MY STUDENT MOBILITY IN GRAZ: Lazar Šarenac

Lazar Šarenac
University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music

Erasmus+ Mobility for Studies at:

Academy of Music in Graz, Austria

My long time wish to study at the prestigious jazz department of Kunstuniverzität Graz finally came true in the 6th semester of my Bachelor studies.  I feel really grateful that I had a chance to study in Graz, since this experience turned up to be a great impact on my both personal and musical life.

I had a great privilege to study with late James Rotondi. He was (currently?) one of the best jazz musicians in the world, my personal favorite, and the best teacher I’ve ever had. Every lesson inspired me to work harder. During last semester my approach to playing jazz completely changed and I was constantly listening to precious stories about his life and his experience with other great jazz musicians. Jim always supported be, gave me a great feedback, and now I am even more motivated to continue with my life long study process.

It didn’t take a long time for me to feel ’like at home’ at my new faculty. I quickly found a lot of new friends, and it’s worth a mention that a lot of people there are from our neighbouring countries. Everybody from teaching staff was very welcoming, friendly and patient with my eventual language barriers. Faculty organises many concerts and events, I went to almost every jam session so it was easy for me to quickly met and play with a lot of people.

Faculty possesses a lot of well-equiped rooms for teaching and practicing. In comparision to jazz department in Belgrade, there are a lot more students in Graz and more strictly jazz subjects?. There are two big bands, a lot of stylisticly different enembles, and a wide choise of interesting elective subjects.

I find this experience very valuable for my life, and I would recommend it to everyone. Living alone in a foreign country, trying to fit in to a new circle of people, and learning from a people from another culture , are among other, quintessential things for musicians’s artistic and personal development. Graz is a beautiful city, similar to my hometown Novi Sad, and I hope that my wonderful experience there will encourage other students to apply for studying at KUG.