Petr Kofroň
From Unearthing The Music
Petr Kofroň (*1955), composer, conductor, essayist and one of the founders of the experimental ensemble Agon Orchestra, is an artist who – thanks to his attachment to “positive disintegration” – constantly evades any possible way of grasping his variable compositional, organizational, theoretical and literary activity, full of inner laughter and liminal energy. His relatively small discography includes a mashup of contemporary and underground music, an interpretation of graphic scores, pieces made for the theatre and probably the most twisted form of Czech pop music. In addition to contemporary music compositions and interpretations of other composers on the Agon Orchestra’s albums (Graphic Scores and Concepts, The Red & Black, etc.) and collaboration with underground musicians (The Plastic People of the Universe, Filip Topol), Kofroň’s work also contains two unclassifiable home-mixed and produced achievements that reveal the sarcastic side of the composer, who does what he wants regardless of the connections with the world of classical music and his essential role for Czech opera. In the years 1974–1979, Kofroň studied composition with Alois Piňos at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU), and also received private lessons from Marek Kopelent over the period 1971-1979. Afterwards, except for leading the Agon Orchestra founded together with Martin Smolka and Miroslav Pudlák in 1983, he was the head of the Plzeň Opera between 1996 and 2004. Currently he works as a director of the National Theatre in Prague.