Ondrej Veselý

The guitarist Ondrej Veselý is dedicated most of all to the performance of the music of Slovak composers and he participates in various chamber music projects. He studied the classical guitar playing with Martin Krajčo and Jozef Zsapka (Bratislava, Slovakia), Carlo Marchione (Maastricht, The Netherlands), Giampaolo Bandini (Lucca, Italy) and Peter Remeník (Žilina, Slovakia). As a soloist he has given the world premieres of the guitar concertos by Oľga Kroupová: Eo Ipso – Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra with the Slovak State Philharmonic Košice, and by Miro Bázlik: Concerto for Guitar, Double-Bass, Harpsichord and Strings with Solamente Naturali ensemble. Besides he has collaborated with Quasars Ensemble, Eva Šušková, Peter Mazalán, Peter Katina, Kamil Mihalov and Július Fujak. He gave concerts not only in Slovakia, but also abroad in Bohemia, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Finland and The Netherlands. The composers who dedicated their pieces to Veselý include Oľga Kroupová (Germany/Slovakia), Jozef Kolkovič (USA/Slovakia), Marc Yeats (Great Britain), Angelo Gilardino (Italy), Nuno Figueiredo (Portugal), Oliver Kentish (Island), James Helgeson (USA), Petr Kotík (Bohemia), and Slovak authors Jana Kmiťová, Peter Duchnický, Peter Machajdík, Víťazoslav Kubička, Lenka Novosedlíková, Alexander Döme, Daniel Remeň, Jakub Laco. Ondrej Veselý is also a keen arranger; his works were performed and recorded by such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Kathryn Stott, Sérgio and Odair Assads, David Russell and José Antonio Escobar. His interest in theoretical aspects of music resulted in the study at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, where he acquired his PhD degree in the field of music philosophy, aesthetics and semiotics (led by Július Fujak) in 2020. The same year he published his debut monograph Hudba v hudbe [Music in Music], focused on theoretical reflection of music. He is a writer of many studies, as well as interviews with contemporary composers, which were published both in Slovakia and abroad.