Competition Jury
Pianist and composer Filip Fak (Rijeka, 1983) is the director of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, associate professor at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, and president of the Croatian Society of Music Artists. He completed his piano studies in 2005 at the Academy of Music in Zagreb in the class of Đorđe Stanetti, and furthered his education at the Scholi Cantorum in Paris in the master class of Eugen Indjić, where he earned the Diplome de Concert with the highest grades. He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in Croatia, throughout Europe, and in the USA, Mexico, and China. As a soloist, he has performed with the most distinguished Croatian orchestras and ensembles...
Julia Gubajdullina was born in Chișinău, Moldova, into a family of distinguished musicians.
She commenced her piano studies at the tender age of four and garnered considerable acclaim at twelve when she performed with the Moldavian Philharmonic Orchestra. She graduated summa cum laude from the Music Academy in Chișinău, under the tutelage of Lyudmila Vaverko, and completed her postgraduate studies in 1999 at the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow, under the guidance of Yuri Khachatryan.
Anđelko Krpan (Zagreb, 1967.) graduated in Violin at the Academy of Music in Zagreb in the class of Kristijan Petrović (1989), and went on to earn his Masters at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna in the class of Dora Schwarzberg (1995). He has been a member of the Vienna Chamber Philharmonic (1989-93), then member of the Zagreb Soloists (1993-97), orchestra leader of the Zagreb Soloists (1997-2002), concertmaster of Croatian National Theatre Orchestra of Zagreb (2002-2006), and has been teaching Violin at the Academy of Music in Zagreb since 1995.
Ivana Kuljerić Bilić is an internationally renowned marimba virtuoso and versatile percussionist. A graduate of Prof. I. Lešnik's class, she is now a full professor at the Zagreb Academy of Music, where she is the Head of the Department of Conducting, Percussion, and Harp, and the Director of Postgraduate Studies. In 2024, she was invited to teach as a visiting professor at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA.
Miro Saje, born in 1965 in Novo Mesto, graduated in trumpet from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana in 1990 under the guidance of Professor Anton Grčar. At the age of 13, he joined the Wind Orchestra Novoles Straža, later renamed the Wind Orchestra Krka, where he served as a conductor from 1990 to 2007. In 1999, he completed his studies under the instruction of Professor Jan Cober at the Brabants Conservatory in Tilburg, the Netherlands.
English 
Croatian