Although piano and violoncello were enjoyable enough, little Ida Kelarová's indomitable musicality was simply not made for the strict shackles of classical music. And so, the daughter of a Moravian-Slovakian elementary school teacher and the south Slovakian multi-instrumentalist Koloman Bitto turned to acting as an adult. She lived and worked in communist Czechoslovakia, Wales, and later in Denmark and Norway. The denial of their Roma origins by her father - who died at an early age - led to Ida's conscious celebration of her heritage: as a singer, for example, in the band Romano Rat, founded together with Desiderius Dužda in 1999, or together with her sister Iva Bittová, as a composer, teacher and integration worker with Roma minority children and youth. Ida has also made invaluable contributions as the director of the Roma children's choir Čhavorenge. She has led the project she founded, ČHAVORENGE, (roughly: ‘for the children‘) since January 2011 and promotes the development of gifted Romani children and adolescents aged 6-18 from selected Romami schools, communities and cities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Now the Janoska Ensemble brings the great musician to Eisenstadt to showcase her many facets, truly border-transcending sounds from, and with, the young and young-at-heart!