Isabel Keleti and Bree Nichols: Finding Friendship Through Czech Music

Isabel Keleti is a pianist. Bree Nichols

is a soprano. Their paths first crossed in September 2021, when they met at the Fulbright orientation for U.S. grantees in Prague; they were just beginning their academic year in the Czech Republic. Isabel came to study Leoš Janáček and other Czech gems of the piano repertoire, and it is no surprise that her host institution was the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. Bree's research project "Czech Art Song: An Anthology and Recital Series 'From the Page to the Stage'" was hosted at the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc. Although they had not originally expected to collaborate, Isabel and Bree would eventually perform together in seven concerts in six cities across the Czech Republic throughout their grant period. One highlight was their early June performance on the rooftop of Prague’s Lucerna together with future Czech Fulbrighter Tomáš Jamník. In this blog post, Isabel and Bree share what sparked their love of Czech music, what they treasure about Czech musical culture, as well as one unexpected benefit of their Fulbright stay: their mutual friendship and professional partnership.

What initially drew you to music as a child?
Isabel: My parents are from Belgium and Slovakia, so they instilled in me a fascination with European music and cultures from a young age. My most joyous early memories are those of dancing with my aunt and grandmother to festive Czech and Slovak folk songs in our Kansas living room. I associated so much excitement with music. At the age of four, I begged my parents for piano lessons and I have continued studying with an ever-deepening love.

Bree: Singing became a part of my identity early in my life; my first words were not spoken, but rather sung along to a tune my mother sang. But as I grew older, classical singing fascinated me as the intersection of so much knowledge: language, culture, history, performance practice, music theory, poetry, stagecraft, athleticism, and technique all meet in this art form. My favorite thing about it is the knowledge that I will never stop learning!

Photo: Isabel and Bree performing together for “At Daybreak Concert of Czech Art Songs” at the Concert Hall of Jan Deyla Conservatory in Prague on May 2nd, 2022.  

What was your professional path to Czech music and more specifically, your respective Fulbright projects?
Isabel: When I left Kansas for the first time to pursue graduate studies in piano performance in New York City, connecting with the musical memories of my childhood helped make the city feel a little bit more like home. My entry to my exploration of Czech music was Janáček’s piano repertoire. I immediately fell in love with his distinct harmonic language, the atmospheric and nostalgic images his music evokes, and his sense of rhetorical expression. While studying Sonata 1.X.1905 “From the Street,” I relied on Professor Jan Jiraský’s recording to gain insight on how to express the sense of anguish that pervades the piece. The opportunity to study with Professor Jiraský, a leading scholar of Janáček and renowned pianist and teacher at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, has been nothing short of a dream come true and has deepened my understanding of Janáček's inspirations and style considerably.

Bree: In May 2018, I was cast in my first opera to be sung in Czech: Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (Příhody lišky Bystroušky). I was challenged and fascinated by the composer’s unique musical idiom and even more so by the language. Though I had learned French, Arabic, German, Spanish, and Italian at varying levels during my travels and musical studies, I had no experience with any Slavic language. To familiarize myself with Czech diction, I learned Dvořák’s famous cycle Gypsy Songs (Ciganské melodie). Later that summer, I was among the cast members sent to the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno for Czech diction coaching, also visiting Prague, Olomouc, and Janáček’s home in Hukvaldy. Before I knew it, I was enthralled by Czech music, planning my first of three all-Czech doctoral recitals, and beginning the study of Czech language and articulation that would allow me to write my dissertation work on Czech opera.
My Fulbright project paired research and performance with the goal to advance the programming and accessibility of Czech vocal music internationally. Firstly, I began work on the first anthology of Czech art songs for English-speaking singers, focusing on late 19th- and early 20th-century works that lack existing scholarship and bridging the language gap through translations and pronunciation guides. This anthology will make it as convenient for singers to perform Czech works as it is to program well-known German Lieder and French mélodies. Selected works curated for the anthology were showcased in a recital series that included collaborations with both Czech and American musicians (like Isabel!) The recitals brought the songs to audiences in cities around the Czech Republic and made them a means for engagement with the musical community. My project aims to raise the international profile of Czech vocal music and diversify the range of available Czech repertoire to include many neglected composers of great artistic quality and historic import; those include J.B. Foerster, Vítězslav Novák, Otakar Ostrčil, and women composers such as Josefina Brdlíková and Julie Reisserová. My hope is that this work will open the door to a new appreciation of Czech repertoire for American singers, and create new avenues of Czech-American collaboration.

Photo: Isabel and Bree perform to celebrate International Women's Day at a concert at the American Corner in Ostrava, March 8, 2022.  

You gave many concerts throughout the Czech Republic this year. What were your most memorable performance experiences?

Isabel: Most of all, I’ve cherished the collaborations and friendships I have formed with my inspiring peers at the Janáček Academy of Music and across the Czech Republic. A few highlights include working with the talented students at Pardubice Conservatory, giving a solo recital at the Dvořák Museum, sharing concert performances with fellow Mannes alumna Kristyna Kůstková and members of the Quasi Trio at the Czech Museum of Music, performing with cellist Tomáš Jamník on the rooftop of Lucerna, and, of course, my close collaboration with fellow American-Fulbrighter, soprano Bree Nichols.

Bree: During my first recital performance in Prague, I was in the middle of singing Čisté jitro, a song cycle I had been working on and performing for the last two years, when it struck me that this was my very first time performing it face-to-face in a public performance. Not a live stream forced by the pandemic, not a recording. A wave of emotion swept over me as I looked out on the faces in the audience, and it was like I was experiencing the poetry and the music again for the first time. After the concert, one of the listeners told me that that very song I was singing, which deals with the death of one’s parents, was like a special gift to her, because she herself had lost her parents. The text, by Antonín Sova, spoke of their souls leaving the struggle of this world to be united with the eternal.

“Children always know to recount this of their parents

With mystic ardor:

How they saw them die with smiles of the blessed.

How the flames of their laborious,

Terrestrial lives, were snuffed out

Upon seeing eternal paradise open.

And it was as if they had come back to life, relieved of burden

And struggle, to the clay that binds up the flesh,

Where they had fought with life’s base demons,

With the betrayals and deceitful terrors of its days,

As with eternal bliss in their dead faces,

Thus half-waking, half-sleeping,

Here they forever forsook the earth.”

This is all I could ask or wish for as a musician— that someone would be spoken to or edified by the art I am a part of. It both honors and humbles me in a way I can’t describe.

A second special moment was the final performance of my grant, on the rooftop of the Lucerna, in which I sang with Isabel as well as cellist Tomáš Jamník. By accident, I had stumbled upon the perfect final piece for us: a trio for voice, cello, and piano by J. B. Foerster. I sang it with them as the sun went down, looking out over Prague Castle on the horizon. The poetry of Adolf Černý ended the night:

“All will bloom which could not bloom before

In that warm, eternal night.

All that here was extinguished in the dust

Will come ablaze with eternal fire.”

In a time when the world is healing from many hurts, and inflicting new ones, these words of hope were a beautiful way to say farewell to a city and a people that had grown so dear to my heart.

Photo: Isabel and Bree on the rooftop of Prague’s Lucerna with Prague Castle in the background, where they performed on the “Fulbright Salon” concert on June 8, 2022.

You also performed together on many programs. How did you become acquainted and what was it like to become friends and work together?
Isabel: Bree and I immediately bonded over our love of Czech music. It’s been such a treat to share musical experiences with Bree, who is not only an inspiring musician and scholar, but also a great friend. One wonderful aspect of our partnership has been the opportunity to discover and perform beautiful works by lesser-known Czech composers, including J.B. Foerster, Vítězslav Novák, Vítězslava Kaprálová, and Julie Reisserová. Given Janáček’s repertoire is heavily influenced by the Czech language, I found working closely with Bree to be helpful to gain a better sense of breath in my playing, and study vocal works which have a more direct relationship to Czech texts.

Bree: When I first heard that there was another Fulbrighter here to study music, I could not have foreseen that she would become such a dear friend and likeminded musical collaborator. My work with Isabel has been an unexpected highlight of my Fulbright grant. In total, we performed seven concerts together in six cities across the country! I have so much admiration for her insightful and technically astounding interpretations of Janáček’s music, and it has been a joy to bring unheard gems like Reisserová’s song cycle Březen to life with such a sensitive musician. I am so grateful to Fulbright for bringing us together! We have plans to continue performing together when we return stateside.

Photo: Isabel and Bree during a farewell reception for Fulbright grantees at the Residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Prague, May 20, 2022.  

What is your impression of the Czech Republic’s artistic life and culture in general?
Isabel: I feel very fortunate that following the music of Janáček has led me down a path of an inspiring and fulfilling year of music in Brno. There are many aspects of my life in Brno which have made it easy to call this “big village” my home. There is a cosmopolitan concert scene, and I enjoyed attending an interesting variety of operas at Brno’s National Theater. There are always new outdoor concert festivals in the main square to discover. The Brno Philharmonic had an eclectic concert season, which even featured concerts of American music, including multiple Philip Glass concerts and a premiere of his Lodger Symphony. As a piano teacher, I am impressed by the high level of teaching and musicianship of Czech students at all levels of the music education system. The pace of life has allowed me to think about the music I love in a slower way, in a place surrounded by constant beauty and warmth of spirit, which reminds me so much of the small-town feeling of my midwestern upbringing. On a more personal note, it was nice to live so close to my father’s birthplace of Bratislava and get the chance to reconnect with my father’s family. I’m so grateful to Fulbright for making the Czech Republic my home this year.

Bree: I was so inspired and delighted to see that opera and classical vocal music has such a vibrant presence in the Czech Republic. It was surprising to see firsthand the difference that government subsidy of the arts can make in the cultural life of a nation. While careers in opera/classical music are still very competitive in the Czech Republic, in the United States it is nearly impossible to make a living by singing alone. In the Czech Republic, it is not only possible, but accessible to a much larger proportion of artists, with far more job opportunities. Towns like Liberec, very small by U.S. standards, manage to have thriving theaters presenting productions year-round. Even major U.S. opera houses present short runs of productions for only a few weeks out of the year. I was also shocked to see undergraduates with paid singing jobs (for example, in the chorus of the National Theater) when such a thing is nearly unheard-of in America. It all highlights the brokenness of the American system and just how much we are losing by failing to fund the arts: not only many jobs for skilled professionals, but the presence of arts and culture at the heart of a nation, which I truly believe can make us better, more compassionate human beings. As an artist, I feel welcomed, accepted, and respected in the Czech Republic. It was absolutely refreshing to experience a culture whose national spirit and identity are tied to music, art, and language, bound to the hearts of the people.

Photo: Isabel and Bree standing in front of the iconic Equestrian Statue in Moravian Square, before the concert “In the Mists” in the Baroque Hall of the Moravian Gallery in Brno on April 18th, 2022.