HLASKOTRABAS OKTET (Czech Republic)

The unique musical formation Hlaskontrabas Oktet, consisting of four singers and four Czech double bassists. The project was created in 2019 by expanding the originally two-member project Hlaskontrabas, founded by Czech vocalist, composer and performer Ridina Ahmedová and double bassist and composer Petr Tichý.
 
At the very beginning of the expansion of the line-up to four voices and four double basses, the idea was to use live musicians instead of the looper that Ridina and Petr used at concerts to layer tracks on top of each other, who would bring their own interpretive soul to the compositions. But it turned out that writing compositions directly for the octet offers the opportunity to arrange and think musically differently. And the octet began to live its own musical life. A lively, unique and inspiring life! In 2025, it became the winner of the Czech Jazz Harvest poll and a shortlist of the Anděl music awards in the jazz category.
 
Kaleidoscapes PROJECT
 The project was created in the summer of 2023 in Iceland and then in the autumn at the Sono Records studio, and will take listeners on musical journeys through mysterious, fragile, wild and beautifully melancholic landscapes in nine tracks. The compositions were written specifically for the Voice Contrabass by leading composers of contemporary music from Norway (Mats Eilertsen, Nils Økland), Iceland (Ragnheiður Gröndal, Guðmundur Pétursson, Pétur Þór Benediktsson), Israel (Adam Ben Ezra) and the Czech Republic (Petr Wajsar, Beata Hlavenková). The founders of the formation Ridina Ahmedová and Petr Tichý also contributed one track to the album. Ridina says about the creation of the album: “In the studio, we just stood in a circle and started playing. Often, one instrument is recorded one after the other, but we chose the path of playing together, live. Thanks to this, the record gives the listeners the right ́live ́ feeling.” The Voice Contrabass Octet was created in 2019 by expanding the original two-member project, founded by Czech vocalist, composer and performer Ridina Ahmedová and double bassist and composer Petr Tichý. At the very beginning of the expansion of the line-up to four voices and four double basses, the idea was to use live musicians instead of a looper, thanks to which Ridina and Petr layered tracks on top of each other at concerts, who would bring their own interpretative soul to the compositions. But it turned out that writing compositions directly for the octet offers the opportunity to arrange and think musically in a completely different way. And the octet began to live its own musical life. A lively, unique and inspiring life

Lineup
Ridina Ahmedová, Alice Bauer, Markéta Zdeňková, Mirka Novak (voice)
Petr Tichý, Klára Pudláková, Ondřej Komárek, Ondřej Štajnochr (double bass)
Mats Eilertsen as a guest (double bass)