Ondřej Havelka & his Melody Makers

Ondřej Havelka & his Melody Makers: That is synonym for authentic interpretation of popular music of the swing era, i.e. music dating back to the beginning of the 1930s to swing’s heights in early 1940s.

The band´s variegated repertory includes a broad spectrum of attractive tunes, sweet and hot, ranging from Hollywood musicals to big bands’s top swing numbers.

A concert is more than that; it is a show designed in the minutest detail to emulate the typical manners of those times, complete with the costumes and hairdos, and rounded off by overall direction of the performance.

The musicians’ thoroughly jazzy style is compounded by their sense of humour, show, and understanding. The band's enthrallings sound and tempo support the soloist: Ondřej Havelka, a singer, speaker and dancer.

Ondřej Havelka is the artistic director of the ensemble. Since his student years, this entertainer, generously endowed with versatile talents, has lived only for jazz and swing of the period between the wars.

Ondřej Havelka graduated from the Drama School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (major subject acting), and from the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts in Brno (direction). Having left the Drama School, he spent six years in Studio Ypsilon, a theatre in Prague. He soon appeared on the cast of films and television plays. His successful acting career has brought him four leading parts in feature films and two leads in television series.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he took up television scriptwriting and direction. He has created three theatre musicals as a director.

Ondřej has been deeply involved with singing, dancing and tapping jazz and popular music of the 1920s and 1930s since the time he was a young student. He has recorded six albums with the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra, and wrote and co-directed a musical film for this band. At the 1991 Montreux festival of television entertainment, this film was awarded a Silver Rose.

In the role of the scriptwriter, singer and director, he recorded a series of three clips in 1995. One of them won the 1995 Czech Grammy award as the Clip of the Year. MTV-Latin bought and broadcast another clip, Jingle Bells.

Also in 1995, Ondřej started his own swing big band, Melody Makers, and has been performing with it since.

The Czech Grammy Academy awarded the Jazzman of the Year title to him in 1996.