Jerry Grcevich

Jerry Grcevich (Croatian: Grčević; born 1951) is a Croatian American folk musician, tamburitza virtuoso, and composer. He is a frontman of the Penn Sembles.^[1]

Grcevic was born in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania to a family of Croatian emigrants from Ozalj, Karlovac and Podravina.^[2] He was introduced to tamburica by his father and uncle, both tamburica players (with the Sloboda Tamburitza Orchestra),^[3] and started playing in his father's orchestra as a ten-year-old.^[2] At the age of 21, he traveled to Croatia and Vojvodina, where he studied with Janika Balaž in Novi Sad. He also met Zvonko Bogdan, with whom he toured in the US and Canada.^[2][4] Since 1980 he composes and records his own music. As a player of multiple tamburica instruments (bisernica, brač, bugarija, berda and čelo), he usually plays and records whole albums on his own.^[3] During the 1980s, Grcevich took multiple ethnomusicological research trips throughout Croatia.^[2][4]

At the end of the 1980s he started a collaboration with Miroslav Škoro, which produced his first album Ne Dirajte Mi Ravnicu. He is co-author and arranger of Škoro's hits Moja Juliška and Ne Dirajte Mi Ravnicu.^[1] Since 1993, Grcevich has had his own group, The Jerry Grcevich Tamburitza Orchestra, which has performed extensively throughout the United States and Canada.^[3][4]

In 2005 he was awarded by National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for his musical work, especially for performances and cultural cooperation with Irish, Romanian and Hungarian Americans in Pittsburgh.^[2] He also became the first Western Pennsylvania artist to receive the award.^[3]