My story
Cimbalom player Gabriela Krchňáčková began her musical studies in 2008 with Lubomír Valečka. Since 2014 she has been a student of the P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatory in Kroměříž under the guidance of Růžena Děcká. In 2019 she transferred to the class of Daniel Skála at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava, where she graduated in June 2021. She is currently continuing her studies in the final year of her bachelor’s degree at the Department of Musicology at Masaryk University in Brno.
Her primary focus is on artistic music originally written not only for the cimbalom, from the Baroque to the present. A large part of her repertoire consists of contemporary works and for this reason she owns a third-generation concert instrument from the HOLAK company, custom-built on the model of Daniel Skála’s cimbalom.
As a soloist, she has previously collaborated with Czech Radio Brno and Ostrava, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, Ostravská banda, TV Noe, BROLN and Ensemble FLAIR.
Gabriela is the recipient of the award of the Director General of the Fire Brigade of the Czech Republic Drahoslav Ryba. She is also a laureate of the International Cimbalom Festival in Valašské Meziříčí in 2017. In 2021, she was awarded the Leoš Janáček Foundation Prize, for which she was nominated by the management of the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava, for her outstanding study and performan- ce results. Since her studies at the conservatory, she has regularly represented the Czech cimbalom school, for example in the UK, France or Hungary. In 2022, she was selected to join Luigi Gaggero, cimbalom player of the Berliner Philharmoniker, percussionist, and chief conductor of the Kiev Symphony Orchestra, for a summer course. She will attend this course again in July this year. Gabriela has had a masterclass with Hungarian cimbalom player András Szalai, who teaches cimbalom at the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest and is a leading player there. The summer semester 2023 Gabriela was part of the music class of cimbalom player, conductor, and early music expert Eduard Tomaštík at the Faculty of Education of MUNI. In late March 2024, she met composer György Kurtág at the Budapest Music Center, where they worked together on selected cimbalom repertoire. During May 2024 Gabriela will have lessons with the prominent Slovak cimbalom player of Moldavian origin Marcel Comendant.
Since April 2019 she has been working for the Ostrava New Music Centre, where she is responsible for the music archive. Since June 2021 she has held the position of assistant to OCNM artistic director Petr Kotík. As a member of the production team, she has realized the Ostrava Days and NODO festivals, organized the Prague concerts of the Essential series (Xenakis 2020, Changes 2021, Youth 2022, Rzewski 2023), the Ostravská banda tour in New York in 2023, the exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Ostrava Days and the release of several music CDs with music of today.
Gabriela also teaches at the ZUŠ Uherský Ostroh, ZUŠ Slovácko in Uherské Hradiště and ZUŠ of Edvard Rund in Silesian Ostrava. From 2017 to 2022 she organized Summer Cimbalom Courses in a close circle of the implementation team. This year, for the third time, she is organizing a weekend school for young cimbalom players called Cimbál v pyžamu.
In the future, she would like to present the cimbalom as a concert instrument in the classical music field and continue her concert, organizational, teaching and study activities.
