Jan Vobořil

He studied the Brno Conservatory in 1986-92 in Professor František Psota’s class and was named the best graduate. In 1996, he was enrolled at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in Professor Zdeněk Tylšar’s class. He is the laureate of seven national competitions. He won the honourable mention in the Prague Spring International Competition in 1992 and in Geneva in the following year. In 1991, he was selected to join the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra with Claudio Abbado as the principal French horn player to perform at the festival marking 200 years since the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which took place in Prague.

He is the Czech Philharmonic principal French horn player, the leader of the section and was a long-time member of the orchestra’s artistic board. Before that, he had been the principal French horn player of the State Philharmonic Brno since 1991 and held the same post in PKF – Prague Philharmonia between 1994 and 2004. He collaborated with the Prague Chamber Orchestra as the principal French horn player between 1999 and 2004 and has been the solo hornist of Solistes Européens Luxemburg since 2005. As a soloist, he has performed in the Czech Republic and abroad (Germany, Austria, France, Japan, China, USA) with conductors including Jiří Bělohlávek, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Petr Altrichter, Jakub Hrůša and others. He has played solo concerts with the Czech Philharmonic, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra, PKF – Prague Philharmonia, State Philharmonic Brno as well as the Slovak Philharmonic  , Bavarian Youth Orchestra and Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra. He has recorded music for the Czech Radio and TV, Czech label Supraphon, German TV station ARD, Japanese Octavia Records and British Classicprint. In 2008-2010, he has cooperated as a soloist with Radek Baborák (Prague Spring, Japanese tour in 2008) and recorded a number of CDs with him. He is a regular guest solo hornist of many orchestras including NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Saito Kinen Orchestra, Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra and Bamberger Symphoniker.

In the recent years, he has been regularly invited to the Kuhmo International Chamber Festival (Finland) where he also teaches at the affiliated courses. He teaches at various masterclass courses (France, China, Japan, Korea and the UK), international French horn courses in Broumov (Czech Republic) and has been teaching at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague since 2008.