Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová is a Czech avant-garde violinist, singer, and composer who has developed a music style of her own.

She was born in 1958 in Bruntál in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – now the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. She attended drama pre-school, specializing in violin and ballet. In due course she gained admittance to the Music Conservatory in Brno, graduating in drama and music. During her studies, she took part-time engagements as an actress and musician in Brno’s Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose On A String Theater). She cites these engagements as some of the most formative and influential of her life.

Around this time she also featured as an actress in radio, TV and movie productions. Later on, while working full time in theater, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her father’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an instrumentalist and by composing her own music.

In 1982, she started studying with Professor Rudolf Šťastný, the first violinist of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years the violin became her life’s passion and the most inspiring musical instrument in her professional life. After living in the countryside near Brno for 17 years, Ms. Bittová decided to relocate her personal and professional life to the United States, settling in upstate New York in 2007.