Vaclav Fuksa

Václav Fuksa was born in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, and has lived in Vienna since his student years, completing his degree at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in 2014. He has divided his life between the concert platform and the teaching studio ever since and considers the two inseparable. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has appeared at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Meisterkonzerte in Würzburg, and the guitar festival La Guitarra Esencial in Millstatt, as well as at halls and festivals across Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. His students have won prizes at several guitar competitions.

His solo work grew out of František Sušil's Moravské národní písně, a collection of Moravian folk songs first published in 1835. Years of arranging them produced his debut album, Prameny (Springs), in 2020—featuring largely forgotten songs brought back to life in his own musical language.

With his colleague and friend, the American singer and guitarist Bryan Benner, he has spent several years immersed in the Neapolitan song repertoire, reviving the arrangements of Fausto Cigliano and Mario Gangi. Of their three Neapolitan albums, Muntagna d'Angeli and Li Pisce Tornano! were recorded in Naples itself, at the Auditorium Novecento, one of the oldest recording studios in Europe and the room where Enrico Caruso and generations of Neapolitan singers made their records. Along the way, the city's musicians took them in as their own, and what followed were unforgettable concerts and lasting friendships.

Away from the concert hall, Václav is a committed eater of English breakfasts, ideally once a day, and can otherwise be found hunting mushrooms (usually with Bryan) or paddling down a river somewhere.