To jsem já / This Is Me ~ Petra Ernyei

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"When I close my eyes, I see myself as a little girl running among the dining tables at the Prague Jewish community. She enthusiastically helps the curly waitress to deliver lunches. Above the entrance to the dining room hangs a photo of Barbra Streisand, who shot the film Yentl in Prague in 1983, in which I played as an extra as a child," describes Petra Ernyei her feelings, which gradually made her record a new album.

She was influenced by the fact that she had been in the Jewish community since she was a child, as well as concert and tourist visits to Israel, or the fact that in the autumn of 2019 she sang Jewish songs at the funeral of Doris Grozdanovičová, a brave Holocaust survivor. "There I realized that I needed to convey the history and destinies of the Jews through singing and lyrics, and because I am engaged in jazz, I decided to first prepare a jazz concert by Jewish authors. In it, I talked about the fates of composers and lyricists, how they influenced American jazz music. Already the first concert in the synagogue led me to the idea of ​​including Jewish songs," describes the singer.

She was eventually forced to remake the concert program into an album by a lockdown, which made it impossible for musicians to play concerts. Together with their teammates, guitarist Adam Tvrdy and bassist Petr Dvorský, they chose jazz, Jewish, Sephardic and musical songs and recorded them live without playback. "Listeners will find Summertime by G. Gershwin or Somewhere Over The Rainbow, which was once sung by young Judy Garland. And of course Barbra Streisand and her song Papa, Can You Hear me," concludes Petra Ernyei, who will baptize the album This Is Me on Thursday, December 16 at the Jazz Dock in Prague. The guest and godmother of the CD will be Ridina Ahmed.

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Petra Ernyei - singer

Born in Prague and raised in a musical environment, her father Andrej Ernyei was an acclaimed musician playing traditional jazz. She performed for the first time at the age of 18 at a jazz festival in the USA in Sacramento.

Upon her return, she began singing in the Original Prague Syncope Orchestra and then switched to swing with the Prague Swing Orchestra. From 2008 to 2019, she had her own band, the Petr Ernyei Quartet, with which she recorded the CD So Many Stars and performed at festivals in Germany, England, Austria, Norway, Hungary, Portugal, Bulgaria, Russia and Greece.

Since 2019, she has been collaborating with guitarist Adam Tvrdy and bassist Petr Dvorský, which has moved her towards a looser concept of jazz singing. She is releasing her current album This Is Me with them.