The City of Prague

Philharmonic Orchestra^®

...Dear Friends...
Old friends or new friends ...

Who are we, and what do we do here in Prague - and when we're on tour?

• A professional, philharmonic symphony orchestra, over 61 years old, predominantly we are Czech and Slovak classical and jazz musicians, though we have a lot of wonderful friends who play and sing with us regularly from other countries, too.
  

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• Our orchestra started out, after World War II, in 1947, as the in-house full orchestra regularly playing music for film, television and animation productions at the world famous Barrandov Film Studio , in Prague, as well as the historic "Kratky Film" productions (meaning "short film," in Czech), and the former Czechoslovak Television. At the time, it was somewhat smaller than today (not surprisingly) and it was called the "Filmový symfonický orchestr, FISYO" which is translated in to English, obviously, as the Film Symphony Orchestra or was sometimes known as the Film Symphony of Prague. You may be a little surprised, but many wonderful international films were done here in those difficult, early days. A good example came in 1986, during the frankly grim and hard times of communism/socialism, when David Lynch first came to us in Prague and recorded the magnificent music for his great film "Blue Velvet" - right here, where you can record your beautiful work with us, too, as do Paramount, Sony, Lucasfilm and many many others we all deeply respect, right here in our Smecky Sound Recording Studio...and like many old friends in this profession, David Lynch graciously returned to us again in 1997 to record his "Lost Highway," and yet again in 2001 to record "Mulholland Drive."

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• Fully Privatized after the Velvet Revolution, today, we are still professionals who play and record wonderful music together (usually every day of the week) for major international films, television series, CDs/DVDs, hot new video games for the top 2 game console makers in the world, (even ring tones!) - both for 'here' in the Czech Republic and, frankly, for 1st class clients & media productions around the world.

• Our 'full size' philharmonic orchestra is Dynamic, Sensitive, Flexible, Experienced in All Major Music Genres, Professional & truly FAST Working! ...Successful & Growing, Affordable & Cost-Effective, industry executives will be interested to know that our philharmonic successfully operates without subsidies of any kind, for decades.
  

• You will also not be surprised to hear that we also play & record the theme & incidental music, regularly, for many 'hit' TV programs and popular, market-leading TV series for Czech Television and Canadian television, and for top productions in other countries, for many years. Frequently our musicians also 'cross town' to perform Film and scenic music at the big TV station, itself, in Czech Television's famous "Music Studio A" (Come for a virtual tour!)

• We have the latest in sound engineering, performance & production/editing studio tools for experts [including DigiDesign's incomparable Pro Tools HD 7.3 ® of course, the stable, global "industry-standard audio production environment" ] and wonderful analog>digital converters & digital>analog converters = truly Full Facilities for both working with our full-size philharmonic orchestra and also when recording large scale, world class choral works.

• You can expect to be working quickly with our seasoned, career-professional, multilingual, expert sound engineers, and musical, technical and support experts to help you Get Your Job Done Right, On-Time and At or Under Budget: the things needed by today's demanding film, television and recording industry leaders. You can even remotely direct & engineer a world class professional recording session with us, and "with everything" for a great Hollywood movie or a wonderful Bollywood movie (we work with both, for years!), a top television show, your next CD/DVD production, or soon-to-be global mega Video Game -and do it in real time- so you can 'run it' comfortably from the other side of the world!

• ...and our team knows how to work quickly, to your standards, and to your tight production schedule!