Biography

Nihad Hrustanbegovic was born in 1973 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and started music education at the age of nine at the music school in the city of Bijeljina. At the age of 15, he started professional musical education in the Music college in the city of Tuzla. Between 1988 and 1991, Nihad, won five different prizes as accordionist at the “Concurs for music students of Bosnia and former Yugoslavia”, among the others three prizes as soloist. In 1995 He continued his music education in Netherlands at the ArtEZ - College for arts at Arnhem and Messiaen academy – special school for master of music. N. Hrustanbegovic received his Bachelors degree in 2000, and in 2002 his Master of Music degree with Cum Laude. Nihad Hrustanbegovic has performed in the Netherlands in 1998 at The Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht during the Golden Jubilee of The Foundation for Refugee Students UAF in the presence Her Majesty Queen Beatrix and in 2005 at the “Knight Hal” in Den Haag during the fifth “Van Heuven Goedhart-Congres'.

As the CD producer, he realised his first solo album ‘The Best of Concert Accordion’ on March of 27th 2007. The debut presentation of the CD was presented in one of the most fameus Dutch TV shows ‘De wereld draait door’ - on March 28th. The Best of Concert Accordion includes classical transcriptions (Bach, Scarlatti, Grieg, Paganini), original contemporary works for solo accordion (Gubaidulina, Schmidt), and world music compositions (Semionov, Hrustanbegovic). In the same year he composed and played the music TV comercial tune ‘Wereldpromenade’ for the Heineken Extra Cold. In 2010 he relased CD opus 7 The Cross-over and in 2011 'Live in Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam'.

Nihad Hrustanbegovic co-operates also with many artists among others with Al Di Meola, Grace Jones, The jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, “The Corpus” from Amsterdam and Mozes Rosenberg. During his first accordion recital on 6th juni 2010 in Concertgebouw in Amsterdam he presented his second solo album Opus 7 The Cross-over and got the huge appreciation in Dutch News Paper Trouw by the journalist Stan Rijven: “What Pablo Casals did for emancipation of the cello, and Astor Piazzola of the bandoneon is Nihad Hrustanbegovic doing for accordion. He gives a ‘poor man’s piano’ admirable place at the Concert stage”.

Between 1995 and 2011 he performed in many European countries, amoung the others in, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech republic, Germany, Hungary, France, Finland, Spain, England, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Zwitserland.