Concert review: Marketa Irglova at Studio DVA

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/.

Recommendation: Looking for Alaska by John Green

John Green is one of the most successful contemporary writers of Young Adult literature. At the age of thirty-six, he is already an award-winning author with four published novels of his own, two collaborative works and a film currently being made, which is based on his latest novel, the best-selling tearjerker The Fault in Our Stars (2012). Back in 2007, he teamed up with his younger brother Hank to create a YouTube channel Vlogbrothers that has gained over one million subscribers, the so-called Nerdfighters, and allowed them to branch out to found more projects - SciShow in which Hank explains the wonders of science and CrashCourse dedicated to history and literature that John is a master of. 

His first book, Looking for Alaska, published in 2005, has been awarded the Micheal L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult literature by the American Library Association and several other literary awards. The main character, Miles Halter, a teenage boy obsessed with famous people’s last words, leaves his boring Florida life behind and sets off to Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama, in search of the Great Perhaps - something great, something worth living his life for before it is too late to set off for such quests. There he meets his roomate Chip Martin, Japanese student Takumi and Alaska Young – a smart and utterly fascinating girl with just the right amount of sexiness and mysteriousness that capture Miles’s heart. The foursome grows close and Miles suddenly finds himself having friends. Then one night changes everything and the ever so mysterious Alaska inflicts even more mystery and questions that Miles and Chip long to know the answers to.

While Green's books fit into the Young Adult category, they are critically acclaimed and loved by a wide range of readers. They're fun and sad, discussing topics such as love and friendship, pain and suffering; all in all, they are relatable not only for teenagers. The story of Miles Halter has two parts: Before and After. One of the many things that I love about this book is the ambiguity of the event that sweeps the plot from Before to After. To quote Green himself, books belong to their readers. That's why the denouement is not completely clear, leaving space for readers to make up their minds about the story.

I highly recommend this novel even if your teen years are long gone and if you think that a story set in a boarding high school could never interest you. I guarantee that Looking for Alaska has what it takes to be both intellectually and emotionally engaging and make its readers feel all kinds of things, quite possibly even leave you teary-eyed as you turn over the last page.

- Zuzana Ondová