Accordion Department student concerts take place at 6 p.m. every second and third Friday of each month. Entrance to these concerts is free.
HISTORY OF THE ACCORDION DEPARTMENT
The Accordion Department was established within Isidor Bajić Music School in the academic year of 1954/1955. Three years later, accordion instruction was offered at both elementary and high school levels, and in 1961 the first generation of students matriculated from the high school.
The founder and first accordion teacher was Margita Baračkov, a prominent pedagogue whose professional activity assumed a pioneering spirit in the area. Her efforts earned the department an esteemed reputation, one which it has preserved to the present day, as it is widely considered a premier center of accordion education. As a result, generations of students have been arriving from throughout the former Yugoslavia to study at the Accordion Department of Isidor Bajić Music School.
Since accordion had long been a popular folk instrument among the people in this region, it was Margita Baračkov’s goal to popularize it as an artistic instrument as well. The idea was adopted and further developed by other teachers in the department, who, led by Milana Baračkov-Malenica, the daughter of Margita Baračkov, set the foundation for an approach to modern accordion teaching that not only directs the curriculum at Isidor Bajić Music School, but also continues to impact teaching practices across a much wider sphere of influence.
Thus accordion underwent a great expansion in the region, attracting many of the most esteemed contemporary composers from the country, including Karolj Krombholc, Rudolf Bruči, Ivan Kovač, Nikola Petin, Petar Ozgijan, Stevan Divjaković, Slavko Šuklar, and others, whose pieces have significantly enriched the literature for this instrument.
In addition to focusing on solo and chamber music, the Accordion Department has also nurtured accordion orchestral playing since its very establishment. In 1950, Margita Baračkov founded the accordion orchestra Mosquito. Later on, under the baton of Milana Baračkov-Malenica, this orchestra evolved into the Accordion Orchestra AKUD Sonja Marinković, an institution in which all the accordion high school students have gained their orchestral performing experience. In 1980, the Elementary School Accordion Orchestra was also established, which later took the name Margita Baračkov Accordion Orchestra in memory of the Accordion Department’s founder.
Striving to provide its students with educational possibilities of the highest quality, the Accordion Department has organized on many occasions master classes and concerts of such world-reknowned performers and pedagogues as Friedrih Lips, Elsbeth Moser, Raymond Kakony, Boris Lenko, and Klaudiusz Baran, among others.
The results of such dedicated efforts from both teachers and students, the former as well as the current, are manifested in the many top prizes that have been won at the most prestigious accordion competitions in Serbia and abroad.