Assoc. Prof. Marek Valášek, Ph.D.
Marek Valášek studied conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU). At the Faculty of Education of Charles University, he completed studies in music education and choral conducting, and at the Týn School in Prague he studied church music (regenschori). In 2006, he was 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 Czech Musicological Society. In 1996, he founded the ensemble Piccolo coro & Piccola orchestra, which he continues to lead to this day.

Assoc. Prof. Zdeněk Vimr, Ph.D.
Between 1976 and 2013, Zdeněk Vimr worked at the Department of Music Culture at the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. In 1994, he completed his habilitation at the University of Ostrava and became an associate professor of music education with a focus on choral conducting; at the same time, he also taught at the Pilsen Conservatory. With his choirs, he won numerous awards at home and abroad, released six CDs, recorded dozens of compositions and folk song arrangements for radio, and toured throughout Europe and the USA. He has led choral workshops, served on competition juries, and is the recipient of many honours, including the Ferdinand Vach Prize (2005), the “Artis Bohemiae Amicis” medal awarded by the Czech Minister of Culture (2018), and the Bedřich Smetana Prize from the Union of Czech Choirs. From 1994 to 2019, he was chorus master of the opera at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, where he prepared over one hundred productions and numerous concerts.

Ondřej Kunovský
After graduating from grammar school, Ondřej Kunovský studied conducting at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU). He completed an international study stay at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. As a conductor, he has worked with many ensembles, including PKF – Prague Philharmonia, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic, the Teplice Philharmonic, and the Swedish Radio Choir, among others. In 2018, he conducted the Symphony Orchestra of the Prague Conservatory in the Pantheon of the National Museum on the occasion of its reopening. In terms of his choral career, after leading several choirs during his early studies, he became principal conductor of the women’s choir Akordum (since 2016) and the Artistic Ensemble of Charles University (since 2019). In 2023, he was selected as a scholarship holder of the Wagner Society in Brno to participate in the Bayreuth Opera Festival. He is currently also studying philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University and has ventured into writing – in 2023 he published the novel The Prophet and Lady Košice.