Karmina Šilec

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Karmina Šilec is the artistic director and conductor of Carmina Slovenica and Choregie – new music theatre. With her artistic concept choregie, she has brought freshness and originality to the world of vocal music and theatre. As a conductor and director, she has projects with various companies, opera houses, and ensembles worldwide. Her interests lie in music-driven theater, music that refers or reacts to other fields, the human voice as central fascination, and the exploration of different music and theater languages. Different elements in her performance (movement, music, word, the visual) merge to suggest various semantic directions.

While at Radcliffe, Šilec is conceiving a new music theatre piece inspired by Balkan women (“sworn virgins”) who take a vow of chastity and live as men. Developed in collaboration with the philosopher Dr. Mladen Dolar, the concept explores questions of choice in contemporary liberal society and of choices of sexual identity.

Šilec, who earned a BA at Zagreb Academy of Music, has received a Music Theatre NOW award, the Robert Edler Prize for Choral Music, and, together with her companies, the Golden Mask and more than 20 other international awards. Her ensembles have performed at such highly esteemed stages and festivals as Dresdner Musikfestspiele; Festival d’Automne à Paris; Holland Festival; Hong Kong Cultural Centre; Melbourne International Arts Festival; Moscow Easter Festival; Operadagen Rotterdam; PROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATER |NOW; the Ruhrtriennale; Saint-Petersburg Philharmonia Grand Hall; Teatro Colón; and Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space. In 2017, she was nominated for the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities.