The jury

The jury of the competition is made up of 5 well-known conductors. Here the names and CVs.

Julia Selina Blank (Germany)

Julia Selina Blank is an award-winning choral conductor based in Norway. In recent years, she has established herself as a sought-after musical leader across Europe. She regularly appears as a guest conductor and choir director, collaborating with ensembles such as the Rundfunkchor Berlin, Netherlands Radio Choir, Bavarian Radio Chorus, MDR Radio Choir, WDR Radio Choir, NDR Vocal Ensemble, RIAS Kammerchor, Swedish Radio Choir, Slovenian Philharmonic Choir, Coro RTVE Madrid, Chorwerk Ruhr, and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. From 2024 to 2025, she served as conductor and artistic director of the Norwegian National Youth Choir. She is co-founder and chief conductor of the JSB Ensemble Oslo, where she develops projects that combine early and Baroque repertoire with challenging contemporary works. The ensemble, composed of leading Norwegian ensemble singers, frequently performs one-on-a-part repertoire. Blank has worked extensively with amateur choirs and currently directs the award-winning chamber choir Kammerkoret NOVA (Oslo), which released the a cappella album Human/Nature in 2025, featuring Romantic and contemporary music by female composers. She is active internationally as a pedagogue and workshop leader in choral conducting and is regularly invited to serve on juries of international competitions. She was awarded second prize at the Eric Ericson Award (2021), as well as first prize at the World Choral Conducting Competition (Hong Kong, 2019) and the London International Choral Conducting Competition (2018). For several years, she was a member of the German Conductors’ Forum. She studied choral conducting with M. Gläser (Munich), F. Malmberg (Stockholm), and G. Pedersen (Oslo).

[Photo credits: Ingvild Constance Festervoll Melien]

Risto Joost (Estonia)

Risto Joost is one of the most outstanding and versatile conductors of his generation, active in both opera and symphonic repertoire, with a wide-ranging interest from Baroque to contemporary music, including numerous premieres. He is music director and chief conductor of the Vanemuine Theatre (since 2020/21) and has been a conductor at the Estonian National Opera since 2009. From the 2024/25 season, he serves as chief conductor of the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. Recent and upcoming engagements include collaborations with the Helsinki Philharmonic, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Kuopio Symphony Orchestra and Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. At the Vanemuine Theatre, he conducts major symphonic and operatic works, including Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, Traviata by G. Verdi, and Le sacre du printemps by I. Stravinskij. Between 2026 and 2029, he will lead a new production of Wagner’s Der ring des Nibelungen. His recent opera highlights include Turandot, Giulio Cesare, Cyrano de Bergerac (E. Tamberg) and Die Zauberflöte. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with leading orchestras such as the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Bergen Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, Strasbourg Philharmonic, and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has also conducted renowned choirs including the RIAS Kammerchor, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Swedish Radio Choir, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Latvian Radio Choir, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. He was chief conductor of the Netherlands Chamber Choir (2011–2015), artistic director of the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir (2015–2019), chief conductor of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (2013–2019), and artistic director of the Tallinn Philharmonic and Birgitta Festival (2018–2019). His discography includes acclaimed recordings of works by A. Pärt, T. Kõrvits, and others. Joost studied conducting and singing at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (J. Panula class). He is a laureate of the J. Panula and N. Malko competitions and has received several awards, including the Estonian Music Endowment Award and the G. Ernesaks Foundation scholarship.

[Photo credits: Mait Jüriado]

Karmina Šilec (Slovenia)

Karmina Šilec is a multidisciplinary artist. She creates projects with opera and drama houses, festivals, and ensembles worldwide, and her productions have been presented at leading international venues and festivals. Her awards include the International R. Edler Prize for exceptional contribution to the global choral movement (2004), two Music Theatre Now International Awards (2008, 2021), the Prešeren Fund Award (2000), and the International D. Matić Marović Award (2023), as well as more than 20 top prizes at international choral competitions. She is active as an artistic advisor for choral music, a university professor of conducting, a guest conductor, and a jury member at major international competitions and festivals, including the E. Ericson competition, the M. Hubad Conductors Competition, the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing, and the International Gallus Competition.
Her artistic work is characterized by a continuous exploration of new music, ranging from medieval repertoire to the most recent experimental and progressive works. She composes for choirs and vocal ensembles, theatre, installation art, and electronic/experimental projects. Šilec often engages with politically and socially charged themes. Her work reflects a wide spectrum of concerns, driven by the need to respond to contemporary social and political transformations. Her creative process focuses on ambiguity and multilayered meaning, merging theatrical elements into an emancipated compositional form that opens multiple semantic perspectives.
She is the artistic director of the internationally renowned ensemble Carmina Slovenica, the ensemble !Kebataola!, and the new music theatre Choregie.

[Photo credits: Dorian. S. Petek]

Maria Dal Bianco (Italy)

Maria Dal Bianco studied under R. Buja and A. Zanon, earning diplomas in composition, organ and organ composition, choral music and choral conducting, and pre-polyphony at the Conservatories of Vicenza, Verona, and Venice. She attended advanced courses in organ with J. Langlais, M. Radulescu, A. Mitterhofer, and M. Torrent Serra; in Renaissance and Baroque performance practice with G. Acciai, L. Picotti, and P. Neumann; and in Gregorian chant with L. Agustoni, N. Albarosa, D.O. Damini, F. Rampi, and J. Berchmans Göschl. She is a professor of organ and liturgical music, organ practice, and pre-polyphony at the A. Pedrollo Conservatory in Vicenza. She is active as a concert organist and has collaborated with instrumental and vocal ensembles.
Since its foundation, she has conducted the Coenobium Vocale, with which she has received awards and distinctions at national and international choral competitions, including prizes for best conductor at the national competitions of Quartiano and Vittorio Veneto. She maintains an active concert schedule in Italy and across Europe.
She has collaborated with prominent figures in Italian culture and theatre, including L. Bertoli, S. Cappelletto, G. Cattin, G. De Bosio, B. De Marzi, A. Foà, M. Mazzucco, E. Ronchi, and P. Villoresi.
For the Fondazione Levi (Venice) and the University of Padua, she has developed numerous thematic projects on the Venetian School of the 16th century, featuring music by A. and G. Gabrieli, G. Croce, G. Zarlino, G.M. Asola, and C. Monteverdi. She has conducted several world premieres of contemporary composers. A former member of the regional music commission of ASAC and the national music commission of Feniarco, she is active as a teacher with associations and institutions of national importance. She is regularly invited to serve on juries for national and international choral and composition competitions.

Antonio Greco (Italy)

Antonio Greco is one of the leading figures on the Italian Baroque music scene. Founder of the Costanzo Porta Choir and the Cremona Antiqua Orchestra, today the resident choir and orchestra of the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona, where he has served as principal music director since 2021, he has conducted the two ensembles at major international festivals and theatres, including Spoleto, Ravenna, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Festival della Valle d’Itria, Halle, Bruges, Amsterdam, Moscow, Kyiv, Fez and the Japan Opera Foundation. He was also principal music director of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano in 2021 and, from 2012 to 2020, resident conductor for the Baroque repertoire at the Festival della Valle d’Itria. In 2015 he was invited by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to work as assistant conductor and harpsichordist with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, joining him in numerous projects, including a world tour of Monteverdi’s three operas and the Vespro della Beata Vergine (2017), and a European tour devoted to Bach’s cantatas (Bach Ring, 2018). He has collaborated with Riccardo Muti and the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, conducting the Costanzo Porta Choir/Cremona Antiqua in a number of works by Verdi (Macbeth, Nabucco, Messa da Requiem, Stabat Mater and Te Deum), as well as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Brahms’s Schicksalslied. All these performances were broadcast on Rai 1 and Rai 5. He has conducted operas by Monteverdi, Cavalli, Stradella, Scarlatti, Steffani, Leo and Rossini, as well as major works by Handel, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Mozart and Beethoven, alongside contemporary repertoire. His interpretations, broadcast by Rai and Radio3, combine historically informed rigour with expressive vitality. Actively involved in the training of young musicians, he teaches at the G. Verdi Conservatory in Ravenna and at the R. Celletti Academy of Belcanto in Martina Franca, and regularly gives masterclasses in Italy and abroad. As an opera chorus master, he has worked on more than forty titles from the major Italian repertoire, collaborating with Opera Lombardia from 2006 to 2015, with the Opéra de Lausanne since 2015, and with the L. Cherubini Choir of the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna since 2019. He has recorded for Dynamic, Tactus and Bongiovanni. His recording of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine will be released by Arcana in 2027.