Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová (born 22 July 1958) is a Czech avant-garde violinist, singer, and composer. She began her career as an actor in the mid-1970s, appearing in several Czech feature films, but switched to playing violin and singing in the early 1980s. She started recording in 1986 and by 1990 her unique vocal and instrumental technique gained her international recognition. Since then, she has performed regularly throughout Europe, the United States and Japan, and has released over eight solo albums.

In addition to her musical career, Bittová has continued acting and still occasionally appears in feature films. In 2003 she played the part of Zena in Želary, a film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2004 Academy Awards. Iva Bittová was born on 22 July 1958 in the town of Bruntál, Czech Silesia, in what was then the Czechoslovak Republic. The second of three daughters, she grew up in a musical family where her father Koloman Bitto (Hungarian: Bittó Kálmán), a famous musician of Hungarian–Romani origin from southern Slovakia, played guitar, trumpet and double bass in folk and classical ensembles, and her mother Lidmila Bittová (née Masařová) sang in professional vocal groups. As a child, Bittová took ballet and violin lessons in Opava and played child roles in the Silesian Theatre of Zdeněk Nejedlý. When her family moved to Brno in 1971, she dropped music in favour of drama and studied at the Brno Conservatory. For the next ten years, Bittová worked as an actress, appearing in several Czech feature films and Brno television and radio productions.

In the early 1980s, Bittová returned to music and studied violin under Rudolf Šťastný, a teacher at JAMU, the Janáček Academy in Brno. She had received her vocal training while studying drama and soon developed unique vocal and violin styles. In 1985, Bittová collaborated with percussionist Pavel Fajt from the Czech rock group Dunaj and recorded Bittová + Fajt, a fusion of alternative rock music with Slavic and Romani music. She then recorded a few solo EPs in 1986 and sang with Dunaj for the next few years. Her breakthrough came in 1987 when she and Fajt recorded their second album Svatba (The Wedding), which was released internationally by Review Records. This attracted the attention of English percussionist Chris Cutler of Recommended Records, who re-issued Bittová + Fajt internationally. The duo also attracted the attention of English avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith, who featured them in a documentary film on him, Step Across the Border (1990), which gave them their first broad international exposure and a tour outside of Eastern Europe.

In 2015, she graduated from Masaryk University in Brno having undertaken a bachelor program in early music. In 2018, she was awarded a master's degree in musicology by the same university. She received a Peter S. Reed Foundation grant in 2018.

Bittová recorded her first full-length solo album Iva Bittová in 1991, followed by River of Milk, her first United States release. In 1997, she began exploring classical music with a series of concerts and recording an album of Béla Bartók's violin duets. Leoš Janáček Moravian folk poetry in songs, Slovak Songs by Béla Bartók, Alfred Schnittke's Faustus Cantata. She collaborated with Vladimír Václavek to record a double album Bílé Inferno (White Inferno) in 1997. The success of this release led to Bittová and Václavek establishing Čikori, an association of musicians involved in improvisational music.

Bittová has performed with a number of avant-garde musicians internationally, including Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Tom Cora, Bill Frissel, Marc Ribot, Hamid Drake, Evan Ziporyn, Bobby McFerrin and has given solo concerts across the world. Bittová lived in the village of Lelekovice near Brno with her two sons, Matouš and Antonín. She now resides in Rhinebeck, New York, with her son Antonín.Her ancestors come from India. Her son's name (Matouš) means "gift by God". It comes from Hebrew name Matthiyah. Her name means "yew" in Germanic languages.