Biography
Marija Župić Bošnjak began the clarinet at the Jakov Gotovac music school in Sinj and continued in Dubrovnik at the Luka Sorkočević art school, studying both music theory and clarinet with Pietro Cavaliere. She read clarinet at the Academy of Music in Zagreb with Josip Tonžetić, graduating with honours, and held a three-year scholarship in Alfred Prinz’s class at the International Summer Academy Vienna–Prague–Budapest. Further study took her to the summer academy of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and to seminars with artists including Prinz, Goričar, Deplus, Meyer, Stevenson, Boeykens, Urdano and Cavallin.
In 2003 she received the interpretation prize for a work by Gottfried von Einem at the Summer Academy’s international competition, and in 2006 the Croatian Society of Composers’ award for the best performance of Marko Ruždjak’s “Versus”. She has appeared as soloist with the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra in concertos by Donizetti, Stamitz, Kramář, Kurpiński and Mozart, and with the Zagreb Soloists in Miletić’s “Voice from Dubrovnik”.
A dedicated chamber musician, she has played with the wind quintet Elfi, the trio Tritonus and piano-trio partners in repertoire from Mozart, Weber and Reicha to Brahms, Bartók, Stravinsky, Khachaturian, Papandopulo, Skender and Palanović. Orchestral collaborations include the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Croatian National Orchestra, the Symphonic Wind Orchestra of the Croatian Armed Forces and the Croatian Chamber Orchestra; during years spent in Florida she was solo clarinet of the Symphonic Band of the Palm Beaches.
Teaching since 2003 — first at the Milka Trnina school in Ivanić Grad and in Jastrebarsko, and from 2010 at GU Elly Bašić in Zagreb — she has guided students to regular prizes at the regional and national competitions of HDGPP (the Croatian Society of Music and Dance Pedagogues) and the Education and Teacher Training Agency, and to international awards at “Woodwind and Brass” in Varaždin, “Distant Chords” in Split, “Davorin Jenko” in Belgrade, the Sirmium Music Fest in Srijemska Mitrovica, the Emona festival in Ljubljana and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. At VIMM she leads the chamber-ensemble programme.