Merima kljuco biography

Merima Ključo (born 26 December 1973) is a Bosnian concert accordionist and composer.
Merima Ključo is a Bosnian concert accordionist and composer.
With a background in contemporary music, she performs internationally as a recitalist and has been guest soloist with many orchestras, including the Scottish.

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Merima Ključo

Merima Ključo
Ključo with her accordion
Born	(1973-12-26) 26 December 1973 (age 51) Livno, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia
Genres	Classical, New music, World, Sephardic, Klezmer, Balkan, Sevdah
Occupation(s)	Concert accordionist, composer, arranger, producer
Instrument	concert accordion
Website	www.merimakljuco.com

Musical artist

Merima Ključo (born 26 December 1973) is a Bosnian concert accordionist and composer. In 1993 she moved to the Netherlands as a refugee of the Bosnian War. Currently she is a Bosnian-Dutch citizen. After receiving a Genius visa in 2011 she became an American resident and is based in Los Angeles.

Ključo is a classically trained accordionist, specialized in contemporary music. She is fluent in different musical idioms and her repertoire draws from classical, avant-garde and experimental music, as well as her own compositions where Balkan, Sephardic and Klezmer traditions meet contemporary techniques.

Ključo has been a guest soloist with a number of symphonic orchestras, including the

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CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with Merima Ključo

by Mike Telin

“I have always been fascinated by the Sarajevo Haggadah, with its story and amazing history,” Bosnian-born accordionist and composer Merima Ključo told ClevelandClassical.com in a 2015 interview. “After reading Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, I became obsessed with the idea of a project that would musically and visually follow the Haggadah’s journey from Spain to Sarajevo.”

Dating from 14th-century Spain, the Jewish prayer book that became known as the Sarajevo Haggadah went through many hands before ending up in Bosnia, having been rescued from destruction by such unlikely figures as a Jesuit priest in Venice and a Muslim imam in Sarajevo — who hid it from the Nazis in the library of his mosque during World War II after it was smuggled out of the Bosnian National Museum by its chief librarian.

That project was presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art in its original scoring for accordion and piano in November of 2015. This week Merima Ključo will return to Cleveland for six free performances of he

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Concert accordionist Merima Ključo imbues a dizzying variety of music with playing that moves with its depth of understanding and experience.

With a background in contemporary music, she performs internationally as a recitalist and has been guest soloist with many orchestras, including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Holland Symphonia, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Citymusic Cleveland. As soloist, she has participated in a number of renowned festivals, including the St. Magnus Festival (Scotland), the City of London Festival, the Gaudeamus Festival (Amsterdam), and the Gubaidulina Festival, which honored one of the greatest composers of our time, Sofia Gubaidulina.

She was a member of the Checkpoint KBK with Iva Bittova and David Krakauer, and Serendipity 4 with singers Theodore Bikel and Shura Lipovsky, and pianist Tamara Brooks, and was a regular guest of MusikFabrik, the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble and the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble. She frequently collaborates with renowned artists and authors such as Miroslav Tadić, Saša Stanišić, Jelena Milušić and M