Milica Pap

Since September 2008 she has lived in France sharing her time between Nantes and Paris . In the former city she has already built a reputation as a teacher and vocal accompanist while also giving recitals. In Paris her work has centred round her ambition to study the work and set up of the world-famous Paris Conservatoire with the hope of one day establishing a similar institution in Sarajevo. French musicians and musicologists have received her enthusiastically and admire her plans.

As her reputation grew, Pap served as head of the piano department at the Sarajevo Music Academy (2005/06) and was given a visiting professorship at Sarajevo University in 2006. She accepted in 2007 to be in charge of European reform of education in her university (Bologna Process).

The major Russian piano composers feature strongly in her performing repertoire, especially Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. Indeed, in 2003 at the meeting of the EPTA (European piano teachers association) she was invited to play Rachmaninov's second concerto with the Belgrade Symphony Orchestra. This led to a scholarship offer at the Luxembourg Conservatoire for one year which she took up and during which she was awarded the " Victor Fenigstein " prize for outstanding talent. She graduated there with a Diplôme Supérieur de Piano studying under professor S. Bausch and gained first prize for harmony, counterpoint, fugue and composition under professor A. Mullenbach.

However, like so many Yugoslavians born before the Balkan conflicts of the last decade, her career has been hampered and her life scarred by the misfortunes of war. For four years when she was in Belgrade she never set eyes on her mother and was basically a stateless person with no passport who could not travel anywhere. These were the years when most young virtuosi would be making their mark on the world stage. In addition this experience made her very sympathetic to ethnic minorities suffering from persecution as her own family came from several different ethnic groups. In 1998 she even tried, with help from UNESCO, to start a project called "Music without Frontiers" to unite the Balkan peoples, but so far it has proved politically impractical. However it is still an ambition she wants to fulfill someday.

Pap was fortunate to study under a series of leading pianists and teachers, including A.Valdma, N. LJ. Starkman, S. Bogino, V. Ogarkov, S. Dorensky, L. Istvan, I. Khudolei, Y. Kot, I. Alekseyhuk, R. Kehrer, D. Anderson, P. Scheyder, L. Pogorelich and D. Protopopescu. This led to her being given a teaching post at the university at the age of 21, and in 1997 she became a professor of music there, specialising in piano, chamber music and accompaniment. By 2000 she also held a professorship at the Sarajevo Music Academy.

By the age of 10 Pap could play works by nearly all the leading composers and gave her first public recital when she was just 14. The Boznian-Herzgovinian authorities awarded her a scholarship to the faculty of music at Belgrade University in 1991, when she came first in the entrance exams that year at the age of 17. While there, she won numerous prizes and competitions, notably the Olga Mihajlovic Prize for best pianist in the university and the Radmila Djordjevic Prize for best piano accompanist. She also won several competitions and prizes during this time, of which the Petar Konjovic Prize pleased her most.

Milica Pap (born December 14, 1973, in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia) is a classical pianist of Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Serbian and Croatian descent.