Page 2 « Even more Lullabies from around the world

The Rui Cunha Foundation presents today, Saturday, June 6that 5:00pm, the concert “Even More Lullabies from Around the World”, conducted by Vit Polášek’s Family Strings Quartet, and joined this time by four local voicesto perform traditional children’s songs from different nationalities.

The event will be kind of a friendly pocket show, following the 2024 edition (“Lullabies from Around the World”) and the 2025 edition (“More Lullabies from Around the World”). In this session, the public will be invited to listen to 12 new songs, representing 7 countries: Czechia, Denmark, Germany, India, Mali, Philippines and China.

Vit Polášek’s family have been collecting different lullabies from all corners of the globe, asking friends living in Macau, amateurs and professionals, to sing them live and share them with the audience at FRC Gallery. The family has recorded and posted some pieces on YouTube in the past, but most will premiere at this event, according to the project’s mentor.

The strings quartet – composed of two violins, a viola and a cello – was founded by Vit Polášek and his wife Lu Yan, both professional members of the Macau Orchestra, accompanied by their two sons, Vit and Lukas, already plucking instrument strings like experts. This year, with their eldest son studying abroad and unable to rehearse most of the pieces, a violinist friend – Ben Lipson – will join the group.

Having lived in Macau for over 20 years, and missing his country’s traditions –– he felt some nostalgia for childhood memories of his parents and grandparentsin Czechia, like many expatriates do, especially since having children. This is how the idea for this project started, where as a musician and as a father he sought to satisfy this desire to rescue testimonies from other cultures that have survived times through oral transmission.

Vit Polášek was born in Uherské Hradiště, then Czech Republic. He graduated from the Conservatory of P.J. Vejvanovsky in Kroměříž, and continued to study violin at the Janáček Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Brno (Czechia), and at the Franz Lizst Academy in Weimar (Germany). He worked at the České Budějovice Philharmonic Orchestra, the Talich Chamber Orchestra in Prague, the Olomouc Philharmonic Orchestra of Moravia (Czechia), and is now Second Principal Violin of the Macau Orchestra, in addition to teaching at the Macau Conservatory and holding regular masterclasses around the world.