Prof. Vladimir Franz is a prominent Czech composer, painter and stage music author, six-time winner of the prestigeous Alfred Radok Foundation Award (1998, 2000, 2002 and 2005-2007) and holder of the Theatre News Prize (2001), and since the beginning of 1990´s also one of the leading personalities of Czech post-modern drama.

Between 1978 and 1982 he studied at the Faculty of Law of Charles University, at the same time taking private painting lessons with the famous Czech painters Karel Soucek and Andrej Belocvetov, studying composition with Prof. Vladimír Sommer, history of art with Prof. Jaromír Homolka and history of music with Prof. Jaromir Kincl. In 1981-1984 he became co-founder, set designer, art designer and composer of the author´r Kytka Theatre. At the present time, he works as head of music dramatics at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts. Until November 1999 he was also chairman of its Academic Senate.

He has applied his education in a wide range of activities. As a painter, to date he has held 70 independent exhibitions both in the Czech Republic and abroad and participated in more than fifty collective shows, exhibitions and competitions. His works of art are on display in galleries and form part of private collections on three continents.

His stage music compositions affected and inspired the work of the most important representatives of the new generation of theatre directors. In his work he has followed the principles of his own theoretical concept of independent status of stage music as one of the determining components of the drama. To date, he has composed stage music for more than 140 theatre performances.

Besides stage, film and TV music he has composed monumental as well as chamber music pieces, which includes several oratorios, a musical, cantatas, songs, artificial folk songs or madrigals. The most important pieces of music he has yet composed are represented by a musical Temptation of St Anthony (Pokuseni sv.Antonina), an opera-oratorio Ludus Danielis, an opera The War with the Newts (Valka s mloky), the First symphony named Songs on solitudes (Pisne o samotach) and a ballet Goldilocks (Zlatovlaska).

Vladimir Franz was born on May 25, 1959, in Prague.

In 2004 the Orpheus Publishers introduced the title Vladimír Franz: Dialogues (Vladimir Franz: Rozhovory) by the art theoretician Petr Kurka, written in the form of an extensive interview on several topics.