PAWEŁ ŁUKASZEWSKI – Poland
President of the Jury 2026
Paweł Łukaszewski is one of the leading representatives of contemporary Polish sacred and choral music. Born in Częstochowa in 1968, he studied cello and composition at the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, graduating with honours in composition in 1995. He has taught at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music since 1996, where he holds the title of Professor and served as Vice-Rector. He has also worked as a visiting professor in Chile and Argentina. Łukaszewski has received numerous prizes and distinctions for his compositions and recordings, including awards at national and international composition competitions, the Orphée d’Or de l’Académie du Disque Lyrique, the Orphée d’Or – Prix Hector Berlioz and ten Fryderyk Awards of the Polish recording industry. His honours also include the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Bronze Gloria Artis Medal of Cultural Merit, the Jerzy Kurczewski Prize, the Blessed Michał Sopoćko Memorial Award and the Feniks Award of Polish Catholic Publishers. His music has been performed at more than one hundred festivals throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. His extensive discography comprises over 150 recordings released by labels including Hyperion, DUX, Signum Records and Musica Sacra Edition. More than sixty of his works have been published internationally by such publishers as Chester Novello, PWM Edition, Edition Ferrimontana, Edizioni Carrara, Walton Music and Lorenz Corporation. Alongside his work as a composer and teacher, Łukaszewski has played an important role in Polish musical life. He has directed the International Festival Laboratory of Contemporary Music since 1995 and has served as President of the Musica Sacra Association since 2000. He is also Artistic Director and Conductor of the Musica Sacra Choir of the Warsaw-Praga Cathedral and Artistic Director of Musica Sacra Edition. He has been invited to serve on international competition juries in cities including Arezzo, Moscow and Bucharest. His music has achieved particular recognition in the United Kingdom, where it has been performed and premiered by ensembles including the BBC Singers, Tenebrae, The Holst Singers, Trinity College Choir, Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony, under conductors such as Stephen Layton and Nigel Short. Hyperion has released two albums devoted entirely to his music.
FABIO PECCI – Italy
Member of the Jury 2026
Fabio Pecci studied cello at the “G. Verdi” Music Institute in Ravenna. He has performed in hundreds of concerts as a soloist and member of chamber and orchestral ensembles in Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, and Greece. He has received several awards in national and international competitions and has recorded various CDs for Tactus, Bongiovanni, and other independent labels. His work in music education sparked his passion for children’s choirs. He currently conducts four children’s choirs and a youth choir, with which he performs extensively in Italy, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, the People’s Republic of China, and Lithuania, winning numerous prizes and awards in various national and international competitions, including 13 first prizes. He teaches children’s choir and music theory at the Maderna-Lettimi Conservatory in Rimini. In 2008, with the children’s choir Le Allegre Note, he took part in the production of Berlioz’s Te Deum conducted by Maestro C. Abbado and broadcast on RAI 1 on Christmas Eve. With the same choir, he has performed C. Orff’s Carmina Burana several times with the Percussionists of Santa Cecilia in Rome and other ensembles on various national tours, as well as collaborating with various theaters throughout Italy on opera and symphonic productions. He has curated world premieres of works by contemporary Italian composers, some of which were dedicated to his choirs: M. Da Rold, A. Basevi, M. Marchetti, M. Santoiemma, and S. Cellentani. A teacher for the FENIARCO Spring Festival in Montecatini in 2016 and 2017, he regularly holds workshops and choral meetings for various choral associations: ACA Arborea (OR), ASAC Veneto, Fersaco, and the National Association of Italian Choir Directors. A member of the jury in numerous competitions in Italy, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovakia, France, and Belgium, he is the artistic director of the “Città di Riccione” Choral Competition for children’s voices. Since 2025, he has been collaborating as assistant choir director for the international projects of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation in Florence.
ROBERTO MAGGIO – Italy
Member of the Jury 2026
Roberto Maggio is conductor of the Laeti Cantores of Salerno and the Academia Vocal Ensemble, with which he has developed an extensive artistic activity both in Italy and abroad. Over the years, he has received numerous awards at choral competitions and festivals, earning recognition for the quality of his interpretative work and for his commitment to the musical development of the ensembles he conducts. Among his most significant achievements are Third Prize, with Second Prize not awarded, at the Arezzo Competition in 2013; Second Prize at Lituania Cantat in Kaunas in 2017; the Gold Prize at Chorus Inside in Budapest in 2018; and the award for Best Choir in the chamber choir category at the Krakow Advent Christmas Choir Festival in 2019. These experiences have contributed to establishing his profile within the Italian and international choral scene. Alongside his concert and competition activity, Roberto Maggio devotes particular attention to training and to exchange among different choral traditions. He has promoted international meetings, workshops and advanced training activities in collaboration with distinguished conductors and teachers, including R. Paul Crabb, Stephan Nicolay, Patrick Gardner and Ragnar Bohlin. These collaborations have provided valuable opportunities for exchange on repertoire, conducting technique, vocal training and choral practice. In 2007 and 2009, he was Visiting Professor at major international academic institutions, including the University of Missouri – Columbia and Truman State University in the United States, Silla University in Busan, South Korea, and Aichi Prefectural University in Japan. At these institutions, he gave masterclasses and concerts and took part in pedagogical exchanges, contributing to the development of intercultural dialogue through choral music. He is currently President of the Italian National Association of Choral Conductors (ANDCI). He also served for three years as a member of the FENIARCO National Artistic Committee. Alongside his conducting career, he is active as an educator and teaches flute at the “D. Cimarosa” Conservatory of Music in Avellino.
JOY HILL – United Kingdom
Member of the Jury 2026
Joy Hill is a conductor, lecturer and music educator who works internationally with choirs and is particularly known for her commitment to contemporary choral repertoire, including music by both established composers and emerging young talents. Her work combines artistic practice, education and research, with a strong interest in the ways choral music can foster musical understanding, collaboration and intercultural exchange. From 2001 to 2025, she worked at the Royal College of Music Junior Department, conducting its senior choirs. She was also a member of the RCM Centre for Performance Science, where she contributed to artistic research related to choral performance practice. Alongside her work at the Royal College of Music, she served as Senior Lecturer in Music and Music Education at University College London, Institute of Education (UCL IOE), and taught academic music while also working as a conductor at the Purcell School. Her interest in choral education and conducting has led to a number of important international experiences. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study approaches to choral education and conducting in Sweden, as well as an Arts Council England bursary to work with choirs in Kaunas, Lithuania. Her academic and pedagogical interests are also reflected in her contribution as a writer to the Oxford Handbook of Singing, published in 2019. Joy Hill is regularly invited worldwide as a jury member, conductor, lecturer and presenter at choral competitions, festivals and symposia. She has been a guest lecturer at leading institutions including the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Hungary and the Yale School of Music in the United States. She has also served on the artistic committee of the International Federation for Choral Music World Youth Choir and is currently a member of the World Choir Council of Interkultur. She currently conducts the RCMJD alumni chamber choir, Vigala Singers, an ensemble particularly devoted to collaborative and cross-cultural choral projects. Among their recent activities, Joy conducted Thomas Tallis’ monumental Spem in alium in the Basilica di Santa Barbara in Mantua, bringing together the Vigala Singers and affiliated choirs from the surrounding area in a large-scale collaborative performance.
DANIELE SCONOSCIUTO – Italy
Member of the Jury 2026
Born in Mesagne (Brindisi) in 1983, Daniele Sconosciuto has lived in Bologna since 2002. He graduated in Piano from the “G. Verdi” Music Institute in Ravenna and holds degrees in Music (DAMS) and Music Studies from the University of Bologna, where he specialised respectively in Music Pedagogy and Music Palaeography. He also obtained his teaching qualification in Piano at the “G. Frescobaldi” Conservatory in Ferrara, a Diploma in Orchestral Conducting from the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan, where he studied with Vittorio Parisi and Marco Munari, and a Diploma in Choral Conducting and Composition from the Conservatory of Ferrara under the guidance of Michele Napolitano, graduating with highest honours and special distinction. He maintains an active concert career as a pianist, collaborative pianist, choral conductor and orchestral conductor, and has further developed his expertise in the symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire through international masterclasses. He also collaborated in the reorganisation and cataloguing of the music archive of the Orchestra Mozart in Bologna during Claudio Abbado’s tenure as Artistic Director. Formerly a lecturer in Choral Studies at the “F. Cilea” Conservatory in Reggio Calabria, he currently teaches at the Conservatory of Bologna. He is also organist at the Basilica of Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano and conductor of the choir of the “L’Arengo” Cultural Centre in Bologna. He teaches Score Reading and Sight-Singing at the AERCO Academy and is a member of AERCO’s Artistic Committee. Since 2018 he has served as Organisational Director, and since 2025 as Artistic Director, of the CantaBO International Choral Festival. From 2022 to 2025 he conducted the Emilia-Romagna Youth Choir, leading the ensemble in national and international festivals, competitions and projects, including collaborations with John Rutter and KorMalta – Malta National Choir. He currently conducts the Emilia-Romagna Regional Choir. In 2024 he recorded Riccardo Perugini’s chamber opera Il Pellegrino del Nulla for the TACTUS label. On 2 June 2025, he performed with the Emilia-Romagna Youth Choir at the Quirinal Palace Gardens in Rome, in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.