Slovenčina
After completing his guitar and musicology studies in his native Brno, Czech Republic, Jan Cizmar was at the Royal College of Music in London studying classical guitar and later lute with Jakob Lindberg. Following were his studies with Nigel North, Joachim Held, Mike Fentross and Christina Pluhar at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag. As well he has taken masterclasses with Hopkinson Smith, Evangelina Mascardi and Yasonuri Imamura. Jan Cizmar is versatile performer on plucked instruments, focusing on historical lutes and early guitars. He is regularly performing with groups such as Orkest van de 18de Euuw (Frans Brüggen), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE), Collegium 1704 (Václav Luks) and many others in the early music field at concerts across Europe, in USA and in Asia. In his non-early music past he was busy as a rock, jazz and later as a classical guitarist. He toured Europe with New York production of Jesus Christ Superstar as a rock guitarist and has often appeared on stage in theatrical/dance productions of the Lindsay Kemp Company and Leine & Roebana. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Czech guitar and lute magazine Kytara and regularly contributes to other musical periodicals. He has also worked as a musical editor for several publishing houses including Bärenreiter and is busy researching, editing and performing music from central European archives. Jan has been teaching at various summer schools and has a lute class at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland.