Jure Cerkovnik (Slovenia, 1990) is a young Slovenian classical guitarist. He graduated in 2013 from Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna (Austria) in class of distinguished guitarist and pedagogue Alvaro Pierri. In his class in 2015 he finished his master studies. He started his second master degree on Hochschule der Künste in Zürich in class of professor Anders Miolin, where he also works as a teaching assistant. Jure participated on many national and international music competitions and won 17 first, second and special prizes, among which are several prizes won on some of the most important competitions in Europe such as Forrum Wien competition in Vienna (Austria) and Anna Amalia competition in Weimar (Germany). He is a first prize holder of Slovenian national music competition. In April 2013 he won first prize on Sarajevo International Guitar Festival competition, and was given an opportunity to participate on world’s biggest guitar competition Guitar Foundation of America held in June 2013 in Louisville (USA), where he was one of the 12 best competitors. He performed in many parts of Europe (Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia) and in the United States of America. In February 2017 he had his solistic debut in famous Konzerthaus in Vienna. Music critics on several occasions recognized the quality and value of his performances offered to audience, and one of them, after the concert in Ljubljana, wrote as follows: “Cerkovnik showed that, although he is still young, he is capable of creating such profound, narrative interpretation of classical music inwrought with multitude of various emotions.” (Tomaž Gržeta)
He has also performed as a soloist with several orchestras, Symphonic orchestra Simfonika from Vrhnika (Slovenia), with whom Jure performed concert Fantasia para un gentilhombre by famous Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo, and Sarajevo philharmonic orchestra under the baton of Austrian conductor Ralph Kircher, with whom he performed one of the greatest pieces in guitar literature, one of the most beautiful and most demanding concert pieces, Concierto de Aranjuez also written by Joaquin Rodrigo. He has made many recordings for archive of RTV Slovenia. His repertoire is consisted of numerous pieces from different epochs, from Renaissance and Baroque, to contemporary guitar pieces of 20th and 21st century.