The recipients of the "smaller" awards, known as the Prešeren Fund Awards, are composer and choir leader Ambrož Čopi, film director Janusz Kica, painter Aleksij Kobal, poet Cvetka Lipuš, sculptor Mojca Smerdu and Katarina Stegnar, an actress, dancer and performer. The artists will receive their awards at the traditional ceremony that takes place at Cankar Cultural Centre on the eve of Prešeren's Day.

The winner of Prešeren's Award for lifetime work is humourist and satirist Tone Partljič, who has always wanted to present both sides of life, the happy and the sad one, and often uses humour as a defence mechanism.

The opus of Ivo Petrić spans from early neoclassical echoes through avant-garde to return to tradition. Music has always been his life. He lives with it nonstop and can't imagine his life without it.

In his rich music career, Petrić also worked as an oboist, the artistic leader of the Slovenian Philharmonic, the secretary and edition leader in the Society of Slovene Composers, the head of the Slavko Osterc Ensemble, and a lecturer at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana.

M. K., translated by K. Z.