prof. Lovro Sodja

A musician, organiser and writer. He graduated from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. For 49 years he taught flute and recorder at the Franc Šturm and Vič-Rudnik Music Schools in Ljubljana, and from 1980 to 2005 he also taught part-time at the Slovenian Music School in Carinthia in Klagenfurt, where he served as pedagogical director for eleven years (1986–1997). In his pedagogical work he devoted particular attention to the teaching of early music on the recorder. In 1980 he founded the Society of Music Pedagogues of Ljubljana, Zasavje and Notranjska and served as its president, and from 1982 to 1992 he was president of the Association of Societies of Music Pedagogues of Slovenia. From 1992 to 2003 he served as Secretary of the Commission for Music Competitions at the Council for Music Education of the Republic of Slovenia. In 1992 he initiated the professional establishment of this commission, known as TEMSIG. In 2002 he was elected to the Executive Board of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY), serving until October 2008. Since 2004 he has been active in the Slovene-Austrian Friendship Society in Ljubljana, first as board member and secretary and since 2011 as its president. He has also served on international early music competition juries in Hamburg and Prague and in 1988 proposed the establishment of the Gerbič Awards for music pedagogues. In 2005 he received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, and in 2019 the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, awarded by the Austrian President Dr Alexander Van der Bellen. More than 530 of his articles have been published in Slovenian and Austrian media.