The Chair of the Jury
Marta Kierska-Witczak

Graduate of the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław (diploma with honours, 1990), professor of musical arts (2011). Conductor, gregorianist, organiser of musical life. At her alma mater, as Head of the Chair of Church Music, she initiated many academic, artistic and culture popularisation events which have become a permanent part of the Wrocław music scene (conferences, courses, workshops, concert series). She has directed more than a dozen nationwide symposia and courses in the field of church music, choral music and Gregorian chant. She initiated the foundation of the church music programme and authored its curriculum. Since 2019, she has held the position of director of the Doctoral School of her alma mater.

Juror of international and national music competitions, director of the International Choir Conducting Competition “Towards Polyphony” (2008-2019), coordinator of the Lower Silesian Science Festival (2008-2013), expert of the Polish Accreditation Committee (since 2020), author of lectures and papers on choral literature, sacred music, Gregorian chant, and ensemble work methods. She is the scientific editor of the publishing series “Psalate Synetos” (KLAM in Wrocław) and other publications, and is a member of, among others, the Association of Polish Church Musicians and AISCGre Polish Section.

She has given lectures, master classes and collaborated with ensembles in many European universities in Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Georgia, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, also in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as with various choirs of Wrocław, with which she has won the highest awards (more than 35 times) at Polish and European festivals and competitions. Between 1993 and 2015 she was the artistic director of the “Consonanza” Chamber Choir of the Wrocław University of Technology, with which she conducted several hundred concerts with a diverse programme – from medieval monody to contemporary vocal-instrumental forms, while also taking part in numerous music competitions in Poland and abroad and receiving high awards (including individual prizes).

 

Anne Kohler is Professor of Choral Conducting at the Detmold University of Music, Germany. Besides teaching her class of choral conducting, she also conducts the German National Youth Choir, the University’s Chamber Choir Detmold and the vocal ensemble Pop-Up.

She studied conducting, piano, and classical voice in Hamburg and Karlsruhe, and developed her studies further through masterclasses with Eric Ericsson, Frieder Bernius, Volker Hempfling, and Tonu Kaljuste. Her work with jazz choirs has been influenced and developed through workshops with The Real Group, Jens Johansen, and Thierry Lalo, and through close connections to the arrangers Martin Carbow and Oliver Gies.

She has been guest chorus master for the SWR Vocal Ensemble and Berlin Radio Choir for Marcus Creed, Pierre Boulez, Sir Roger Norrington, and Ingo Metzmacher.

From 2003 to 2011, she conducted the Hanover choir “Capella St Crucis”, which won various prizes, including the “Echo Klassik 2011”. She won first prizes with Detmold University’s Chamber Choir at the International Choir Competition in Mosbach (2012) and the German National Choir Competition in 2014.

Giving courses and workshops on conducting, vocal technique, and jazz and pop-choir conducting has seen Anne Kohler travel all over the country and abroad. Her vocal ensemble Pop-Up recorded its fourth CD in 2019 and has won first prizes at international choral competitions.

 

Elżbieta Wtorkowska is Professor of Music in the artistic field of conducting. She is rector of Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. She is also a lecturer at the Postgraduate Choirmaster and Voice Projection Studies in the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, as well as the vocal consultant of the “Opera Nova” Choir in Bydgoszcz. Moreover, since 1993, she has been a lecturer at the Studies for Conductors of Polonia Choirs in Koszalin, organized in the framework of Polonia Choral Academy in Koszalin. Since 2002, she has been the conductor of “Ojczyzna” (“Motherland”) Choir of Polonia Conductors. She has led seminars and choral workshops for conductors of Polish choirs in Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, the USA, and England. She also gave lectures and choral workshops in Australia, Scotland, Mexico, Spain, and Canada.

In 1981, she established the Girls’ Choir “Canzona” in Murowana Goślina, and in 2001 – the Women’s Choir “Canzona-Absolwent”. Currently she leads the women’s choir, while serving as artistic and subject consultant for girls’ choir and “Canzona Kameralna” ensemble, both led by Dr. Adrianna Wtorkowska-Kubińska. With “Canzona” choirs she gave concerts in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Finland, Austria, Ukraine, England, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Malta, and the USA.

She is the founder and artistic director of Edmund Szymański International Choral Festival in Murowana Goślina, held annually since 2007. She guests as a lecturer at numerous seminars for vocalists, teachers, and choir conductors in Poland and abroad. She also gives vocal workshops to various ensembles, including amateur, professional, academic, children, youth, boys’, women’s, men’s, and mixed choirs all over Poland.

 

One of Lithuania’s leading choral conductors, Gintautas Venislovas rose to prominence as an artistic director of the Brevis Chamber Choir that he has been in charge of since 1993. The choir has won several dozen prizes at top international competitions and was awarded the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing in 2003.

A graduate of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Venislovas has been teaching there since 2003 and was appointed head of Choral Conducting at his alma mater in 2018. Simultaneously he took over as the artistic director of the Academy’s mixed choir.

A remarkably versatile conductor, he has worked with almost every artistic project imaginable involving choral singing, from chamber performances of Renaissance music to open-air rock operas. He was named the best conductor at choral competitions in Slovenia (1996), Lithuania (1998), and Italy (2002).

As a composer, he is best known for his choral works ranging from songs for children to masses. In 2019, he wrote Lithuanica, a musical celebrating the nation’s two pre-war pilots who flew over the Atlantic Ocean in 1933, in what back then was an extraordinary feat.

Venislovas is also an ingenious arranger. His commissions in the field include several rock operas, musicals, and, occasionally, not so common tasks, such as reworking the national anthem for a music box and a choir.

 

Heng-Yi Pao, born in Taiwan in 1991, began his musical education as an oboist and singer. In 2012, he had the honour to be invited to Sydney (Australia) to join the Gondwana National Choral School by support from Australian composer and conductor Stephen Leek with full scholarship. He studied Orchestral Conducting with Simeon Pironkoff and Choral Conducting with Alois Glaßner at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. 

Heng-Yi Pao is the first Taiwanese to win an international choral conducting competition and the first conductor in Taiwan to win prizes in both orchestral and choral conducting competitions. In 2019, he won the 8th International Conducting Competition “Towards Polyphony” in Wrocław (Poland) and also three special prizes (for the best interpretation of a work by Monteverdi, of a contemporary composition, and of a Polish composition). In the same year, he was awarded a special prize at the International Competition of the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra. At the International Competition for Choral Conducting “Aegis Carminis” in Koper (Slovenia) he won 2nd prize as well as the prize for the best interpretation of a Slovenian composition. 

In 2020, Heng-Yi Pao was selected and supported as “Conducting Fellow” by the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts-Weiwuying (Taiwan) which enabled him to study with Maestro Peter Eötvös at the Budapest Music Center. In 2021, he was invited to Slovenia as a lecturer at the International Youth Choir Festival “Aegis Carminis”.

He assisted Peter Marschik in several opera productions in Vienna, including Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In 2020, Pao assisted the conductor Anja Bihlmaier at the Vienna Volksoper with Mozart’s Magic Flute and Bizet’s Carmen. In 2021, he assisted Marie Jacquot at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein with Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. He has conducted outstanding choirs such as Webern Kammerchor, Chamber Choir of the Conservatory of Music and Ballet Ljubljana (KGBL), Riga Chamber Choir Ave Sol, the NFM Choir (Poland), and Taipei Chamber Singers.

 

The Secretary of the Jury
Aleksandra Milcarz