Orest Shourgot

Orest Shourgot, violinist, pedagogue, conductor and chamber musician, professor at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. Born in the family of a university professor dr.sc. Bogdan Shourgot and violinist Volodymyra Shourgot. In 1982, he won first prize at the Kiev Violinists' Competition, where he played the First Concerto in F minor by H. Wieniavsky. The following year, in 1983, he also won first prize at the J. Kocian in the Czech Republic. In 1989, he graduated from the Central Music School in Moscow. That year he received the first prize at the Odessa Violin Competition. From 1993 to 1994 he studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and became concert master of the Contemporary Music Ensemble (ASM) at the Union of Composers of Russia. In 1993 he continued his successful streak — he won first prize at the First International Violinist Competition M.Lysenko in Kharkov. From 1994 to 1996 he completed postgraduate studies at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where he began working as an assistant since 1995. At the First International Violin Competition Abram Jampolski in Dubna in 1996, he won the second prize. As a student, he played in the ensemble Moscow Soloists under the direction of maestro Yuri Bashmet. He has been a Fellow of the New Names Fund sponsored by Anatoly Karpov and Raisa Gorbachev since 1992. He came to Croatia in 1997 and acquired citizenship in 2001. Since 1998 he has been teaching at the Academy of Arts in Split, and since 1999 he has been an assistant professor at the same academy. Since 2001, he has been the concert master of the Zagreb Philharmonic. Since 2005 he has been an assistant professor at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, and since 2010 artistic director of the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra. Since 2011 he is an associate professor at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. That same year he founded the Classicus Soloist Ensemble, which he still leads today.

As a soloist and ensemble player he has performed with leading world musicians and conductors such as: Sir Neville Marriner, Shlomo Mintz, Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Alun Francis, Pavle Dešpalj, Milan Horvat... As a soloist he has been performing since 1981. During his career, he played on rare violins of old Italian masters: Antonio and Hyronimus Amati, Lorenzo Storioni, Giuseppe Guadagnini, Alessandro Gagliano. Since 2011 he has been playing regularly on the King violin of 1735, by the famous Italian master Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù which is owned by HAZU. Also, since 2007 he has been playing on the violin of the Italian master Antonio Vinacci from 1761. Also, in 2015 he played on the violin A. Stradivari Joachim in Cremona.

He is a member of the jury of international violin competitions in Sion (Switzerland) in 2011, Novosibirsk in 2013, Ohrid in 2014 and in Belgrade in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, he performed with the Zagreb Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in New York.

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