Mário Sedlár, PhD. is a Slovak organist, pianist, musicologist, and pedagogue working in Opava and Ostrava.
He studied organ playing at the Bratislava Conservatory with Imrich Szabó, at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna with Herbert Tachezi, and later graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in the organ class of Ferdinand Klinda. In addition to music studies (in Bratislava, Vienna, and Luxembourg), he completed a master’s degree in musicology at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, and also doctoral studies at Comenius University and the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He deepened his artistic knowledge and education at International Music Academies under figures such as Kenneth Gilbert, Jean Guillou, Olivier Latry, Ludger Lohmann, Klaus Eichhorn, Martin Sander, and others.
Pedagogically, Mário Sedlár has taught at the Bratislava Conservatory and the Faculty of Education at the Catholic University in Ružomberok (organ playing), where he also defended his doctoral rigorous thesis in organ pedagogy (2003). Since 2004, he has been teaching and leading the organ department at the Church Conservatory in Opava (Czech Republic).
He has successfully participated in and is a laureate of domestic and international music academies, festivals, and competitions, such as Bratislava (laureate), Trnava, Nitra, Piešťany, Žilina, Banská Bystrica, Košice, Prague, Brno, Opava (laureate), Warsaw, Luxembourg, Zurich, Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Innsbruck, Gdansk, Raciborz, Lecco, Loretto, Pola de Siero, Korschenbroich, etc. During his church music studies at the conservatory, he performed as an organist and member of the Conservatory Choir on concert tours in the USA (Boston, New York, Northampton – 1994), France (Cannes – 1993), and Italy (Loretto – 1995). He collaborated and recorded CDs and performed with the Bratislava Slovak Radio Choir at many locations in Slovakia (Bratislava, Piešťany, Banská Bystrica, Košice, etc.) and in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Croatia, etc.). He has appeared in numerous live broadcasts on Slovak Radio – Rádio Devín, as well as Czech Radio – Station Vltava (for example, the 2002 concert at Valtice Castle, Czech Republic). His organ concert from the Italian monastery Oropa in July 2000 was broadcast by Radio Vaticana.
He is a founding member of the artistic ensemble for the interpretation of sacred music Harmonia Seraphica, specializing in old European and Slovak organ music (Bruhns, Bach, Purcell, Roškovský, Zarewutius, etc.). He regularly performs works by Slovak composers of Romanticism and the 20th century (Bella, Trnavský, Suchoň, Zeljenka, Zimmer, and others). In 1997, he premiered in Slovakia Max Reger’s organ work Fantasie und Fuge d-Moll, Op. 135/5 – Original-Fassung and a piece by contemporary German composer Adriana Hölszky: „Und ich sah´, wie die gläsernes Meer mit Feuer gemischt“ and in 2000 Rheinberger’s Concerto in G minor for organ and orchestra No. 2, Op. 177.
In chamber music interpretation, he collaborates with vocal and instrumental soloists such as J. Pastorková, H. Varga-Bach, Z. Fišerová, L. Korbelová, L. Ramíková, A. Jablokov, J. Pehal, M. Žuk-Olszewski, A. Čajová, E. Čambálová, M. Babjak, Ľ. Vargicová, I. Matyášová, R. Suchán, J. Černohorský, G. Agratina, D. Waldhansová, M. Bančej, V. Černá, L. Dlouhá, and others.
He has also performed with the Slovak Philharmonic, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, State Chamber Orchestra Žilina, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, The Czech Ensemble Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Slovak Radio Choir, Lúčnica Choir, ensembles Musica Vocalis, Pressburg Singers, Laudate Dominum, and others, as well as with conductors Vladimír Válka (Czech Republic), Roman Válka (Czech Republic), Jiří Šimáček (Czech Republic), Christian Gausch (Germany), Keith Brion (USA), Leoš Svárovský (Czech Republic), Branislav Kostka, Janka Rychlá, Dušan Štefánik, Ivan Anguelov (Austria), Zsolt Nagy (Hungary), Jakub Žídek, Jiří Šikul (Czech Republic), and Kremena Pešakova (Bulgaria/Czech Republic).
He regularly publishes scholarly articles, reviews, and critiques in the journals Adoremus – Adoramus Te (editorial board member since 2000), Varhaník, Slovenská hudba, and Hudobný život.
“…the performer showed the experience of a concert, technically skilled player who understands the content of the music and can expressively sing it, especially in lyrical passages. Mário Sedlár offers an art of powerful expression, whose naturalness, combined with the creation of musical tension, has nothing to do with ostentation or empty virtuosity.” (Wiesnerová, Markéta: Organ Romantic in Opava. In: Harmonie 2010, no.6, pp. 54-55.)