Biography

Cimbalist, composer and improviser Daniel Skála (b. 1981) studied cimbalom at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and music composition at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava. As a cimbalom player, he has received numerous awards at performance competitions both at home and abroad, and has performed in many places around the world – highlights include the La Biennale festival in Venice, the Bregenzer Festspiele with Ensemble Modern, and a concert with Amsterdam's Asko/Schönberg Ensemble in California and at Carnegie Hall in New York. Skála currently focuses primarily on composition and solo projects. He strives to expand the repertoire for cimbalom and collaborates with composers from around the world to this end. Known as a pioneer in cimbalom playing, he has had a unique concert instrument built for him and continuously explores new performance possibilities. At the University of Ostrava, he championed the establishment of a cimbalom studies programme, which has been running since the academic year 2025/2026, making the university the first higher education institution in the Czech Republic to offer cimbalom as a degree subject.

As a composer, he focuses on works for cimbalom and seeks to expand the possibilities of this sonically unique instrument – though his scope extends further. He has written works for choir, orchestra, various chamber ensembles, and music for children's theatre productions. Recent compositional projects include the "neo-opera" Červený nos (Red Nose), a series of chamber pieces called Studie obsahovosti (notated exclusively in graphic notation), the project DeCliché, and the piece Zooooooo for five instruments and sound recording, written for the Prague Quiet Music Collective.