Scala & Kolacny Brothers: Biography

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”.

From 2005 on, the whole ‘Scala choir & rock’ concept stands out more clearly. Steven writes more and more songs and works very closely with Koen Buyse, the frontman of the Belgian rock band Zornik. This collaboration has resulted in a new Scala sound.Koen Buyse gets increasingly involved by co-producing Steven Kolacny’s arrangements for Scala, but also his own songs. The effects of this collaboration can be listened to with the album ‘It All Leads To This’ (released only in Belgium in September 2006). The release was followed by the ‘It All Leads To This’ tour which lead Scala in theatres and cultural centres throughout Belgium. This tour showed how much sound, light, the set and projected backgrounds have become essential elements of Scala’s live performances.

All this has artistically culminated in the release of One-Winged Angel. This international release was thought of and worked out by EMI/Virgin Germany and is an important step for Scala & Kolacny Brothers. This album was also presented on 24th March 2007 at the ‘Stars of Europe’ show in Brussels celebrating the 50th anniversary of the European Union. This show was broadcast by 35 TV stations for about half a milliard TV watchers. The same day, One-Winged Angel has been released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. To be continued ...