta and her band had
graced the United States and Canada with their gigs throughout the month of
October, proceeding with the European leg of the tour until mid-November.
The concert at Divadlo DVA on
November 10 was the last one out of the three in the Czech Republic, following
Brno and Markéta's hometown Valašské Meziříčí. With my Once re-watch and the date quickly approaching, I was getting, reasonably,
more and more excited to hear her ethereal voice and mellow piano-driven
melodies in the intimate theatre atmosphere.
For once, I thoroughly enjoyed even
the opening act. The Israeli-born singer-songwriter Rosi Golan played a
forty-five minute set of acoustic songs, and the applause was getting
observably louder with each one. After a
quick break we were presented the premiere of Markéta's new music video for This Right Here, and after that, shortly
before 8:30, Markéta herself finally appeared on stage, starting the evening with one of my personal
favorites, Phoenix. Most of the
performed songs were off her latest release but she threw in some of the
well-known Once sounds. As I had not
attended her show before, getting to hear the beautiful, Oscar-winning Falling Slowly that concluded the
setlist was quite an experience! Shortly after, Markéta was back with a
three-song encore: first, The Hill, performed
solely by her on the keyboard. Then she was joined by Rosi and Aida for Golan's
Can't Go Back and one more Swell Season's piece, I Have Loved You Wrong. After the well-deserved and persistent
standing ovation, she came back once again, laughingly remarked that that would
really be the last song of the night,
and sang Karel Kryl's Jeřabiny acapella, encouraging the audience to
join in. After the show, she was signing autographs, taking photographs, and,
of course, humbly accepting a shower of praise by the merch table - where, by
the way, people were queuing up, and both Markéta's and Rosi's albums were
selling like hot cakes.
It is
safe to say that the night was an epic musical experience that exceeded all of
my expectations that were set pretty high. The aura of eeriness, fragility and
modesty that Markéta has always emitted was present on stage as well as outside
of it, and the way she plays combined with her angelic voice rightly leave
concert halls all around the world filled with awe.
Zuzana Ondová
Note: Photographs from the event are available at
http://musicserver.cz/clanek/48856/marketa-irglova-rosi-golan-studio-dva-praha-10-11-2014-fotogalerie/.
