Jan Schulmeister

Jan Schulmeister (2006) belongs to the sixth generation of the Černý music family; his direct ancestor František Černý, the founder of the family’s musical tradition, was a pupil of Antonín Liehmann and a classmate of Antonín Dvořák. 

Jan Schulmeister has been playing the piano since the age of five. He attends ZUŠ in Kroměříž, where he is a pupil of Eva Zonová. Since the age of seven, he has regularly participated in national and international piano competitions, in which he achieves remarkable results – he won first prizes or absolute victories at the prestigious competitions César Franck Piano Competition (Brussels), Piano Talents (Milan), Virtuosi per musica di pianoforte (Ústí nad Labem), Amadeus (Brno), Broumov key, Beethoven ‘s Teplice or Pro Bohemia (Ostrava). In many of these competitions, he also won a number of other special prizes. In light of these achievements, the most valuable award is the participation in the finals of the International Radio Competition Concertino Praga in September 2020, where he received an honorable mention of the 1st degree together with the prize of the European Union Youth Music Competitions (EMCY). Jan’s latest great achievement is the 1st prize winner the Odin International Music Competition 2021 (Tallinn, Estonia), which took place in January this year.

He participates in master interpretation courses under the guidance of well-known Czech and foreign teachers (Alena Vlasáková, Ivan Klánský, Ivo Kahánek, Martin Kasík, Marian Sobula, Eleonora Tkač, Nikolaj Luganskij, Philippe Raskin).

In the school year 2018/2019 he was a scholarship holder of the prestigious MenArt program, organized by the Magdalena Kožená Endowment Fund; thanks to that he performed at the Prague Spring and Smetana’s Litomyšl festivals.

In November 2018, he was invited to the concert series Má vlast, organized by Václav Hudeček and broadcast by TV Noe.

He became the youngest member of the PETROF Art Family association, which gave him the opportunity to record two CDs. 

He performed as a soloist as part of the Little Great Philharmonic 2019 project at four concerts together with an orchestra composed of the best pupils of the Zlín Region Art School and members of the Bohuslav Martinů Zlín Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Tomáš Netopil and Jiří Kadavý. As the Absolute Winner of the Amadeus International Competition, he was given the opportunity to perform with the Brno Philharmonic under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. He performed with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra (SOČR) under the direction of Jiří Rožeň as part of the final evening in the Concertino Praga competition. He also collaborates with the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the "Barocco semper giovane" chamber orchestra, the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc and the North Bohemian Philharmonic in Teplice. 

In addition to these activities, he regularly gives solo concerts not only on Czech but also foreign stages. He also accepted invitations to perform at major international and national music festivals – Chopin Festival Mariánské Lázně, Dvořák’s Prague, Prague Spring, Music Holidays in Prague, L. van Beethoven Music Festival in Teplice and Music in the Gardens and Castle in Kroměříž.