Mihela Jagodic and Mitja Gobec
Mihela Jagodic taught pre-school music education and theory/solfège at the Conservatory of Music and Ballet in Ljubljana and sang in APZ Tone Tomšič from 1995 to 2002. Having come to know a number of competitions and festivals abroad, she became professionally engaged in the choral field as the person responsible for choral activities at the Public Fund for Cultural Activities (JSKD), which is in charge of the support and development of all types of amateur culture. She has together with experts redesigned existing programmes into new arrangements and trainings, and classified the Maribor International Choral Competition among the six competitions for the Grand Prix of Europe. Since 2006, she has been a member of the European Choral Association - Europa Cantat, and assumed the leadership of the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing Association last year, together with her collaborator Matija Varl. Email: mihela.jagodic@jskd.si. Mitja Gobec has been a conductor and editor of choral music editions for many years. He conducted for over five decades, and worked for twenty years as a professional collaborator for music at the Association of Cultural Organizations of Slovenia, where he was in charge of the organization and content of national seminars, events and competitions for the entire choral structure. Over the last three decades, he has been dedicated to editing sheet music editions for choirs. An expert on choral literature, especially Slovenian, he holds over ten thousand choral compositions in his home archive. After retirement, he remains active as an expert presence at regional choir festivals, and has been intensely exploring the phenomenon of Slovenian folk and patriot songs for the past two decades, writing articles on the subject, making him familiar to a wide range of readers. Email: mitja.gobec@siol.net