When I met Marek he was working in a local chemical factory in his hometown. A job he has since unfortunately lost, due to downsizing of the company. I have been helping him by providing him with musical equipment and computer equipment to allow him to create and record his music. A Kurzweil SP-76 keyboard, a Kurzweil K2000-RVP rack mount synthesizer, a fast PC, RAM, audio digitizer, midi cables, and other things. You can hear the results of some of his music using this equipment on his download page. A couple of the pieces on the page, Running Far Away, and the archive of MOD music files, were composed before the equipment, on a tiny miniature keyboard, with a slower computer, entering all the music one note at a time, by hand.
None of the sample pieces of music on his download page are really "classical" as you might think of classical music from listening to the radio. The closest I can
come to categorizing them might be "Windham Hill new age" or "modern instrumental" or something. But then, I am a computer programmer, not a musical critic :)
I brought Marek and his girlfriend Monika to the US to visit me in Utah in
July of 2001, and when he returned home he composed "Utah Suite", inspired
by their vacation visit. The 5 short themes or sections refer to various
sections or places in Utah that Marek visited. Marek asked me to name the
themes in the music, after I listened to it, since, while he knows english,
he thought that I as a native would be able to select more aesthetic or poetic
names.
It was interesting that after listening to the first movement, I
immediately said it reminded me of a stream or river in Zion National Park,
which is in southern Utah, and to which I had taken them. He was very
pleased because he said that is exactly what he had intended when he composed
it. Since I did not know anything about this before-hand, I thought this was
rather impressive. The third movement, with the blowing wind noise, is
Snow Canyon, also in southern Utah, right next to the city of St. George Utah,
and the fourth movement is Riding to Navajo Lake, which is on the way to
Bryce Canyon park with its unusual sandstone formations. The mp3
of this piece, and others, is available from the downloads link on his
website. Click on the little
flag of the United States to go to the English language version of his
site, since the link above goes to the Czech language version.
Since Marek is currently unemployed, I am trying to help him in whatever
ways I can to get started in the music, composing business. He has in fact,
already done some work composing music for two computer games, and did some
interesting work. Since, as he says, he does not have "a name" yet in the
business, he has to start small, like computer games, or if a new film maker,
producer, etc. needs some music composed for an independent film, or local
documentary, television spot, or whatever. Marek would be very glad for
the work.