Pavel Zemek-Novák: (born 1957) studied oboe and composition at the Brno Conservatory and Janáček´s Academy of Music (with Bohuslav Řehoř, Miloslav Ištvan), in the 1990s he completed his education with George Benjamin in London and Gérard Grisey in Paris. He has been teaching composition and music theory at the Brno Conservatory. He has collaborated with the violinist Milan Pal´a and the percussionist Martin Opršál in Brno for a long time, with the ensembles Konvergence and Helix in Prague and with The Schubert Ensemble of London since the late 1980s.
Among the recent compositions, which are characterized by the unison technique and its increasingly significant reduction, we can mention: Quartet No. 3 for clarinet, violin, viola and cello; Seven Words of Christ on the Cross (VII) for mixed choir and vox instrumentalis; Seven Songs of Love - in unison for baritone and piano; Symphony No. 6 for women's choir and orchestra (on the text of the Canticle of the Creation by St. Francis of Assisi); the full-length Passion according to St. Luke (Symphony No. 7) for a large vocal-instrumental ensemble; and the elaborate St. John Passion for 3 singers and two instrumentalists. Increasingly, he favours liturgical music and also collaboration with amateur musicians.