Profile
Original Vintage Orchestra
This classy 17 piece orchestra presents the best music of the Swing era – great songs from Bing Crosby to Duke Ellington in the style of 1920s Hot Swing, but what makes this band doubly unique is how they perform big band arrangements of modern hits in the same style, including songs such as Counting Stars by One Republic, Get Lucky by Pharrell Williams and Amy Winehouse’s Valerie.
Charismatic Bandleader and great musician Petr Kroutil is the creator of this project, plus lead vocalist and accomplished musician, and multi-lingual Host entertaining guests in both Czech and English.
Vocal trio Hot Sisters, Los Angeles unforgettable solo star Chuck Wansley, vice-champion of the world in classical dance Nikol Mikesková and the most successful Czech director of the last decade and moderator of the show Jiří Vejdělek regularly cooperates with the bigband. The occational guests of the ensemble included Michal Malátný, Matěj Rupert, Tereza Černochová, Ondřej Havelka, Dalibor Gondík, Rosie Havelková, Dani Robinson (USA) and Kate Mátl.
Contact us, please for booking. You will be delighted to have this orchestra in your Music Festival, Concert or any kind of Function.
Petr Kroutil
One of the most distinctive and most charismatic musicians in the country.
He studied Jazz Composition and Performance at the prestigious Berklee College Of Music in Boston. Petr studied sax and clar at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague. He studied bamboo flute at Kathmandu University in Nepal. Petr Kroutil’s biggest and most successful project so far is the big band Original Vintage Orchestra, where he acts as a bandleader, soloist (sax., Clar., Indian flute), singer and arranger.
From the age of 18 he played alongside with Ondřej Havelka in the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra and at the age of 22 he co-founded the big band Prague Swing Orchestra, where he was a soloist and crooner for seven years.
In the US he accompanied the famous The Platters with Herb Reid, Marty Allen, Kenny James, Victor Mendoza’s Afro-Latin American Big Band, Joe Mareiny – a member of the Louis Armstrong All Stars Band and also PK performed alongside with phenomenal drummer Dave Weckl, Chris Minh Doky and Dean Brown from Brecker Brothers.
In 2004-2005 he lived and studied in Kathmandu (Nepal), where he played with the most famous Nepalese rock band 1974 A.D. With them he performed for tens of thousands of enthusiastic fans at stadiums across Darjeeling, Sikhim, Nepal and Bengal. He also founded his own very successful funk band The McTwisters, which was nominated for a Nepalese Grammy.
Petr Kroutil holds the B.E.S.T. Award Of Berklee College Of Music.
He was the only Czech player to play at the opening festival of the Olympics in London in 2012. For this purpose he made a music arrangement of the song Škoda lásky (Beer Barrel Polka) in swing style. The Trafalgar Square was attended by 25,000 people and the concert was broadcast by the BBC.
In 2016 Petr Kroutil founded an ambitious big band based on jazz of the 20s and 30s of the Original Vintage Orchestra (OVO). This musical fusion proves to be very succesful and the big band regularly sells out its home scene at the Lávka Club in Prague. This year the famous Prague´s Lucerna Music Bar will also be heated up for the sixth time. In addition, the orchestra performs dozens of concerts and festivals throughout the country, such as the Grand opening concert Soundtrack Podebrady, Jazz Spring Festival Prague, Dvur Kralove, Havirov, Ceske Budejovice, Slany jazz days, Melnicke vinobraní, Slovakia Jazz Festival in Nove Mesto nad Vahom, etc.
In 2019, the Original Vintage Orchestra released their debut album We Are The Swing Champions. The godparents – Mr. Jiří Suchý, Eliška Balzerová and producer and director Tomáš Hoffman also arrived at the Lucerna Music Bar.
Czech National Television (CT) chose this project already twice as a musical accompaniment on ceremonial Gala evenings – Gala Evening of Dance Sports (2018) and the audiovisual awards Trilobite (2020). The recording of the entire solo concert of the Original Vintage Orchestra for Czech Television will take place at the end of October 2020 at Lucerna Music Bar. Frontman Petr Kroutil repeatedly appears in various TV shows, eg 333 (CT Art), Good Morning with CT, V.I.P. news (TV Prima).
On the Czech National Radio (ČR) you could hear this big band, for example, as a musical surprise for Jubilee birthday of Eliška Balzerová or on Jan Smigmator’s Evergreen show.
Petr Kroutil and Chuck Wansley expanded to the US with this musical project in 2019, where, along with the Hollywood Dancers, they thrilled more than 1,000 visitors to the famous Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles (until 1943 the Academy Awards were taking place there).
The founder of the big band Petr Kroutil is also known in the Czech republic as an actor – Danny Smiřický from the TV series The Swell Season, where he played the lead role – alter ego of Josef Škvorecký, directed by Karel Kachyňa (Petr also recorded music for this series). As an actor, he also performed in minor roles in the film Ballad for the Pilot, La Bohème, The Wild Country, Dad’s Volga. He collaborated on the documentary Gentleman Josef Škvorecký and the film The Last Aristocrat.
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