Event

Guitarist Goran Ivanovic

Sunday, May 18, 2025
3:00 pm - 4:15 pm
Petty Auditorium

One of the most versatile, skilled, and curious musicians in Chicago, guitarist Goran Ivanovic has built a career built upon exploration.

Born and raised in Croatia, his parents were expelled in the late 1990s. The family was granted asylum in the U.S. and settled in Chicago.

Goran's repertoire includes not only European classical music and Balkan sounds, but jazz and flamenco as well.

He has recorded duet albums with the great Pakistani-Chilean jazz guitarist Fareed Haque as well as Greek-American musician Andreas Kapsalis and is a key member of the quartet Eastern Blok with Matt Ulery, Doug Rosenberg, and Michael Caskey, a combo that deftly surveys the folk music of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Serbia in a distinctly jazz-oriented context, embroidering timeless Balkan melodies and rhythms with sophisticated improvisational gambits.