Bojan Sudjic

Bojan Suđić is among the leading orchestral conductors in the Balkan region and has been active in many countries beyond his home region. He has been chief conductor of Serbia's RTS Symphony Orchestra since 1992. Bojan Suđić (or Sudjic; Serbian: Бојан Суђић) was born in Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia, in 1965. He attended the University of the Arts in Belgrade, studying in its Faculty of Music, and conducted his first concert there at age 19 while still a student. He took first prize in 1989 at the Yugoslav Competition of Musical Artists, marking the first time the top prize had been given to a conductor in the more than 40 years since the competition had been established. In 1985, Suđić became assistant conductor of the RTS Symphony Orchestra and its associated choir (in full: the Choir and Symphony Orchestra of the Radio and Television of Serbia), and he was elevated to permanent conductor of these ensembles in 1992. He remained in that position as of 2022. The orchestra is also part of the larger RTS Music Production entity, which has furnished soundtracks conducted by Suđić for films both in Serbia (Emil Kusturica's Arizona Dream, 1993) and abroad (Patrice Chereau's Queen Margot, 1995), both of which were released on albums. Outside Serbia, he spent five years as conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, and he has conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland, the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra in Russia, and orchestras in Odense, Denmark; Turku, Finland; and Klagenfurt, Austria. Suđić is also on the faculty as a professor of conducting at Belgrade University, and he conducts that institution's symphony orchestra. Both in Serbia and elsewhere, he is inclined toward conducting works requiring hundreds of performers, such as Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"), the Berlioz Requiem, Op. 5, and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, leading a choir of hundreds of school students from all over Serbia in the latter. In 2023, Suđić and the RTS Symphony Orchestra on an album featuring cello concertos by Saint-Saëns and Lalo, featuring cellist Maja Bogdanovic.
© James Manheim /TiVo