Blum Matusja
Main achievement
Bosnian pianist and teacher.
About
She was the dean of the Sarajevo Music Academy for two terms. A recording of a 1995 interview with her is held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Blum was born in Chișinău on January 10, 1914. She studied piano there before moving to the Prague Conservatory, which she graduated from in 1939. While in Prague, she met and married Emerik Blum (1911–1984), a Bosnian politician and businessman who served as the mayor of Sarajevo between 1981 and 1983. She moved to Sarajevo with him and was one of the founders of Collegium Artisticum. She taught piano in Sarajevo and, from 1948 to 1952, worked as a pianist and music educator in Belgrade. Returning to Sarajevo, she was one of the founders of the Sarajevo Music Academy (now part of the University of Sarajevo), where she was a professor and served two terms as dean, between 1963 and 1964 and between 1970 and 1975. An international piano competition, the Matusja Blum Memorial, was held in Sarajevo for the fourth time in 2024. Blum died in Sarajevo on March 25, 1998.
