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The story of Scala & Kolacny Brothers

Perhaps you saw Scala on the telly or watched a video clip of this successful girl choir. Maybe you heard Scala's version of "With or Without You" on your favorite radio station. You could of course also know the Scala girls from one of their live concerts. It is a success story, a real dream for all the people involved in it. Today, more than 200 girls (16 - 26 years) are on the member list of Scala, but the choir started 10 years ago on a very small scale. The very first rehearsal took place on 2nd April 1996, with just 18 singers. The brothers-pianists' purpose was to work with "voices" in their free time. Obviously, a choir is ideal for this kind of experiment! Scala spent its first years within a classical choir environment. The many rehearsals and perseverance very soon lead to winning prizes at classical choir festivals and contests. So, in Belgium (their home country) Scala became "Choir of The Year 1999-2000" and won top prizes at national festivals (European Youth Music Festival in Neerpelt) as well as at festivals abroad: Florilège Vocal de Tours (France), Hamamatsu World Youth Choir Festival (Japan), International Choral Kathaumixw Contest (Canada), International Choir Competition Budapest (Hungary), International Fleishmann Trophee Competition Cork (Ireland).

Yet, the Kolacny Brothers very soon turned aside from the beaten track. In his search for "another repertoire", Steven started writing his own arrangements of some well-known pop and rock songs. Stijn rehearsed this new repertoire with the same enthusiasm in between the classical songs. So, on 1st December 2002 the first "Scala On The Rocks" CD was born. The concept is simple but daring: to transpose a rock song into the sound world of 40 female voices and 1 piano.

The success of this first CD and the reactions in the press and with the public was unexpected! The CD got the support of nearly all Flemish radio stations, TMF (TMF awards) and JimTV, papers and magazines, of well-known guests from the Belgian rock scene (Zornik, Arid, Hooverphonic, K’s Choice, Noordkaap…), of StuBru-DJ's who pushed Scala to the 1st place of the StuBru hit-parade. Scala performed at several summer festivals (Lowlands in the Netherlands, Gentse Feesten, Nekka Nights, Dranouter Folk Festival ...). All this lead to a "golden On-The-Rocks" CD in Belgium. At the end of 2003 the second CD "Dream On" (named to Depeche Mode's song) was released and Scala made its first great "On The Rocks" tour in Flanders.

It did not last long before Scala's CD's were picked up in the neighboring countries. In Paris, RTL2 and M6 rolled out the red carpet for the Scala girls and Nikola Sirkis (the lead singer of Indochine) openly loves the Scala concept. This resulted in radio shows with RTL2, a fantastic collaboration with Indochine (X-Festival), a great duet (Le Grand Secret), two concerts (Brussels-Paris) in one day, and singing on the latest CD of Indochine (“Starlight” on Alice & June). So, Scala releasing "Respire" (French rock songs) in 2004 was an obvious step.

In Germany, Scala was discovered by Radio Fritz, a radio station in Berlin. The play lists of the Scala version of "Engel" (a song of Rammstein) and a live Fritz-concert in August 2004, got the recognition of Rammstein themselves, but also resulted in a lot of concerts in Germany (Berlin, Köln, Bielefeld, Munster, Hamburg, Kiel…), radio and TV-programmes (Eins Live, Radio Eins, Delta Radio, Radio Bremen 4, the German Radio Awards, Viva, MTV) and the collaboration with the German band "Mia". In 2005 Scala released the German CD “Grenzenlos”.

In September 2006 Scala presented their CD “It All Leads To This” to the press and the public. The première of the "It All Leads To This" tour took place on 22nd September.

The release of their newest CD "One-Winged Angel" will be in Austria, Germany and Switzerland on March, 23rd, in France and Belgium on March, 26th.

"You can't put Scala into words, you have to experience it!" Stijn Kolacny