Meet the Conductors
Cordelia Vana
Cordelia Vana (née Karner) has been a passionate choral singer since her earliest childhood. She gained her first musical experience in the family choir of her parents. At the age of 16, she took over the artistic and organisational direction of the school band at her grammar school in Unterwaltersdorf, with which she repeatedly developed new polyphonic repertoire for the monthly performances.
These formative experiences set Cordelia's course for the rest of her life. This was followed by two bachelor's degrees in musicology and economics, as well as an acting diploma from the Vienna Media School.
No less formative was her study of music education at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where she received her choral conducting training from the renowned Austrian choral conductors Alois Glaßner, Johannes Hiemetsberger and Michael Grohotolsky. During her studies, in 2017 she took over the direction of EnChoir Vienna, a task that she continues to fulfill with great joy and commitment until today.
Cordelia has sung in many different formations, such as the Neue Wiener Stimmen, the Chorus sine nomine, the WebernKammerchor, Momentum Vocal Music, and several soloist ensembles. She has toured the world with them and sung on the biggest concert stages in Vienna (Musikverein, Konzerthaus, Volksoper).
Since March 2020, she has been responsible for the Artistic Operations Office at the mdw's Institute for Music Direction and thus also for the management of the mdw's Webern Chamber Choir, and in the course of has realised numerous choral and orchestral projects, tours, collaborations at home and abroad, as well as television productions.
Miriam Laznia
Miriam Laznia's musical career began in the city of Salzburg, where she discovered her love of making music at a young age, especially playing the piano and singing in choirs. She was particularly influenced musically by her training in the preparatory course for piano at the Mozarteum University (2011-2019), where she also gained her first experience in conducting, improvising and composing.
Since 2020, Miriam has been studying music education and instrumental music education with a major in choral conducting, as well as a master's degree in piano pedagogy at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Her teachers include Elisabeth Aigner-Monarth (piano), Agnes Schnabl and Johannes Hiemetsberger (choral conducting). She gained formative artistic impulses at courses and masterclasses for choral conducting with Johannes Prinz, Jan Schumacher and Martin Steidler, among others.
She also gained extensive practical experience by singing in choirs such as the Wiener Singverein, the Coro Siamo and the Webern Chamber Choir.
Miriam is active as a speaker at singing and music-making weeks, works as a piano teacher and is a student assistant in the conducting department at the mdw's Anton Bruckner Institute. With experimental piano music and singing, she realises interdisciplinary projects as an improviser-performer with the author Elke Laznia and also performs regularly as a conductor, répétiteur, choral singer and pianist.
Besides being one of the conductresses of the EnChoir Vienna and director of it’s vocal ensemble, Miriam is currently a scholarship holder of the artistic assistance of Neue Wiener Stimmen for the 2024/25 season.