musician
He comes from Banská Bystrica. He worked as a dancer and musician in several folklore ensembles: children’s folklore ensemble Matičiarik and University folklore ensemble Mladosť. He was strongly influenced by his long-standing friendship with the Latinák family from Heľpa, a family that is a prominent carrier of the Upper Hron voices. He completed two cycles of musical education at the Ján Cikker and Róbert Tatar Music School, which he successfully completed in 2008. From 2005 to 2018 he played in the folk music Sedmokráska at DFS Matičiarik. Since 2018, together with Leonóra Súdiová and Peter Pavlík, he has been leading the new generation of children’s folk music of this ensemble.
During 8 years of his stay in Bratislava he was a dancer in TS Partia and for 7 years he danced in US Lúčnica. After returning to Banská Bystrica in 2016, he started leading the male singing group UFS Mladost’, which focuses primarily on authentic interpretation of Upper Croatian polyphonic singing. From 2013 to 2019 he was an accordionist and vocalist of Katarína Málikova’s ensemble.
In 2019, he founded the project Ondro a kamaráti, which is partly a continuation of Katarína Málikova’s early work, which originated in a band called Katka a kamaráti. The title is adopted with her permission. The biggest success of this project so far has been their participation in the TV show Zem spieva, where they were the first experimental group to reach the final, where their adaptation of the song Hora mi je hora captivated both the jury and the general public. In addition, over the last two years the project has published experimental adaptations of folk songs in the form of videos on social media. The last published video (the song “Preleť vtáčku preleť” in an adaptation with organ) has more than 74 000 views on Facebook in March 2022, the song “Hora mi je hora” has more than 22 000 views on YouTube.
A distinctive feature of this project is the guest artists – friends with whom Ondrej shares a long-standing friendship, connected with rich non-visual spontaneous musical creations in noncommittal experimentation with folk song. The biggest current ambition of the project is to record and release a debut CD.