JEROEN KEYMEULEN – Belgium
President of the Jury 2025
During intensive years of study, Jeroen Keymeulen earned at the Lemmens Institute three master’s degrees in music for classical guitar, chamber music and orchestral conducting. To further qualify himself in choral conducting, Jeroen took several master classes with Prof. Andre de Quadros (USA) and Lone Larsen (Denmark), with Hervé Niquet (France), with Prof. Markus Utz (Geneva), Prof. Denis Rouger (Stuttgart) and Johannes Dewilde (Ghent), as well as classical singing with Axel Everaert (Maastricht). After passages with Camerata Ostendia, Musica Nova and Vivente Voce, Jeroen conducts the Mechelen-based Vokalis and the Chamber Choir Flanders. With this young ensemble he has achieved meritorious prizes at international choral competitions in recent years, and became third champion in the champions competition “Chamber Choirs” at the European Choir Games 2025. Jeroen is regularly asked as a jury member at choral competitions. Thus, he was a jury member at the World Choir Games 2024 (Auckland, New Zealand) and sat on the jury of the Concorso Corale Giuseppe Savani 2025 (Carpi, Italy). An active career in education, as a teacher (Oudenaarde) and as a principal (Wilrijk and Borgerhout), he concluded in July 2019 as network director of the Academies of Urban Education. In August 2019, Jeroen took on a new challenge, bringing together several passions, as general director of Koor&Stem vzw, the Flemish amateur arts organization for vocal music.
FABIO PECCI – Italy
Member of the Jury 2025
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.
JAKUB MARTINEC – Czech Republic / Canada
Member of the Jury 2025
Jakub Martinec is director of choral activities and associate professor of choral conducting at Memorial University in Canada. Dr. Martinec holds a Ph.D. in music education from the University of Western Ontario and his research focuses on a comparison of European and North American perspectives on choral conducting as well as investigations of early Czech choral literature, and pedagogical strategies for teaching adolescent male singers. Born in the Czech Republic, he was the artistic director of the renowned Czech Boys Choir. Dr. Martinec has recorded for national TV and Radio in the Czech Republic and has directed on numerous CD‘s and DVD’s – his recording of Britten‘s A Ceremony of Carols received a Recording of the Month award by the London-based Classical Music Web in 2004. Dr. Martinec has performed with eminent orchestras, ensembles and musical personalities in some of the world’s most famous concert halls and cathedrals , including Meistersingerhalle, Nürnberg, Germany (2005, 2009, 2011, 2017), Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, USA (2004), Winspear Hall in Edmonton, Canada (2006), Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada (2012), the Pantheon and the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome for the leaders of the Vatican (2009, 2010), Truro Cathedral, UK (2013) and regularly at the Rudolfinum Dvorak Hall and Smetana Hall in Prague. With his choirs, he performed the opening concert of choral cycle of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (2006), and has appeared at numerous international music festivals including The Prague Spring Festival (2004, 2005), European Festival of Youth Choirs „Giuseppe Zelioli“ (2003, 2012), AmericaFest International Festival for Boys’ & Men’ Choirs including the VIth World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis (2002), Festival d’Ambronay (2006), Mitte Europa (2008, 2009, 2013), and the highly acclaimed World Festival of Singing for Men and Boys (Prague, Hradec Kralove, 2004, 2008). Dr. Martinec is also often asked to be a guest clinician, adjudicator and presenter, e.g. Cornwall Male Choral Festival, UK (2013, 2019, 2022 and 2024), Pemulwuy, Australia (2014), European Festival of Youth Choirs „Giuseppe Zelioli“, Italy (2014, 2016), Podium, Canada (2014), ACE – Asian Conference on Education, Japan (2015), ISME, UK (2016), Education Research Symposium – Merton College, Oxford, UK (2018), Musica Orbis (2024, 2025). Since 2019, Dr. Martinec served as a choral columnist for the Canadian Music Educator Journal and in September 2020, Dr. Martinec received the prestigious RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant award for his contributions to choral singing in Canada through his research at Memorial University. In December 2020, Dr. Martinec was awarded the President’s Award for Exceptional Community Service from the Memorial’s president Dr. Vianne Timmons.
LUCA BUZZAVI – Italia
Member of the Jury 2025
Luca Buzzavi obtained his Second Level Academic Diploma in Prepolyphony with highest marks at the G. Verdi Conservatory in Turin under the guidance of Maestro Fulvio Rampi, a Second Level Academic Diploma in Choral Conducting and Choral Composition (with honors and special mention) from the G. Frescobaldi Conservatory in Ferrara, a Doctorate in Physics, a Master’s Degree in Pedagogical Sciences, and several University Master’s Degrees in Teaching and Pedagogy. He conducted the Coro Aurora children’s and youth choir (2009-2025) and the Com’è bello cantar choir (2020-2024), a choir made up of aphasic patients in collaboration with the Local Health Authority of Mirandola-MO. He is the artistic director of the Accademia Corale Teleion, where he prepares and conducts the vocal group that performs repertoires from the Middle Ages to the present day. He is scientific director and teacher at the School of Gregorian Chant promoted by AERCO. Since September 2020, he has been conducting the Schola Gregoriana Ecce. He is a member of the editorial committee of the specialist magazines FarCoro and Dirigo, a teacher on the regional course for school choir conductors promoted by AERCO, eligible for the AERCO Artistic Commission competition for the three-year period 2018-2021, member of the USCI Lombardy Artistic Commission for the two-year period 2018-2020, member of the AERCO Artistic Commission since 2024, and director of the same since 2025. He has achieved important results and awards in national choral competitions as a conductor, composer, and commissioner and has published specialist articles, collections of compositions, CDs, the studies L’elemento neumatico spiraliforme di Laon239 and Missa S. Simeonis in canto fratto, and the manual Teoria Musicale. He is a member of the artistic direction of the Choral Festival and International Composition Competition Corinfesta. He was artistic coordinator of the 2017 Voci nei Chiostri Choral Festival. Already a winner of competitions for Music Education (A030) at lower secondary school level and for Choral Conducting for Teaching (CODD01) at the Conservatory of Cuneo, he teaches Choral Conducting for Teaching, Choral Practice and Gregorian Chant at the “N. Rota” Conservatory in Monopoli, and Choral Practice at the “Vecchi Tonelli” Conservatory in Modena.
VAUGHN ROSTE – USA / Canada
Member of the Jury 2025
Canadian by birth, Vaughn Roste currently lives in Chicago. He holds four degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in Music, a Bachelor of Theological Studies, a Master of Music in Choral Conducting, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from Louisiana State University. His research interests continue to explore the intersections of music and theology; his doctoral dissertation compared choral settings of Jesus’ Seven Last Words by three French Romantic composers: Gounod, Franck, and Dubois. He collaborated with the composer Michael Trotta for a new translation of the Requiem and has also served as a music editor and choral lyricist. He taught at the post-secondary level for twenty years, including posts in Georgia, Oklahoma, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. The author of over thirty peer-reviewed articles, he is also a successful writer: his first monograph, entitled The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Canadians, was published by Oval Books in England, and his debut novel, about Thomas(ine) Hall, the first queer immigrant to America in the 1620s, is forthcoming. He is also a represented writer for screenplays and has two feature films currently in pre-production – one of which is about Oradour, the site of the largest Nazi atrocity on French soil in 1944. He maintains an active schedule as an adjudicator, performer, clinician, and guest conductor throughout the American Midwest. He is also an avid player of board games and owns a collection of over 200 of them. In short, yes, he’s a nerd.