About me
Damir L. Sertić alias Damn Ear
... a Croatian native, born and grown up in Munich, took his first piano lesson at the age of five. Later, he attended a (former Yugoslavian) preparatory school for musical education, where he was taught by Ljubinka Mirković. He began his piano studies in Munich in 1993 at the Richard-Strauss-Conservatorium, an affiliate of the Munich Advanced School for Music and Theatre, where he received a degree in music pedagogy in 1998 and a performance diploma in 2000. At the Conservatorium Damir studied under Alla v. Buch, Vadim Suchanov, and Gernot Sieber.
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From 1999, Damir L. Sertić continued his studies in piano at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, where he was taught by Alexej Lubimov, and received his master's degree in 2007. During his piano studies, he has been an active participant in many master classes, working with many distinguished artists such as Alexei Nasedkin, Rudolf Kehrer, Thomas Larcher and Elisso Virssaladze.
In addition to his pedagogical and artistic activities, he studied for his doctorate which he was awarded in 2018 for his thesis „About the Relation of Hearing Ability and Performance Quality“ – an extensive research project into the significance for pianists of perfect as against relative pitch.
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Damir won third prize at the Lions-Music-Competition for Young Artists in May 2002, and was invited to give concerts in Zagreb as the “Best Croatian Participant” of the Zagreb 2004 International Piano Competition. He has performed in Europe and North America, giving concerts and participating in ensembles in the USA, the UK, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, and Switzerland.
As an expert on the fortepiano, he has worked in Salzburg with the Mozarteum Foundation since 2005, performing regularly on historical instruments, such as Mozart's own Anton Walter fortepiano from Vienna, made in 1781.
Since 2006, he has also been the resident concert pianist at Schloss Leopoldskron.
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Damir was already busy with his career as a concert pianist and piano teacher, when he discovered his countertenor voice and his love for early vocal music. From 2001 he started taking singing lessons with Catarina Lybeck and later on from 2006 with Monika Lenz.
His debut as a singer was in November 2007 with “Musik, daran die Welten hängen” for string quartet, piano, percussions and countertenor by Wolfgang Roscher (broadcasted live by ORF from the “Solitär-hall” in Salzburg) and he sang in opera and concerts in Munich, Salzburg and around the UK. At the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2009 he was a member of the Salzburg Bach Choir in the Handel opera “Theodora” under Ivor Bolton.
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He is also passionate about composing and writing songs. While studying at the “Mozarteum” he had the privilege to attend improvisation and harmony lessons with Alexander Mullenbach. His models for composition have been the great classical masters, especially Prokofiev, but also the most innovative pop artists such as Björk, who allowed him to publish his “Six Variations for Piano on [her] 'Overture'”. In addition to classical compositions, the artist also expresses himself in his own alternative “pop” songs, mixed with electronic music. His first single “Stronger Forces” and its music video came out in November 2011.