Doris Kovačić
Artistic Director
Biography
Doris Kovačić was born in 1977 in Rijeka. In 2000, she graduated in Primary Education from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, and in 2006, she completed studies in Music Culture and Arts at the Academy of Music in Pula, specializing in Conducting. She is employed at the Ivan Matetić Ronjgov Music School in Rijeka as a teacher of theoretical music subjects.
She is a co-founder and the artistic director of the Josip Kaplan Youth Choir (Mixed, Girls’, and Kap Children’s Choir) and the Rijeka Chamber Choir Val. She also serves as a mentor in the singing workshop at the School of Creativity Novigradsko proljeće. Doris Kovačić is the author of children’s songs, collections of poetry for children, and textbooks for music education.
With her choirs, she performs at numerous concerts both in Croatia and abroad and consistently wins top awards at competitions. She has received the Award for Young Conductor with Outstanding Performance at the National Choir Competition in Varaždin (2009), the “Čestmir Mirko Dušek” Award for Best Conductor at the International Competition Lege Artis in Tuzla (2018), as well as several awards for artistic impression. She has prepared choirs for performances in operas, musicals, ballets, cantatas, and concerts, including La Bohème, Carmen, The Nutcracker, Carmina Burana, Evita, The Queen of Spades, Stabat Mater, and others.
With the Josip Kaplan Youth Choir, Doris Kovačić won the HRT show Do posljednjeg zbora in 2012. In 2018, at the international competition Lege Artis, she won two Grand Prix awards with the Josip Kaplan Girls’ and Mixed Choirs. In 2023, with the Josip Kaplan Youth Choir, she won the Grand Prix at the National Choir Competition, two international gold medals, two special awards for Best Program Selection, and two awards for Best Performance of a Work by a Croatian Composer.
In 2024, with the Josip Kaplan Youth Choir, she won Gold and the Grand Prix at the international competition Zlatna Lipa Tuhelj in Tuhelj, as well as a gold medal at the 3rd International Choir Competition Lisbon Sings in Lisbon, Portugal. In the same year, at the 17th Meeting of Croatian Choirs in Zagreb, she won a gold award with the Kap Children’s Choir, a gold plaque with the Girls’ Choir at the 21st Meeting of Small Croatian Vocal Ensembles in Đurđevac, and with the Rijeka Chamber Choir Val, a gold plaque and the award for Best Performance of a Work by a Croatian Composer at the national choir meeting.
In 2025, with the Josip Kaplan Youth Choir, she won the 1st Prize, the Abbess Čika Bronze Cross, and, for the fifth consecutive time, the Special Award for Best Program Selection at the 14th International Choir Competition in Zadar. That same year, at the 11th International Competition Canta al Mar in Calella, Spain, she won a Gold Plaque and the title of Winner in the Small Mixed Choirs category.