VENI ACADEMY is a project aimed at forming an ensemble which systematically educates young
people, students of conservatoires and music academies in the interpretation of 20th-century and
contemporary music. The idea is the brainchild of several members of VENI ensemble (namely Marián
Lejava, Daniel Matej, and Ivan Šiller), whose principal activities lie in contemporary music and who feel
its absence on all levels of majority of the educational systems worldwide. Through workshops, seminars,
and summer master courses, the aim of the pursuits of VENI ACADEMY is public presentation of the
results of their accumulated knowledge and experience.
The first public presentation of VENI ACADEMY took place in 2010 during the ARS NOVA
CASSOVIAE festival. To this day, VENI ACADEMY is already a project of quite a surprising scale with
many successful concerts in a variety of venues (conventional halls, unusual spaces like parks, shopping
malls and streetcars and large festivals such as Bažant Pohoda Trenčín or Music Biennale Zagreb as
well). Their debut CD ROLLING STONES│IN ZARTER BEWEGUNG was recorded in July 2013. The
CD was awarded a prestigious Radio_Head Award 2014 for best album of the year in category “Classical
music 2013”.
At the beginning of July 2015, a summer academy took place in Kasárne/Kulturpark in Košice, the
“second home” of VENI ACADEMY. The main guest was the composer and guitar player Elliott Sharp.
The result of this few days cooperation was a concert during the international festival ARS NOVA
2015 and the recording of the four compositions which are to be found on the new CD DISPERSION, issued in 2018 by the prestigious New York based label Mode Records.

(Daniel Matej)