Marko Ivanović (born 5 January 1976) is a Czech conductor and composer with Serbian roots.

Early life

He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, but spent his childhood in Yugoslavia, his father’s native country. He moved to Prague to study music when he was aged 15. He graduated from the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in composition (Prof. Václav Riedlbauch), conducting (Prof. Radomil Eliška, Jiří Bělohlávek) and choral conducting (Prof. Miroslav Košler). In 2003, he became a laureate of the Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Young Conductors in Katowice, Poland. In 2008, he received his PhD in composition and theory of composition.

Conductor

He began as an assistant conductor at the National Theatre Prague (2006–2010). In the years 2009–2014, he was chief conductor of the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic. In 2015, Ivanović was appointed music director of the Janáček Opera in Brno.

In 2016, he won the Divadelní Noviny Award for the best musical production of the 2015/2016 season for his staging of Bohuslav Martinů’s Epic of Gilgamesh. He won the same award in 2017 (Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin), 2020 (his own opera Monument), 2022 (Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes) and 2023 (Salome by Richard Strauss).

In 2023, he received an Anděl Award for his recording of symphonies by Miroslav Kabeláč with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Composer

Ivanović has written various compositions for orchestra and chamber ensembles, but focuses primarily on stage works. The production of his first opera Girl and Death won the 2003 OPERA Festival Director’s Award. In 2007, he worked with director Miloš Forman on his production of the jazz opera A Walk Worthwhile as the author of a new instrumentation. In 2012, he was commissioned by the National Theatre in Prague to write the full-length family opera Enchantia (Čarokraj) which was also subsequently staged at the National Theatre Brno. He was also commissioned by the National Theatre in Brno to write the opera Monument which premiered in the 2019–2020 season. In 2020, the composer himself won the Theatre Critics’ Award for this work. In 2022, he wrote the ballet The Jungle Book as a commission from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the dance company Dekkadancers.

Ivanović is also a frequent composer of incidental music for Czech Radio and various theatre productions.

Music educator

Since 2005, he has been co-founder, conductor and host of the educational concert series Steps to the New World (Kroky do nového světa) produced by the Czech Philharmonic with musicologist Petr Kadlec and the Czech Student Philharmonic. In 2022, he received the Jaroslav Herden Award from Czech Music Education Society.

ivanovic@ndbrno.cz

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