The Endless Waltz by Jiří Bulis

The program will be recorded by Czech Television and broadcast with a delay.
The event is supported by the State Culture Fund of the Czech Republic.

It has been 30 years this year.

Jiří Bulis (*3 October 1946), a native of Chomutov, died tragically at the age of 46 on 12 May 1993. He had composed music for the cult and internationally renowned productions of Boleslav Polívka—without which Bolek would not have been Am, Pepe, the Fool, or the Castaway (as Jiří Černý recalled in Divadelní noviny)—as well as for some of the strongest works by Arnošt Goldflam at HaDivadlo, and productions of the Drama Club, Drak Theatre, and Ypsilon Theatre. His music was also featured in films by Chytilová, Jakubisko, Luther, and Fenič, and performed in theatres across France, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary. He died just a month after returning from the USA, where his music had begun to gain recognition.

In addition to actors from HaDivadlo and Theatre Husa na provázku—including some older, now legendary figures—the evening will feature bands from the Czech alternative scene. A rediscovered mini-opera will be performed by Ensemble Opera Diversa. Alongside Bára Zmeková, the Lucie Dlabolová Band—led by Jiří Bulis’s daughter—will also perform. A jazz composition written by Jiří Bulis at the age of 15 will be reconstructed. Other performers will include Divadlo X, students from Prague’s DAMU with Přemysl Rut, and Brno’s JAMU with Dada Klementová.

The last members of the legendary Divadélko v podloubí—banned in the 1960s, for which the sixteen-year-old Jiří Bulis composed music—will also appear. Among the performers will be, via remote connection, American journalist Jolyon Naegele, for whose wedding Jiří Bulis wrote a song. Additional performers may still be announced.

The evening is directed and hosted by Břetislav Rychlík, a colleague and friend of Jiří Bulis.

More than two hundred entirely original songs remain. “Each of them is a small work of genius,” says Jan Dalecký, guardian of Jiří’s legacy, his classmate from the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, emeritus violinist of the Brno Philharmonic, and jazz musician.

“Jiří Bulis once stunned me when I got hold of his vinyl EP. It felt like the four most beautiful compositions I had heard in years. It struck me as a great challenge—for someone else to try and interpret them in their own way.”
— Martin E. Kyšperský