Choirmaster of the HRT Children's Choir, Vinko Karmelić

Born in Bol in 1987, Vinko Karmelić completed his undergraduate studies in music pedagogy (cum laude) in 2010 at the Zagreb University Academy of Music, where he also obtained the title of Master of Music Pedagogy in 2012. 

He started leading choirs at an early age as a choirmaster and organist at the Parish of St. John the Baptist in Bol. From the very start of his work with the choir, he devoted himself to the preservation and restoration of Bol’s traditional folk singing. He attended seminars held by eminent Croatian and European choir conductors.

Since 2010, he has been one of the artistic directors of Concordia discors, the Academic Choir of the Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb. The choir has been successfully performing and competing, earning prizes such as the awards from the Croatian Composers’ Society for performance of works by Croatian composers and third place in the final of the competition To the Last Choir  on HRT in 2012.

He also achieved notable results with this choir at the international choir competitions in Barcelona, Venice, Prague, Bratislava, Krakow and Verona. Between 2012 and 2014, he was the vocal director at the Ivan Goran Kovačić SKUD Folklore Ensemble.

In addition to his artistic work with various vocal ensembles, he is also active as a pedagogue and currently employed at the Pavao Markovac  Music School in Zagreb.

Among other activities at the school, he leads a children’s monophonic and polyphonic chamber choir with which he participated in several competitions in Croatia and abroad, achieving outstanding results. Two awards are particularly noteworthy: the one in 2018 when the choir was proclaimed the absolute winner at the 14th Competition of Croatian Singing Choirs – Zagreb and the one in 2022 when the choir earned the highest number of points at the national competition organized by the Croatian Society of Music and Dance Pedagogues.