JAZZ DIPLOMACY
Jazz and Diplomacy Intersect as Czech Ambassador Visits Constellations
When Hynek Kmoníček’s team embarked on a search for a fitting reception venue in Atlanta amid the pandemic, they ran into mostly closed doors.
The ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States was slated for a two-day stop here en route to Washington from New Orleans, where he’d held a convention of all the country’s volunteer diplomats around the country. They discussed how to use culture and business to drive bilateral engagement.
Mr. Kmoníček’s goal in Atlanta was to install a new honorary consul, a local diplomatic representative who would handle matters related to the Czech diaspora while helping drum up business between her adoptive and ancestral homes.
Monika Vintrlikova, a manufacturing entrepreneur, had just taken up the mantle, replacing George Novak, who had died in 2020 after more than 20 years of service linking Georgia and the central European nation.
Constellations community member Global Atlanta, an international business news service covering the city’s links with the world, had profiled Ms. Vintrlikova’s rise to the position and heard in passing about her dual predicaments: finding a place to welcome the ambassador at a reception, while also arranging for the music-loving diplomat to experience some of Atlanta’s jazz scene. Restaurants had only outdoor seating for her group, and music venues were mostly shuttered.
With a dash of serendipity, an unforgettable evening began to emerge from the crucible of COVID-19.
Global Atlanta offered Constellations as a venue for the socially distanced reception, highlighting the building’s flexible space and efforts to ensure sanitization and air filtration, but more importantly, a chance for the ambassador to take in the civil rights heritage of the Sweet Auburn district in a set of buildings with a surprisingly relevant jazz history.
For Mr. Kmoníček, an unconventional ambassador who immerses in local culture wherever he finds himself (including engaging in exotic hunts in Africa and elsewhere), the match was appropriate. A trained classical guitarist who studied and taught music before joining the diplomatic corps, he sees obvious parallels between jazz and diplomacy.
For us? Well, we got to have some fun and drink some bubbles and invite others from around the globe to get a taste of what Atlanta cultural development is like when it really swings. Cheers!
