Dr. Jakub Martinec is Director of Choral Activities and Associate Professor of Choral Music at Memorial University in Canada. Dr. Martinec holds a Ph.D. in music education from the University of Western Ontario and his research focuses on a comparison of European and North American perspectives on choral conducting as well as investigations of early Czech choral literature, and pedagogical strategies for teaching male singers. Born in the Czech Republic, he was the artistic director of the renowned Czech Boys Choir. Dr. Martinec has recorded for national TV and Radio in the Czech Republic, and has directed on numerous CD‘s and DVD’s – his recording of Britten‘s A Ceremony of Carols received a Recording of the Month award by the London-based Classical Music Web in 2004. Dr. Martinec has performed with eminent orchestras, ensembles and musical personalities
in some of the world’s most famous concert halls and cathedrals , including Meistersingerhalle, Nürnberg, Germany (2005, 2009, 2011, 2017), Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, USA (2004), Winspear Hall in Edmonton, Canada (2006), Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada (2012), the Pantheon and the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome for the leaders of the Vatican (2009, 2010), Truro Cathedral, UK (2013) and regularly at the Rudolfinum Dvorak Hall and Smetana Hall in Prague. With his choirs, he performed the opening concert of choral cycle of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (2006), and has appeared at numerous international music festivals including The Prague Spring Festival (2004, 2005), European Festival of Youth  Choirs „Giuseppe Zelioli“ (2003,  2012), AmericaFest International Festival for Boys’ & Men’ Choirs including the VIth World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis (2002), Festival d’Ambronay (2006), Mitte Europa (2008, 2009, 2013), and the highly acclaimed World Festival of Singing for Men and Boys (Prague, Hradec Kralove, 2004, 2008). Dr. Martinec is also often asked to be a guest clinician, adjudicator and presenter, e.g. Cornwall Male Choral Festival, UK (2013, 2019, 2021), Pemulwuy, Australia (2014), European Festival of Youth Choirs „Giuseppe Zelioli“, Italy (2014, 2016, 2018), Podium, Canada (2014), ACE – Asian Conference on Education, Japan (2015), ISME, UK (2016), Education Research Symposium – Merton College, Oxford, UK (2018), ACDA conferences in Wisconsin (2012) and Florida (2020), etc. Since 2019, Dr. Martinec served as a choral columnist for the Canadian Music Educator Journal and in September 2020, Dr. Martinec received the prestigious RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant award for his contributions to choral singing in Canada through his research at Memorial University. In December 2020, Dr. Martinec was awarded the President’s Award for Exceptional Community Service from the Memorial’s president Dr. Vianne Timmons.

Tristan Meister is a freelance conductor and lecturer in Choral Conducting at the Universities of Music in Mannheim and Frankfurt am Main. He received his first musical education as a member of the Limburg Cathedral Boys’ Choir and studied choral conducting with Georg Grün, Harald Jers and Frieder Bernius as well as orchestral conducting with Klaus Arp at the University of Music in Mannheim. He is the founder and musical director of the Ensemble Vocapella Limburg and his recordings with this group include the first complete recording of Max Reger’s male voice choruses. He also founded the semi-professional chamber choir Vox Quadrata, with which he published the world’s first recording of Friedrich Gernsheims choral music in 2022. He conducts the Beethovenchor Ludwigshafen and the Wormser Kammerensemble and is in addition the artistic director of the Jugendchor Hochtaunus and the singing school of Cantus Juvenum Karlsruhe.
With his ensembles Tristan Meister won first prizes at several competitions like the German Choir Competition and the International Choir Competition in Varna, where he was awarded the special prize for the best conductor of the competition. He is frequently invited to festivals at home and abroad, among others to the World Choral Expo 2019 in Lisboa, as well as to the Abu Gosh Festival 2022 in Israel or the ACDA National Conference in Cincinnati 2023. He works with orchestras like the Baden-Baden Philharmonics, the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester or the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, leads workshops for singers and conductors, is editor of several choirbooks and juror at national and international choral competitions.