Mgr. et Mgr. Marek Valášek, Ph. D.

Marek Valášek studied conducting at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU). At the Faculty of Education of Charles University, he completed degrees in Music Education and Choral Conducting, and at the Týn School in Prague he studied the discipline of regenschori (church music director). As part of the Prague Spring Festival in 2005, he conducted the Czech premiere of Jan Hanuš’s full-length oratorio Ecce Homo. In November of the same year, he recorded Hanuš’s Symphony No. 1 with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in 2009 he conducted the world premiere of Hanuš’s Requiem. In 2006, he appeared as a guest conductor in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Kyoto, Japan.

In 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Ferdinand Vach Prize by the Czech Music Fund Foundation and the Association of Choral Conductors of the Union of Musicians and Musicologists. In 1996, he founded the ensemble Piccolo coro & Piccola orchestra, which he continues to lead to this day.

 

 

 

Doc. Paed Dr. Zdeněk Vimr 

From 1976 to 2013, he served at the Department of Music Culture of the Faculty of Education at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň. In 1994, he received his habilitation at the University of Ostrava and was appointed Associate Professor in Music Education with a specialization in Choral Conducting. He contributed to the accreditation of a Master’s program in Choral Conducting, in which he trained a number of active graduates. For several years, he also taught at the Conservatory in Plzeň.

From 1979 to 1990, he was the conductor of the choir Česká píseň (Czech Song), and in 1990 he founded Nová Česká píseň (New Czech Song), which he led until January 2018. Under his direction, the choir received numerous top awards in choral competitions both at home and abroad, released six CDs, recorded dozens of original compositions and folk song arrangements for Czech Radio, and undertook many international tours across Europe and the United States. He has led several choral workshops and frequently serves as a juror at both national and international choral competitions.

He was awarded the prestigious Ferdinand Vach Choral Conducting Prize in 2005, received the Artis Bohemiae Amicis Medal from the Minister of Culture in 2018 for promoting Czech culture abroad, and was honored by the Union of Czech Choirs with the Bedřich Smetana Award.

Between 1994 and 2019, he served as the chorus master of the opera company at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň, where he prepared more than 100 productions and numerous choral concerts. He also founded and led the Children’s Opera Choir of the J. K. Tyl Theatre for five years. Since 2007, he has been the custodian of the manuscript archive of composer Zdeněk Lukáš.

 

 

Ondřej Kunovský  

After graduating from grammar school, Ondřej Kunovský studied conducting at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU). He spent a study internship at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. As a conductor, he has led a number of ensembles, including PKF – Prague Philharmonia, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic, the Teplice Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio Choir, among others. In 2018, he conducted the Prague Conservatory Symphony Orchestra at the Pantheon of the National Museum on the occasion of its grand reopening.

In his choral conducting career, after working with several choirs early in his studies, he became the conductor of the women’s choir Akordum (since 2016) and the University Artistic Ensemble of Charles University (since 2019). In 2023, he was selected as a scholar of the Wagner Society in Brno, which enabled him to attend the Bayreuth Festival.

In addition to his musical pursuits, he is currently studying philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University and has also ventured into writing – in 2023, he published his debut novel The Prophet and Lady Kosice.