Musician and songwriter Karel Plihal releases album to celebrate 25-year career

Karel Plihal, one of the country's most popular musicians and songwriters has just released a new album and DVD to celebrate 25 years in the business. The double album called Karel Plihal in Olomouc features live performances from a December concert in his Moravian home town. The songs were selected by Karel Plihal himself. He says these songs have been closest to his heart in his musical career. Besides his most popular songs, it includes tracks that have never been released before, and forty short poems.

Karel Plihal, who turns forty-seven this August, worked as a design engineer and stoker but in the 1970s he decided to put his passion for music first and began appearing with several amateur bands, before making his first solo appearance in 1983. He has released nine albums to date.

Karel Plihal's music is appreciated by all age categories as his melodic guitar compositions are accompanied by lyrics that are often a play on words, or refer to fables, anecdotes, love songs, and humorous situations. Karel Plihal is the holder of four Porta folk music awards, and he has also composed music for a number of plays, including the Czech versions of Cyrano de Bergerac, Manon Lescaut, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In Nebe pocka, Heaven Will Wait, which was released last year, he honours the works of the respected interwar period singer and songwriter Josef Kainar.

Karel Plihal has helped to produce albums of artists like Petr Fiala, the Eben Brothers, and his close friend Jaroslav Nohavica, with whom he starred in the popular Czech movie The Year of the Devil.