Biography
Artist and concert organist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, born on October 3, 1967 in Sarajevo.
His musical career started at the age of 5, when his parents bought him his first, semi-concert piano. He attended primary and secondary music school in Sarajevo at the piano department, as one of the most talented students, winning a number of awards at national and federal competitions for young pianists. Afterwards he enrolled at the Music Academy in Sarajevo, studying from 1988 to 1992. at the same time Piano playing and Solo singing in the class of professors: Izolda Ambrožić and Radmila Smiljanić.
Due to the war in his country and his native Sarajevo, he left the former Yugoslavia in 1992 as a graduate student and first continued his piano studies at the Conservatory “Gabrielle D’Annunzio” in Pescara – Italy, before coming to the Kingdom of Norway in 1993. He remained there for many years and achieved his full academic, artistic and professional career.
In Norway, in 1993. he enrolled and completed piano studies in the class of professors Mark Nypyrd and Jiri Hlinka at the Barrat Dues Conservatory of Music. Then, as the best candidate of the generation, in 1994 he was admitted to the highest university state music education institution in the Kingdom of Norway “Norges Musikkhogskole” in Oslo, majoring in organ and church music in the class of famous professor Harrald Herresthal. From 1994 to 1998 he studied organ and church music, and worked as an organist and later cantor for the Norwegian Evangelical Church in several churches in Oslo and around.
As part of his studies at the Norges Musikkhogskole in Oslo, he attended many organ master classes in the class of Professor Jon Laukvik from Stuttgart, Professor Olivier Latry, organist of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Maestro Fritjof Bonsaksen, organist of the Nidaros Dom Cathedral, harpsichord by Kenneth Weiss of the Sorbonne University in Paris, Professor Harald Vogel from Hamburg and others. In 1999 he graduated organ at the Norges Musikkhogskole in Oslo in the class of Professor Kaara Nordstog, organist of the Cathedral of Oslo.
Although previously active in concert and engaged in many projects throughout Norway and Scandinavia, with these debut concerts in his career, maestro Kolonomos Martinčević began a long, upward trajectory of his successful artistic and concert career as organist, conductor and chamber musician.
After graduating from the Norges Musikkhogskole, he worked as a cantor and organist in the Fet and Dalen churches near Oslo, and since 2003 he has moved to the famous medieval church of the Tanum kirke in Oslo. Along with his regular work, liturgical and extra-liturgical engagement in the Tanum Church, he was actively working in several other music fields and projects, some of which represented a real rise in his music and concert career.
From 1999 to 2003 he worked as a conductor and general manager of the famous boys’ choir from Oslo “St. Halvard guttene”, with which he toured and traveled many countries, recorded two CDs, visited and performed at St. Chairs in the Vatican, participating in many music festivals and held about 300 concerts. In addition to this he led a number of other amateur and professional ensembles such as the ensemble “Musica Mundana” specializing in the medieval and renaissance musical epoch.
Since 2004, together with two top artists Ya’ak Rubinstein, world-famous violinist from Israel and young accordionist Almir Mešković from Tuzla, BiH, he has founded the “Rubinstein Klezmer Project”. The trio promoted klezmer music style at the highest artistic level, along with ladino music, Jewish Sephardic tradition and elements of Bosnian sevdah and Balkan melody. With a string of over a hundred performances in Norway, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, the Balkans and Europe, and even Africa, the top trio recorded a 2012 CD entitled “Fidler on the Road” at the Pavarotti Music Studio in Mostar – published by the largest publishing house for ethno music content in the world – “Arc Music” from London.
Kolonomos Martinčević distinguished himself with his pedagogical work, both in Norway and in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked on several occasions as an university pedagogue at the Franciscan Novitiate in Livno and as a senior assistant at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Mostar from 2014 – 2021. The crown of his rich career with more than a thousand performances in thirty countries and 11 recorded recordings for world record labels such as Naxos, Arc Music from London, Musikkloften from Oslo, Croatia Records and former Jugoton, Kolonomos Martinčević achieved with his solo master’s organ study at the Zagreb Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 2021 in the class of Professor Mario Penzar.