Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion

Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ljubinka Kulisic received her Bachelor’s and Master of Arts in Music Performance from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland in Lugano. After graduating in Switzerland, she moved to Canada for the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the University of Toronto, where she also worked as a teaching assistant for the Contemporary Music Ensemble. In 2017 she participated in Google Talks in San Francisco where she presented music for accordion to Google engineers. Kulisic participated in numerous concerts across Europe and North America. She has performed as a soloist with the New World Symphony in Miami and at the New England Conservatory in Boston as a member of the organization “Music for Food,” collaborated with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and violist Kim Kashkashian.

In addition to music, she is known in her country of birth for her political engagement. As a reward for her activism, in 2017 she was awarded the “Super Woman” award in her hometown, from which she had to escape with her parents as a one-year-old girl due to civil war.

She speaks four languages: Serbian, English, German, and Italian.