Mgr. Ivan Sedláček

The founder of KANTILÉNA, an ensemble of the Brno Philharmonic, dedicated his life to the cultivation of children's choral singing.

After completing his studies at the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Arts, he established the Šlapanice Children's Choir. With a selective approach, he then shaped Kantiléna into a top-tier ensemble, a position it has maintained for decades. He conducted over a thousand concerts with them.

In his programming, he emphasized Renaissance motets and consistently introduced contemporary compositions. He recorded over fifty technically demanding pieces for the radio, most of which were commissioned specifically for Kantiléna. Many of these recordings subsequently saw a significant number of concert performances, such as Řezníček's "Atomus" (130 times), Eben's "Mudrosloví" (120 times), and Pololáník's "Missa brevis" (101 performances). Besides audio recordings and professional critiques from eighteen European countries, Japan, the USA, and Canada, the quality of their performances was affirmed by an impressive collection of competitive awards. Among these accolades were two first-place awards from the competition in Arezzo (1977, 1981), with the latter instance also achieving the absolute victory with the Béla Bartók Award. Pedagogically, he worked at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno in the field of Theory and Direction of Children's Choirs.

He chose to conclude his tenure with the choir at the beginning of its 50th season.