Ljiljana Nestorovska, MMus
Artistic and teaching activities are the main strongholds of Professor Ljiljana Nestorovska’s endeavors. Her work embodies that rare and precious blend of artistic talent, performance qualities and teaching skills. Professor Nestorovska is a top-level pedagogue who not only brought about the Faculty of Music’s harp class to the highest-ranked one in the region and one of the best in Europe, but also vastly raised interest in this instrument in Serbia and neighboring countries by enhancing the methods of harp teaching and corresponding subjects. Her work significantly contributes to the prestige of the Faculty of music in country and abroad. She is the double recipient of the Acknowledgement for the exceptional contribution to the Faculty of Music’s development (1999 and 2013), as well as the University of Arts in Belgrade Silver Medal (2003).
Ljiljana Nestorovska has been working at the Faculty of Music since 1997, when she was elected as the assistant professor for harp and chamber music, and since 2010 she is acting as a full time professor. During this time, over 20 students earned their bachelor degree in her class, while 6 got their master’s, 2 specialized and 4 magister degrees. Seven students of these were awarded Ministry of education scholarship for scientific and artistic youth. Ljiljana Nestorovska’s students won over 130 awards at national and international competitions. Majority of her former students and pupils are successful orchestra musicians or harp professors in the country and abroad, while more than 10 of them had been awarded prestigious international scholarship grants for postgraduate studies.
Alongside her pedagogic work Ljiljana Nestorovska has realized a very successful concert career. Among her numerous performances, the following ones can be particularly singled out: World Harp Congresses in Geneva, Vancouver and Sidney, Northern Lyre Festival in St. Petersburg International Review of Composers, concerts at International Harp Festival in Belgrade, Harp Festival in Rio de Janeiro, festivals BEMUS, NOMUS, NIMUS in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš respectively, Festival “Baš-čaršijske noći“in Sarajevo, Dubrovnik Summer Festival, and many others. As a soloist, she performed with more that 10 orchestras, with Academic Choir “Collegium Musicum”, and with conductors Bojan Suđić, Darinka Matić Marović, Biljana Radovanović, Vesna Šouc, Dragana Jovanović, Vladimir Kranjčević, Uroš Lajovic, Ken Hsieh, among many others. She regularly performs in various chamber ensembles, among which duos with Ljubiša Jovanović, Ljudmila Gros Popović and Belgrade Harp Quartet stand out. She is a longstanding collaborator of numerous orchestras (Belgrade Philharmonic, Symphony Orchestra of Radio Television of Serbia, Camerata Serbica, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, St. George Strings, Symphony and opera orchestra of Sarajevo, Symphony orchestra of Montenegro, etc.).
Particularly notable is her longstanding collaboration with composers in Serbia, inspiring them for composing for harp and chamber ensembles with harp (with Srdjan Hofman, Svetislav Božić, Milan Mihajlović, Isidora Žebeljan, Vladimir Tošić, Dragana Jovanović, among others). Many composers have dedicated their works to prof. Nestorovska and she regularly performs them on concerts. Apart from her intense artistic and teaching activity, prof. Ljiljana Nestorovska actively contributes to the work in the academic and wider community. She is a valuable and reliable member of Faculty’s bodies and those of many other institutions. She was a member of the Faculty of Music Council (2002–2005), Staff Committee (from 2005) and Head of the Poly-Instrumental Department (2005–2015).
Prof. Ljiljana Nestorovska is the Dean of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade since 2015, currently on her second mandate. She is also a longstanding president of the Poly-instrumental section of the Association of music and ballet teachers, member of the Harpist Association presidency and one of the founders and managers of Belgrade International Harp Festival.