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. Biography Iva Bittová was born on 22 July 1958 in the town of Bruntál, Czech Silesia, in what was then Czechoslovakia. The second of three daughters, she grew up in a musical family where her father Koloman Bitto (), 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 bal