Emilija Kortus

Emilija Kortus was born in 1994 in Toronto, Canada.  Growing up in Belgrade, Serbia, she began playing the violin at the age of 5. She won 1st prizes at the State Competitions: 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, becoming the laureate in 2010. In 2009, she won the 1st prize of the First national competition of young violinists, „Société General Serbia“.

Aged 16, she was officially a student of The Faculty of Music Arts in Belgrade. Studying with Maria Spengler, she performed at many concerts organized by the University and also as one of the violinists of  the chamber orchestra “St. George Strings”. She had solo recitals in the “Serbian Gallery of Science and Arts” in years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 – winning a prize of “Stanojlo Rajicic” for the best recital of the season 2013/14. She performed the premiere of John Cage’s “Cheap Imitation” in Serbia.

In august 2011, 2012 and 2013 she took part in “The International Holland Music Sessions”, working with professors David Takeno, Krzysztof Wegrzyn and György Pauk in Bergen, Netherlands. In 2011 and 2014 she took part of a 6-day masterclass located in the south – east of France, working and sharing the stage with Nemanja Radulović.

Graduating her bachelor degree in 2014, she decides to continue her studies in Leipzig, Germany, coming to work with Carolin Widmann. In 2018 she finishes her Master studies, but continues to work with Carolin for another three years of the “Meisterklassenexamen” (Artist degree-Doctorate) at the University of Music and Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig, being one of the youngest to have enrolled to this study programme. Since 2016 she is a member of the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig (mko-leipzig), performing in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and more.

She was a part of a piano trio (2017-2020), the ‘Max Klinger’ piano trio (piano – Hyelee Kang, cello – Timothy Hopkins), and took part at the HARMOS Festival in Porto, and in the Houston Tour organised by the HMT Leipzig and the Shepherd School of Music, both in 2018. Highly active in solo and chamber music performances, she gives recitals in Mendelssohn-Haus, Leipzig, and takes part of the Notenspur Project in Leipzig. In 2018 she was supported by the Fondation “L’Abri” to give recitals in Geneva, Switzerland. She is one of the recipients of the Deutschlandstipendium (2018) and Landesstipendium Sachsen (2020).

Since november 2018 she was an Intern/Academist (Stipendiat) of the chamber orchestra Kammerakademie Potsdam.

She is the holder of the “Landesstipendium Sachsens”, a scholarship given from the Ministry of Germany for her performances and studies in Leipzig.

In November 2020 she was the Finalist of the international Violin Competition in Paris “Via Luce”.

Since June 2020, Emilija plays a violin from Francesco Ruggieri (1680) generously loaned from Gabriele Forberg-Schneider and the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig.