Vicki Genfan and Jennifer Batten — a new common project of both guitarists, guest: Norbi Kovács

27. 11. 2009 07:00

Concert belongs to the 12th International Music Festival GUITAR ACROSS STYLES Fléda club, Štefánikova 24, Brno

 

Vickin Genfan (born in 1959 in the USA) is a guitar virtuoso, composer and an excellent vocalist. Her music operates on the boundaries between folk, jazz, pop, soul and world music. Vicki plays the guitar finger-picking style, uses the guitar as a percussive instrument and uses different instrument tunings within a single concert. She performs regularly at prestigious international festivals (e.g. Montreal International Jazz Festival, Soave in Italy, and Open Strings in Osnabrück) and gives concerts as a soloist throughout the world. In 2008 Vicki Genfan won the title Guitar Superstar, awarded every year by the American magazine Guitar Player to the most interesting performer in the world. She was the first woman to receive this most prestigious award in guitar playing. She recorded five solo CDs (Native, Outside The Box, Vicki Genfan Live, Up Close & Personal, Uncovered).The phenomenal guitarist Jennifer Batten is known for her unique style of playing the electric guitar. She has performed in many bands and crossed boundaries between various genres from rock, metal and fusion to funk. For a long time she collaborated with Michael Jackson who had chosen her among hundreds of guitarists to support him on his Bad Tour, later she also accompanied him on the world tours for Dangerous (1993) and HIStory (1997). In 1998 she started to play in Jeff Beck’s band and their collaboration lasted for three years (CDs Who Else and You Had It Coming). She recorded three solo albums: Above, Below and Beyond (multi-genre), Jennifer Batten's Tribal Rage-Momentum (world music and rock crossover) and Whatever (electronica). Currently she performs solo and her one-woman shows have a multi-media form.The collaboration between these two guitarists is a start of a brand new project and their concert will be one of its first performances.

 

Norbi Kovács came to live in Prague in 1992 from Slovakia, where he got his first musical experiences. In Prague he played with many musical groups (for example Stará cesta, Red Wine, Plazma and others) and cooperated with different Czech musical personalities (for example with a songster Radůza). He is a member of the group Lokomotiva (which was for 6 years involved  in a TV show S politiky netančím to create the  musical background) and Růžový brejle (co-founder together with singer Ivan Hlas). He composes music for movies and theatre performances as well. He taught the guitar at the rock school of a famous Prague musical club Mlejn for 10 years.