Jury 2023

Karmina Šilec is a conductor and author of musical-scenic projects. She has opened the way toward complex artistic events through innovative interventions, her concepts are provocative and daring, while her ideas break social and musical taboos. Her projects are shaped as a rounded picture wherein a string of images joins into an integral whole. Such broader arc connects all her work – from concerts of medieval music to musical-scenic productions.

Her concert and music-theatre work has resulted in a comprehensive, profound and internationally acclaimed creative opus. She has received over 20 highest international prizes in choral competitions: the Robert Edler Prize for outstanding contribution to the choral expertise on a global scale, the Prešeren Fund Prize, the Music Theatre Now award, the Glazar Credential, the Golden Mask Theatre Prize, the Sterija Award for theatre music, and others.

Šilec is also a member of juries and artistic councils at choral and conducting competitions, and lecturer at universities at home and abroad, international seminars, conferences and congresses. With the Choregie concept, she has toured in numerous renowned festivals and venues such as Operadagen Rotterdam, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Prototype Festival (NYC), Kunstenfestival Brussels, Golden Mask Moscow, Holland Festival, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Esplanade in Singapore, Arts centre Melbourne, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Davis Symphony Hall San Francisco, Ruhrtriennale, Moscow Easter Festival, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, World Music Days (ISCM), Theater Basel, Beijing International Music Festival, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Radialsystem V Berlin, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, Palau de la Música Catalana, and many others.

Avip Priatna Mag. Art is one of Indonesia’s most prominent conductors nowadays. He studied orchestral conducting with Leopold Hager and choral conducting with Prof. Gunther Theuring at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria. Avip is the founder, conductor and music director of the Jakarta Concert Orchestra, Batavia Madrigal Singers, and The Resonanz Children’s Choir. He is also founder of The Resonanz Music Studio where he actively teaches in vocal and conducting class.

He won Champions in European Grand Prix for Choral Singing in 2018 with The Resonanz Children’s Choir, and with Batavia Madrigal Singers in 2022. He also won Best Conductor award and Best Song Interpretation awards several times in international competitions.

In 2015, Priatna received the Cultural Appreciation from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture in the Creator, Pioneer and Reformer category. In 2021, he was awarded Decoration of Honour in Gold by the government of Austria for his dedication in maintaining good relationship between the Austria and Indonesia through music. In 2022, Avip Priatna was appointed as an Executive Committee member of the Asian Choral Association from Indonesia.

Jānis Liepiņš conducted the youth choir “Kamēr…” from 2006 to 2012 and was its Artistic director and Chief conductor from 2012 to 2018, during which the choir won several awards, including the European Grand Prix in Arezzo. In 2014, he made his debut at the Latvian National Opera conducting Verdi’s Il trovatore. Since September 2019, he is the First Kapellmeister at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.

Along with conducting repertoire performances, Liepiņš has been the the Musical Director of several productions including Glazunov’s ballet Raymonda, Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus, operas such as Carmen by Bizet, Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, as well as a concert performance of Puccini’s La rondine. In 2018, he assisted conductor Daniel Oren in a concert performance of Verdi’s Ernani.

Liepiņš assisted conductor Alexander Vedernikov in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades at the Savonlinna Opera Festival. He has worked with all Latvian professional symphony orchestras. In 2022 he made a debut at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and Theater Chemnitz in Bizet’s Carmen.

His accomplishments were recognised in 2013 at the Latvian Grand Music Awards where he was presented with the New Artist of The Year award.

Jordan Šrámek is Founder/Artistic Director of The Rose Ensemble, which has performed to international acclaim for 25 years. He studied early music at the College of St. Scholastica which in 2016 awarded him a Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL). Born in the USA to a Czech family, he is now based in Prague and enjoys a career as performing musician, choral clinician, and founder of Rose Publications.

The recipient of Chorus America’s prestigious Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal, he is respected for his meticulous research of vocal music seldom heard in the concert hall, and has championed choral repertoire from renaissance Poland, medieval Bohemia, and Baroque Malta and Mexico. His monumental recording of early Hawaiian music recently saw unprecedented global exposure in HBO’s The White Lotus.

Šrámek’s three decades as musician and musicologist have brought him to some of the world’s most important libraries and centres of learning, resulting in invitations for lectures, masterclasses, and juries at universities, conferences, and competitions.

He has served as guest clinician at the 11th World Symposium on Choral Music (Barcelona), Festival d’Ile de France (Paris), Certamen Coral de Tolosa (Spain), and The Hebrew University (Jerusalem). Other engagements include Cornell Univ., Princeton Univ., Univ. of Hawai’i, and the Society for Biblical Literature.

Tadeja Vulc studied at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and perfected her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She received the JSKD Golden Badge for outstanding creative achievements in the field of vocal music, as well as the Gallus statuette for special achievements with the Maribor Academic Choir (APZ Maribor), with which she has successfully competed in many international competitions. In 2015, she won the 3^rd place in Seghizzi, followed by 1^st place in the Mixed Choirs category and qualifying as a finalist in both Debrecen (2016) and Varna (2018). In the same year, APZ Maribor was also among the finalists of the competition in Arezzo, where it won 1^st place in the sacred category. In 2019, under the direction of Tadeja Vulc, APZ Maribor won the final 3^rd place in in the 15^th Gallus International Choral Competition. At the 27^th national choral competition Naša pesem in 2022, the choir won an absolute 1^st place.

Beside conducting, Tadeja Vulc also intertwines her work with her compositional achievements. As a composer, she has received several awards, including 4^th prize at the Rostrum Competition in the Netherlands, the Student Prešeren Award for her composition Tri iveri (Three splinters), 2^nd prize at the competition of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, and 1^st prize at the International Competition of the Academic Choir Tone Tomšič. Her compositions are frequently performed at home and abroad. She is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the University of Maribor.