Czech Philharmonic • Open Air Concert

Charles Yang (violin, vocals), Nicolas “Nick” Kendall (violin, vocals), and Ranaan Meyer (double bass, vocals), have found a unique voice of expression to share with the world: They are Time For Three (Tf3). Bonded by an uncommon blend of their instruments fused together with their voices, the band defies convention and boundaries and stands at the busy intersection of classical music, Americana, and singer-songwriter. To experience Time For Three live is to hear the various eras, styles, and traditions of Western music fold in on themselves and emerge anew.

Time For Three has a long-standing history of working with contemporary classical composers, such as Chris Brubeck and Pulitzer Prize winners William Bolcom and Jennifer Higdon. Their most recent commission, Contact by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts, premiers with the San Francisco Symphony and The Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2022. This piece, along with Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, was released in June 2022 on Deutsche Grammophon. The album, entitled Letters for the Future, was recorded with The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Xian Zhang.

In the coming season the band will further perform at the Sun Valley Music Festival, Portland Chamber Music Festival, the Moab Music Festival, Lake George Music Festival and the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival to name a few.

Highlights of Time for Three’s recent European engagements have been their feature on the famed “Night of the Proms” tour, sharing the stage with such artists as Chaka Khan and Ronan Keating, playing arenas throughout several European countries with stops in Antwerpen, Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Köln, München, Hamburg and Bremen in 2016. They performed at London Roots Festival and at the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival in 2019 and together with Keith Lockhart at the Czech Philharmonic in 2018. They returned to Prague in 2019 including a nationwide broadcast in Hradčany Square and performed alongside the Tonkünstler Orchestra at Musikverein in Vienna. The trio has collaborated with artists as diverse as Ben Folds, Branford Marsalis, Joshua Bell, Aoife O’Donovan, Natasha Bedingfield, and Arlo Guthrie.

Earning praise from NPR, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Sun-Times, the band has become renowned for their charismatic and energetic performances. Having graced the stages of Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and The Royal Albert Hall, their inimitable and mutable style fits equally well in an intimate club setting, like Joe’s Pub in New York, or Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

They’ve appeared on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, and won an Emmy for “Time For Three In Concert,” produced by PBS. Yet for all their accolades and diverse experiences, the irrepressible band constantly hungers for new ones. In 2020, the band partnered with cellist and composer Ben Sollee to put together the soundtrack to the new Focus Featuresʼ film Land, starring and directed by Robin Wright. The film first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 31, 2021. With a collection of new songs, the band has teamed up with GRAMMY-winning songwriter Liz Rose and GRAMMY-winning producer Femke Weidema for new recordings released through Warner Music.

In the 2022/2023 season, Petr Nekoranec appeared in October 2022 in Florence as Oronte in Handel’s Alcina, opposite Cecilia Bartoli in the title role; in November he performed along with Diana Damrau at the concert Iain Bell and Bel Canto in Prague. In March 2023, he made his debut as Pylade in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride at the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy. He returned to the National Theatre in Brno as Tamino (Die Zauberflöte). At the National Theatre in Prague, where he is currently engaged as a soloist, he extended his repertoire, encompassing Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Tamino and Ferrando (Così fan tutte), with another two parts: Romeo (Roméo et Juliette) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni).

The opera highlights of the 2021/2022 season included performances of Asprando (Nicola Antonio Porpora: Carlo il Calvo) within the Bayreuth Baroque Festival; debuting as Almaviva (October 2021), Tamino (December 2021) and Ferrando (January 2022) at the National Theatre in Prague; appearing as Yurodivy (Boris Godunov) at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Tamino at the National Theatre in Brno and Almaviva at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. In July 2021, he and the pianist William Kelley premiered at the Bach Festival in Świdnica, Poland, the monodrama Comfort Starving by the British composer Iain Bell, with whom Petr closely collaborates.

From 2018 to 2020, Petr Nekoranec was a soloist of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, where he portrayed Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Ramiro (La Cenerentola) and Ernesto (Don Pasquale). Between 2016 and 2018, he was the first Czech to participate in the prestigious Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. From 2014 to 2016, he was a member of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and its Opera Studio, where his repertoire included the title roles in Le comte Ory and Albert Herring, the latter of which earned him the Bavarian Art Prize (2016). In January 2018, he received the Classic Prague Award in the “Talent of the Year 2017” category. In the autumn of 2019, Supraphon released his profile album French Arias (made with the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Christopher Franklin). Since the 2021/2022 season, he has been a soloist of the National Theatre Opera in Prague. 

Petr Nekoranec has garnered numerous accolades. In October 2021, he won second prize at the Vincerò World Opera Competition in Naples; in January 2017, he became overall winner of the Concurso Tenor Viñas at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, where he also received the Plácido Domingo Award. In August 2015, he advanced to the semi-final of the Queen Sonja International Singing Competition in Oslo. In July 2014, he came first at the Ljuba Welitsch International Vocal Competition in Vienna, and in September of that year, he won second prize at the Concours International de Chant in Toulouse. When it comes to his native Czech Republic, he received second prize at the 2013 Antonín Dvořák International Vocal Competition in Karlovy Vary.

Petr Nekoranec studied at the Pardubice Conservatory, under the tutelage of Jarmila Chaloupková. He has further honed his skills with the Italian tenor and vocal coach Antonio Carangelo.

For Czech Philharmonic fans, the American conductor Keith Lockhart probably comes to mind in connection with the traditional June open-air concerts on Hradčany Square – at the end of last season, Lockhart took the baton before the leading Czech orchestra on that occasion for the second time. He is the music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra and the artistic director of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, but Czech audiences may associate him with four popular concerts given around the Czech Republic when in 2016 the Czech Philharmonic joined with him in presenting a programme titled The Best of Broadway, the very first concert of melodies from musicals that the Rudolfinum-based orchestra ever played.

Keith Lockhart was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and he began his music education with piano lessons at age seven. A graduate of Furman University majoring in both German and piano, he furthered his studies at Carnegie Mellon University, where his focus finally turned to conducting. He has now been the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra for nearly 30 years, since 1995. With that orchestra, he has given nearly 2,000 performances and has gone on 45 American tours visiting 150 cities. There were also four tours abroad. His full impact on America’s cultural life can also be seen in the 80 television broadcasts on which he has appeared, including performances at such major sporting events such as the American football championship (Super Bowl) and the NBA basketball finals. Each year on Independence Day (the Fourth of July), the orchestra attracts an audience of over half a million (along with millions more watching the live TV broadcast) for the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Not all of his American conducting legacy is connected with the Boston Pops Orchestra. For 11 years he was the music director of the Utah Symphony Orchestra, where his most visible performance was certainly at the opening of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Although most of Lockhart’s performing has been in North America (where one might say he has conducted nearly every orchestra), his activities in Europe have been by no means negligible. He has stood at the helm of such orchestras as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and from 2010 to 2018 he served as the principal guest conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, with which he took part in annual festival appearances at The Proms and in celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the orchestra’s founding. Also in 2012, the ensemble performed at a gala concert for Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II.