Meet the elite jury of the 2025 Prague Spring Oboe Competition
American oboist Nancy Ambrose King performs in prestigious venues such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York and has a number of award-winning recordings, including the Grammy-nominated album Sila. She launched her career with a first prize in the Third New York International Competition in 1995. A professor of solo oboe at the University of Michigan and author of the successful eBook, Making Oboe Reeds from Start to Finish with Nancy Ambrose King, she is the first woman ever to be elected president of the International Double Reed Society. She has also worked at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Indiana University, Ithaca College, University of Northern Colorado, and Duquesne University Schools of Music. The University of Michigan awarded her the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 2024 and inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2010.
Fabien Thouand has been principal oboist of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan since 2004. He is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana di Lugano and an assistant professor at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Lyon. He graduated from the CNSM in Paris in the class of Jacques Tys, Jean-Louis Capezzali and Frédéric Tardy. He is a laureate of the Prague Spring Competition, of the Petritoli International Oboe Competition Giuseppe Tomassini in Italy and of the International Oboe Competition in Toulon. As a soloist he has cooperated with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra or the Bamberger Symphoniker, with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Muti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Metha, Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Chailly.
Clara Dent-Bogányi is a laureate of the ARD Competition in Munich and the CIEM Competition in Geneva. Since 1999 she has been a solo oboist with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. She also regularly works with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Israel Philharmonic, the Bavarian State Opera and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since 2009 she has been professor of oboe at the Nuremberg University of Music. She regularly gives masterclasses in Japan, China, South Korea, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany.
The principal oboist of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Kalev Kuljus, is the winner of the 2001 Prague Spring Competition and the holder of the “Pacem in Terris” title for the best oboist at the International Music Competition in Bayreuth in 2000. As principal oboist he has performed in many prestigious European orchestras: Berliner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Filharmonica Arturo Toscanini, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 he performed on the occasion of the opening of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. He has been a guest lecturer at music academies in Leipzig, Karlsruhe and Shanghai and regularly gives masterclasses in various parts of the world.
Vilém Veverka is not only a successful soloist, but also a founding member of Ensemble Berlin-Prag, PhilHarmonia Octet and the Vilém Veverka TRIOplus. In addition to classical music, he also experiments in the field of genre fusions, especially with the Ultimate W Band (album Next Horizon, 2020). In addition to the HAMU in Prague, he studied at the prestigious Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin in the class of Dominik Wollenweber, and as part of the Karajan Akademie he performed in the orchestra of the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2003 he won the Sony Music Foundation Competition. He has given Czech and world premieres of many technically demanding concertante works by contemporary composers of the second half of the 20th century. Since 2024 he has been a teacher at the University of Ostrava.
The winner of the 2014 Prague Spring Competition, Johannes Grosso, has been the solo oboist of the Frankfurt Opern and Museumsorchester since 2015 and was also a member of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France for four years. As a soloist, he has worked with conductors such as Christoph von Dohnányi and Daniele Gatti and with a number of Czech and European orchestras: the New Bach Collegium, the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra or the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. He regularly gives masterclasses and since 2018 has been professor of oboe at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.
Jan Souček is a laureate of the Prague Spring Competition (2008), the winner of the Jozef Cieplucha International Academic Oboe Competition in Lodz, Poland (2005) and a semi-finalist of the international competitions in Karuizawa, Japan (2006) and Geneva (2010). He is currently the principal oboist of the Prague Philharmonia and the State Opera Orchestra. He is also active in chamber music: he is a member of the Belfiato Quintet, with which he won the 3rd prize at the Concours International “Henri Tomasi” in Marseille, and the Trio Arundo. He regularly cooperates with Ensemble Prague Modern and the Ostravská Banda chamber orchestra, which focus on the interpretation of contemporary music. He graduated from the Prague Conservatory in the class of F. X. Thuri and HAMU in Prague in the class of Jana Brožková. As part of his studies, he completed an internship at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Lyon under Jean-Louis Capezzali and Jérôme Guichard.