Concert Season 2023/2024

At the Ljubljana Academy of Music, we believe that the student musician develops his or her maximum potential while performing on stage. The concerts are an important and inseparable part of the teaching&learning process and at the same time an ongoing review of the quality of study programs and their content. Arranging more than 150 bigger (and much more departmental and smaller) local and international concerts per year in its Concert Season, the Ljubljana Academy of Music is one of the largest organizers of music events in Slovenia.

Very few other music higher education institutions around the globe offer so much musical production synergy with their local or national music institutions. Slovenia’s leading national orchestras participate in the Tutti concert series of the Academy: the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Slovenian National Theatre Opera & Ballet Ljubljana, the Slovenian National Opera Theatre Maribor Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian Police and Slovenian Army Wind Orchestras, and the Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre. In the same series, the Academy’s Symphony Orchestra, String Orchestra, Wind Orchestra, Big Band, Chamber, and Women’s Choir also give performances. Through the Tutti concert subscription series, more than twenty students per year are selected by audition to perform with these elite, national orchestras as soloists. These orchestras also perform pieces by the students of composition and offer practice opportunities for the conducting students. As a result of this collaboration, senior students are often in high demand as substitutes in the aforementioned orchestras. The orchestra concerts take place in the beautiful concert halls of the main national cultural center Cankarjev dom, the Slovenian Philharmonic Hall in Ljubljana, the Narodni dom in Maribor, the Knight's Hall in Brežice, and in the Academy's Kazina Hall.

Envisioning international collaborations as the main driving force of the future, we continue to encourage music to open dialogues and build strong connections with our partners. In the last fifteen years, the Academy’s symphony orchestra has established its reputation as one of the best European orchestras of its kind. It was invited several times to the Young-Euro-Classic Festival in Berlin’s Konzerthaus. The Academy’s Big Band has very successfully toured Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia. The productions of several operas (Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Piccini’s La buona figliuola, Coryell’s War and Peace, etc.) have received wide acclaim from the public and critics. Every three years the Academy sponsors an International tour of Mini Operas written by students of composition and performed by students of the vocal and instrument departments (e.g. at the Opera Exam Festival in Budapest, at JAMU Brno, and in the Ljubljana National Opera House).  The Ljubljana Academy of Music’s referral service provides gigs for students as soloists or in chamber groups and ensembles.

Each year the students of the Ljubljana Academy of Music have won more than a hundred awards at international and national competitions. There is a high graduate employment rate, and students regularly win auditions for international orchestras each year — such as the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, Nei suoni dei luoghi, CEMAN, EUphony, and others. Within the very rich framework of pedagogical practice, students of the educational programs get an insight into teaching at all levels of musical education. Besides conducting the musical life in Slovenia, many of its alumni have important soloistic careers, perform in the best European symphony orchestras, or lecture at important international institutions. An integrated part of the European-wide Bologna system of comparable standards, the Academy is also a member of a number of international associations and higher music education networks — for example, the AEC, Medinea, CEEC, GMEL, and the Music Education Alliance Across the “Belt and Road”.