Mihajlo Zurkovic

Mihajlo Zurkovic (1978) was born in Sombor, Serbia where he started playing piano. At the age of 14, being given a full scholarship, he became a student of the ?Zero Year? (for outstanding young talents) at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, in the class of Jokuthon Mihailovic. He graduated and later obtained a master?s degree at the Academy of Arts in the same class. At present, Zurkovic is on doctoral studying program at the Faculty of Music Art in Belgrade under Jokuthon Mihailovic?s mentoring and also employed as a docent lecturer for piano at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad.

He won numerous awards at national and international competitions and among them the most important are: Top Prize at the International Competition ?Petar Konjovic? (Belgrade, 1995), First Prize at the European Piano Competition (Moncalieri ? Italy, 1995), Third Prize at the International Competition ?Frederic Chopin? (Novi Sad, 1997), Finalist of the Dinu Lipatti Competition (Bucharest ? Romania, 2002), First Prize at the International Forum (Kiev ? Ukraine, 2009).

He had his first solo concert at the age of 12 and since then he has played over 300 recitals, chamber music concerts and appeared many times as a soloist with different orchestras. His performances have led him round Europe (Italy, France, Romania, Hungary, Russia, Germany, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia), Japan and USA.

He participated in the project ?Operation 40 Fingers? within he had a concert tour in Italy in the concert season 2007/08.

In December 2009, he had debut recitals in prestigious halls of New York : two concerts in Bechstein Concert Hall and a concert in Symphony Space. In March 2010, he proceeded his concert activity with the recitals in Russia, playing in very important halls of St. Petersburg such as: Small Hall of Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, The Great Hall of Mussorgsky College (within the festival dedicated to Frederic Chopin) and in one of the most prestigious halls in St. Petersburg ? Sheremetev Castle.

He has recorded for Swiss Radio, Radio Vaticana, Radio Television of Montenegro, MTV2-Hungarian National Television and Serbian National Television.

In 2009, Zurkovic recorded LIVE CD produced by ?Laza Kostic? Cultural Centre (Sombor) and the Academy of Arts (Novi Sad) with pieces by Schubert, Scriabin, Brahms and Chopin.

? ?For its part, Misha Zurković sported nothing short of amazing piano skills. His is to be considered in all respect a superior talent, unconditionally capable of expressiveness and clarity of the sound and should be considered, without any fear of exaggeration, one of the biggest names in the piano world? ?

Alessandro Samsa, Recensioni di musica classica, 2014