Luka Juhart - (text by Luka Zagoričnik)

The accordionist Luka Juhart belongs to that generation of young Slovene musicians, performers, and interpreters who are enthusiastically, painstakingly, and passionately devoted to contemporary music repertoires. That is, to performing contemporary classical music works of the past century and current compositions of foreign and home composers, with whom Juhart collaborates very closely already during the composition process. These compositions often balance precariously on the verge of performability, on the very edge, which not only demands exceptional skills and a refined ear for music – thus intentionally or unintentionally nurturing the virtuoso in the performer himself – but also a considerable ability to co-create, to participate in decision making, and to offer initiatives and decisions about how to read the music and other composition materials. Juhart attracted the attention of the Slovene wider public with compositions by Vinko Globokar and by Uroš Rojko, with whom he often appears in smaller chamber ensembles. Juhart has completed the bulk of his studies abroad, as an instrumentalist. After graduating from Maribor Music High School under Prof. Andrej Lorber, he enrolled to the class of Prof. Hugo Noth at the Academy of Music in Trossingen, Germany. In 2005, he graduated from music pedagogy and in 2006 received an art degree. In 2008, Juhart completed his Master’s degree in the class of Prof. Stephan Hussong at the Academy of Music in Würzburg. Juhart is a multiple winner of international and national competitions, the recipient of the 2001 Roman Klasinc Award for exceptional achievements, the 2002 recipient of the DAAD foundation award for best exchange student at the Academy of Music in Trossingen, Germany, the recipient of the Iris Marquardt Preis Award for best student of the same school, and the 2008 recipient of the Golden Bird Award for music. Besides recording for numerous national and foreign radio stations and collaborating with countless prominent home and international chamber, orchestral, and other ensembles, Juhart spends most of his talents collaborating with the contemporaneous generation of composers. Among others, he has collaborated with Thomas Larcher, Klaus Huber, Eduardo Demzo, Volker Heyne, Adrian Seiber, and Stefan Beyer. At home, he regularly collaborates with Vinko Globokar and Uroš Rajh, and among the younger generation of composers with Bojana Šaljič Podešva and Matej Bonina, for example. His interpretation of Matej Bonino’s composition for accordion, percussions, and a plastic tube ‘One Man Band’ premiered this year in the event ‘Forgotten, Overlooked’, while in 2008 Juhart boldly entered the field of electroacoustic music with a composition for accordion and magnetic tape ‘Meditation on Presence’, composed by Bojana Šaljič Podešva. This year, Juhart appeared alongside Aventure Ensemble and the Freiburg Anton Webern Choir in Uroš Rojko’s work ‘King David’, which was performed in Slovenia and abroad. He also participated as a soloist in Vinko Globokar’s composition for accordion, percussions, the choir, and orchestra ‘Radiographie d’un Roman’, which was performed at this year’s edition of Donaueschinger Musiktage. Juhart is noted not only by a broad repertoire, encompassing a wide range of classical works, not only by virtuosity and an ear for contemporary streaming in music, but also by his playful attitude toward extended performing techniques, toward electronics, and electroacoustic sound, as well as by flirting with performativity, such as is needed, for example, in the interpretation of the extremely demanding Vinko Globokar’s piece ‘Dialogue Uber Luft’, which Juhart performs regularly. Alongside redefining the accordion in the Slovene space, with which he is stepping into a circle of contemporary Slovene accordionists, such as Bratko Bibič, Marko Hatlak, and others, Juhart’s main val