Jovan Kolundžija
Jovan Kolundžija is a violin maestro and politician in Serbia.Early life and career as violinist
Kolundžija was born in Belgrade, in what was then the People's Republic of Serbia in the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He holds a master's degree in music from the University of Arts in Belgrade and has studied with Henryk Szeryng. He performs on a 1745 Guarnerius.
Kolundžija is the founder of the Guarnerius Centre for Fine Arts in Belgrade, which was recognized as an institution of cultural significance by the government of Serbia in 2013. He has participated in more than four thousand concerts internationally, including performances at Carnegie Hall and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.
In 1994, Kolundžija was the featured violinist for a program called The Ten Magnificents, comprising performances of concertos by J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Max Bruch, Édouard Lalo, Henryk Wieniawski, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms over the course of four days. In 2008, he performed a program called Do You Love Beethoven? in Belgrade, consisting of all of Beethoven's sonatas for solo violin and piano.
He is the brother of pianist Nada Kolundžija, with whom he has frequently performed.Politician
Kolundžija appeared in the third position on the Aleksandar Vučić — For Our Children coalition electoral list led by the Serbian Progressive Party in the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election. This was tantamount to election, and with the list having secured a landslide victory he is slated to be awarded a seat in the new assembly. He has said that he will serve as a Progressive Party MP in a non-partisan capacity and will work for meaningful changes in Serbia's cultural sector.
