Jelica Mijanovic
Jelica Mijanovic
Jelica Mijanovic is an award-winning, versatile musician with a rich performing career and years of experience as a professor of guitar at various universities, colleges and conservatories in Canada and Switzerland. Jelica is a guitar and ensemble instructor at Mohawk College, Hamilton. She is currently enrolled in a Doctor of Musical Arts program at the University of Toronto in the class of Jorge Caballero.
Jelica has been invited across Europe to more than 30 international festivals as a soloist, lecturer, or jury member. She is fluent in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Serbian, and she seeks to share her fascination and knowledge about different cultures through her repertoire, teaching, and publications.
Jelica left her native Montenegro at sixteen to study at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She later continued her studies in Switzerland and obtained a Bachelor's degree in Music at the University of Applied Arts and Sciences of Western Switzerland at 19. Two years later, she became the youngest student to obtain a Master's degree in Music Pedagogy from the same institution. She later received a Master's degree in performance in Geneva and Artist Diploma in Music Performance in Strasbourg, France, and Basel, Switzerland.
Jelica’s teachers have included iconic figures in the guitar world, such as Dusan Bogdanovic, Paolo Pegoraro, Stefan Schmidt, Susana Prieto and Oscar Ghiglia. She has taken masterclasses with renowned guitar and lute players such as Pepe Romero, Edin Karamazov, and Zoran Dukic, to name just a few. Jelica Mijanovic taught at the Conservatoire Populaire de Musique, Dance et Theatre in Geneva from 2013 to 2019 and was an Associate Professor at the University of Applied Arts and Sciences of Western Switzerland from 2016 to 2019.
While teaching guitar at Switzerland’s most renowned music institutions, Jelica participated in guitar competitions, played concerts as a soloist and chamber musician, and attended festivals, at times as a participant, lecturer and jury member. Jelica has won 11 first and two second prizes at international guitar competitions such as Gredos San Diego (Madrid), Guitar Art (Belgrade), Incontri Chitaristici di Gargnagno (Brescia, Italy), and she won four first prizes at the National music competition of Montenegro. She received awards in the two largest music competitions in Switzerland – Migros, and the Swiss Association of Musicians, where she competed against all categories of instrumentalists. Jelica has also received more than 20 scholarships from organizations, including Hans Wilsdorf (Rolex), Rotary International, the Italian Embassy in Montenegro, Yehudi Menuhin (Live Music Now), and the Montenegrin Ministry of Culture.
Jelica is also active as a music editor and commissioner of new works. In 2012 she published "The most beautiful classical pieces for young musicians," – a collection of classical music masterpieces she transcribed for beginners, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro. In 2014 she invited composers from Iran, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey/Switzerland, and Serbia/USA to write solo guitar pieces based on Montenegrin traditional music. She then prepared the resulting works, dedicated to and premiered by her, for publication as “Montenegro, Origin and Inspiration” (Musical Center of Montenegro, 2016).