Guests

Doctor Déirdre Cooper is a medical practitioner since 1996, speci‐
alist in neurology since 2006 (trained at the neurological department
in Cologne‐Merheim Hospital) and consultant in psychiatry and psy‐
chotherapy since 2010 (trained at the Department of Psychiatry and
Psychotherapy at Bonn University Hospital). From 2010 to 2014 she
worked as a Consultant Neuropsychiatric and Consultant in Acute
Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Bonn
University Hospital. In 2010 she inaugurated her Bonn stage fright cli‐
nic which specialized in the treatment of musicians suffering from music
performance anxiety. In November 2013 she was awarded prize, in re‐
cognition of her work, by the German Association of Psychiatry, Psycho‐
therapy and Psychosomatic (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und
Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Nervenheilkunde, DGPPN).

Tilman Hoppstock (*1961) has been highly acclaimed in the classical
guitar scene for about four decades. 2003 – 2005 he was invited to teach
as a guest professor at the Music University in Piteå (Sweden). In addition
to his live performances, the artist has recorded 30 CDs. 2010 and 2013 he
published two critically acclaimed books about “Bach’s Lute Works from
the Guitarist’s Perspective . Besides his career as a recitalist, Mr. Hopp‐
stock teaches international guitar classes the Academy of Music at Dar‐
mstadt (Germany). In 2013 Tilman has received the “Darmstadt Music
Award 2013 for his lifework as guitarist, teacher, musicologist and pub‐
lisher. In 2014 he obtained one’s doctorate with his dissertation about “The
Polyphony in Bach’s Lute Fugues . He has a predilection for crime novels
and Russian literature, but is additionally an enthusiastic specialist in large
and small ducks and stories based in the famous town of Duckburg. He is
also a passionate lover of art and enjoys the great wines of France and Italy.

Rehabilitation physician Pavel Drbal is the author of the second
online lecture at the Prague Guitar Forum festival. He specializes in
Rehabilitation and Physical Medicine. He is a founding member of the
Association of Young Rehabilitation Physicians. He established the
Czech Society for Musical Physiology and Medicine of Musicians, which
he chairs. Since 2011 he has been a doctor for foreign tours of the Czech Philharmonic.

In 2021, 300 years passed since the death of the luthier and com‐
poser Jan Antonín Losy. This exceptional personality of the Czech
Baroque is indelible and has also imprinted on the repertoire of guita‐
rists around the world. Lecturer lutenist Jan Čižmář is a unique union
of otherwise separated worlds of lutenists and guitarists. As part of
his lecture and the following concert he and his guests will present the
latest findings and publications about the Losy life work.
Jan Čižmář is a versatile performer focusing on historical plucked
instruments. He performs regularly in Europe, Asia and the USA with
ensembles such as Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra of the
Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Rotterdam

Philharmonic Orchestra and Capella Cracoviensis, and under condu‐
ctors such as Frans Brüggen, Christopher Hogwood, Giovanni Antonini,
Yannick Nézet–Séguin and Christina Pluhar. He appears also as soloist
with baroque and renaissance repertoire. After graduation in guitar and
musicology in his native Brno he studied at the Royal College of Music
in London, where he began playing the lute in the class of Jakob Lind‐
berg. He continued his studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague
with the teachers Nigel North, Joachim Held, Mike Fentross and Chris‐
tina Pluhar. He was the founder and editor of the Czech guitar magazine
Kytara and contributes regularly to other musical periodicals. He is also
intensely involved with publishing and research activities in the field of
early music. Jan Čižmář taught lute and related instruments at the Karol
Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice in Poland; he is teaching
at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno and at
the Academy of Ancient Music at Masaryk University in Brno. He regu‐
larly gives courses and masterclasses in Europe and overseas.