A performance at the Strings of Autumn festival.
Though mainstream music fills the Czech capital all year, autumn is the time for the avant-garde to shine, with several festivals supplementing the usual operas and orchestras.
From the first day of fall through Nov. 18, the Strings of Autumn (www.strunypodzimu.cz) offers a kissing cousin of the long-running Prague Spring concert series, but more diverse in taste. The program stretches this year from the American jazz violinist Regina Carter to the Portuguese fado vocalist Ana Moura.
For cutting-edge tunes with visual accompaniments, check out Music on Film-Film on Music (www.moffom.org, from Oct. 18 to 22) for music-themed movies from around the world. Run by John Caulkins, an American resident of Prague, Moffom, as the festival is known, shows more than 70 documentaries, musicals, concert films and videos. This year's special focus on Russian films includes a live performance by the Beth Custer Ensemble during a screening of the 1929 Soviet silent comedy “My Grandmother.”
Through Oct. 21, more unconventional acts perform noise and electronic music at the Stimul Festival (www.stimul-festival.cz). Among them will be the Japanese sound performer Keiji Haino, the American experimental hip-hop group Dälek, the Italian duo My Cat Is an Alien, and the pioneering English guitarist Fred Frith.
In the middle of all this is Prague's Bollywood Film Festival from Oct. 11 to 14 (www.bollywood.cz), a long weekend of movies, music and food from the Subcontinent.
With several new high-end addresses, Prague has no shortage of excellent lodgings, though the most suitable for avant-gardists might be the high-tech Hotel Icon (V Jame 6; 420-221-634-100; www.iconhotel.eu), which opened this spring. Rooms, which start at 120 euros ($170 at $1.42 to the euro), come with a keyless “biometric” safe, a Skype phone and an iPod jack, so you can mix your own offbeat selections between events.
