Portrait of Nemanja Bogunovic

By: Una Zabunov
Belgrade, Aug.15 ,2009, Nemanja Bogunović is a classical guitarist, composer and arranger from Belgrade. He writes his own music and makes arrangements for guitar, and his melodies represent a great combination of virtuosity, colorful expression and delicate sound just as his composition “Lullaby” is.
Nemanja plays the type of music which is suitable for the guitar. That is mostly music from the Romantic era. “I like music of Augustin Barrios and other composers from Latin America, as well as the music of Spanish composers. Also, the music I write is very romantic”, Nemanja told Serbia Today.
This very talented young man started playing the guitar at the age of seven, and gave his first public performance at the age of ten. Many experts have said that he was a wonder child. It came easy to him, but, as he said, he has never played video games . Being an artist is a beautiful thing, but it also carries a big portion of sadness with it. It doesn’t matter how much he achieves, he always thinks it can be better, so Nemanja is never satisfied. That’s a problem sometimes.
He graduated from the Conservatory of Music in Belgrade. Nemanja had the opportunity to study with the Royal Family of classical guitar (Los Romeros) in San Diego, and he attended master classes of many famous guitarists, such as Rolan Dyens.
“Serbian gentleman with a guitar”, as he is called, gave recitals throughout the United States and Europe, and also appeared as a soloist with several chamber and symphonic orchestras in USA and Serbia. His works have been performed by various artists in Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, United States and Venezuela. He has published a “Book of Romantic Melodies” (transcribed works by Chopin, Debussy, Dvorak, Schubert and Schumann). He also published a CD "Ballad for a princess", named after his piece dedicated to HRH Princess Elizabeth Karageorgevich of Serbia.
” It is a great honor to be a family friend of our Royal family. They are royalty, but above all they are very nice people in general, and my relationship with many members of the family may be described as close friendship, which is very precious to me”, Nemanja said.
Many celebrities such as Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Mel Gibson etc. were fascinated with Nemanja’s playing. Most of the celebrities he met are very modest and down to earth people. Nemanja has performed everywhere in the world but he has the biggest stage fright in Belgrade. “Partially because it’s always the hardest to play in front of people who know you so well, and partially because the audience in Belgrade is very demanding”.