Who am I?

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Who am I?

My name is Miroslav, I am called Mirek. Surname Patek means Friday in Czech.

I have (unforunately :-) no connection to the Swiss Patek-Philippe company, even if made the clock too - the musical clock!

Born in 1969, live in Prague, capitol of the Czech Republic. I am educated as MD and MBA, married, have two sons.

I played 10 years mandolin, in 1999 tried the Holoubek custom made resophonic mandola (open tuned, played with fingerpicks) which redirected me to the fingerpicked DGdg tenor banjo.

I play on Czech made tenor banjos Janish and Capek. I play all my fingerstyles in the open G tuning DGdg, just sometimes I tune the thickest string to C so I can manage the C tunes on frailing banjo tuned in CGdg.

Here is great banjo finale of both performers and visitors (like me) at Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival in September 2004. Yes, I am the one with white navy cap just next to Gerry O'Connor on the right side of the picture.

^{Photo made by Yoshiko Sue Tabata}

Also at Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival in September 2004 - photo with Earl Scruggs.

^{Photo made by Martin Stehlik}

Here I play in the night jam in bluegrass festival Jamboree Strakonice 2001.

^{Photo made by Colonel}

And here I visited the bluegrass festival Banjo Jamboree Kopidlno in 1998. Note the partial capo placed on the second fret of G and D strings of my Krishot mandolin. The partial capo creates the open tuning AEae without destroing the voicing of closed chords. By the way - you can find some of my mandolin related ideas in the archives of CoMando maillist. Go to search and put into the author's address field this one: miroslav.patek@ch.novartis.com (it is no longer valid) and into Since field write April 1998.

^{Photo made by Irena Silence Pribylova}