NYC homage to Václav Havel sells out

New York, March 31 (CTK) - Rock singers Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega played during a commemorative event paying homage to late Vaclav Havel, Czech dissident and later president, in the Czech Centre in Manhattan on Friday night.

The concert entitled Love Is Here To Stay was sold out.

Havel died shortly before last Christmas.

Vega played one of her famous song Tom's Diner. She said she had played this song at Havel's birthday party in Prague. This is how I met Havel, she said.

Lou Reed recited the texts of his songs from his latest album Lulu, made together with the Metallica group.

Other participants in the music programme were The Fugs group and Ivan Kral, a Czech-born musician who played the guitar with rock legends Patti Smith or Iggy Pop.

The concert was an opportunity for the local Czech and Slovak community to say farewell to Havel.

Havel spent several months in New York in 2006 as a residential writer at Columbia University.

"When Vaclav Havel died, we were thinking how to give people a chance to come to say farewell to him because New York is far from Prague," Pavla Niklova, head of the Czech Centre in New York, told CTK previously.