Ladislav Simon

Ladislav Simon belongs to the few artists too restless and inquisitive to focus solely on the lifelong construction of one huge and well visible cathedral. Rather than that he tries through his work to build a number of buildings at the same time, not always as high, but in most cases innovative and very interesting.

He graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (professor Rauch), Alois Hába was his tutor in his composition studies. As a composer, dramaturge, conductor and director he numbers among the generation of the founders of the Czechoslovak Television, for which he composed several hundred scores of incidental music for various TV productions, thus providing the nascent music genre with the appropriate basic aesthetic norms. For more than eleven years he assumed the position of chief conductor of the Vinohrady Theatre orchestra.

Here he established the first Czechoslovak electronic music studio, and he also founded a chamber ensemble specializing in performing New Music – Sonatori di Praga. Afterwards, he entered into professional relations with the National Theatre in Prague, for which he worked both as a composer and conductor for not less than twenty-two years. At the very start of this partnership, he grossly violated the existing conventions of the National Theatre by establishing the National Theatre jazz orchestra within the drama section of the institution. This feat, initially seen as rather shocking, very soon turned into a triumphant entrance on the jazz scene at the International Jazz Festival of 1972. The climax of Simon’s cooperation with the National Theatre can be seen in the staging of his dance drama Jennifer in 1987.

As for his pedagogical career, he taught music theory at the conservatories in Prague and Ostrava, where he laid the foundations for education in the emergent genres within the areas of electronic music and musique concréte. Shortly after he had retired, he put all his effort in the thorough reconstruction of AUS (Army Art Ensemble). Together with the conductor J. Bělohlávek and the dramaturge Dr Ilja Šmíd he initiated the foundation of the Prague Philharmonia. Also in this environment his artistic contribution was significant, as can be testified, among others, by the composition and performance of his “Requiem for the dead for whom music was life”.

Titles for hire - see Complete catalogue