Nick Jordanoff

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Deceased
Balkan
Balkan

Nick Jordanoff

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Dr. Nicholas "Nick" Jordanoff (also known as "Jordie") was a musician, an Associate Professor of Music, and the Director of Music Admissions at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the artistic director of the Duquesne University Tamburitzans Institute of Folk Arts (DUTIFA) for 20 years. He also had been involved with the Pittsburg Folk Festival and Children's Festival Chorus.

He was the dean of students at Robert Morris University and an escort officer and interpreter for the State Department. He also did collaborations with ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and choreographers throughout eastern and central Europe.

Nick choreographed more than 100 pieces for stage and television.

Dr. Jordanoff and his wife, Dr. Christine Jordanoff (chair of Music Education at Duquesne and an alumna of the Tammies), were involved with the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne. In 1990, the Jordanoffs toured Bulgaria as representatives of an ethnic foundation.

Nick's son, Nick Jordanoff Jr., and his Bulgarian-born wife, Desi, run the Old Europe Club, a Bulgarian restaurant in Pittsburgh, now known as the Bulgarian-Macedonian National Educational and Cultural Center. They are the only group in the nation two years ago to receieve a federal grant from the "Save America's Treasures" legislation. In addition to that, they have received numerous grants from governmental and private sources to keep their work alive. Nick thought that they probably had the largest collection of film, records, videoptaes, etc. of Bulgarian folklore. So what they did with much of this grant was to get various library, archival, and historical interns to start work on trasfering this data to more modern technology.

In July, 2008, Nick finally retired from the University which was gracious enough to give him an adjunct faculty contract to do some special projects for them.

Nick's health issues had prevented him from actively teaching dance, so he had become like the "senior citizen" guru of what is right and what is wrong.

Nick turned the "new" dance group, which was founded in 1956, over to his son, Nick, and he and his wife ran it for many years. There are also a lot of recent Bulgarian immigrants involved with choreographies and teaching.

Nick's family were special friends of Dick Crum. Nick sent an e-mail that reads in part:

"It's been a long time since we met in California -- light years ago. As you could imagine, the death of Dick [Crum] was devastating to me since we had been so close all of our lives. From the time he came to Pittsburgh he basically 'lived' at our home, picking my mother's brain on all things Bulgarian until the time of his death. The interesting thing about that time was that I had made a donation to my wife's children chorus for a scholarship in the name of great teachers that I had in mylife -- and that was Dick. I had sent him an e-mail to him apologizing for this and I know how humble he was about this sort of thing. This happened in November and I did not get a reply from him, so I sent several more e-mails and I received no response. This was very unusual, since we made contact at least once a week via e-mail. Whenever he would come East, he would stop for a day and it would end up close to a week. I can not tell you what a loss this was to me personally and to my wife and to my three sons, Nick, Iliya, and Greg. They just could not believe that 'Uncle Dick from out of town' had passed away."

Nick Jordanoff passed away on March 3, 2009. He will be missed by many.

Dances Nick taught include Kazanlŭško Mŭžko Horo, Kazanlŭško Žensko Horo, Kermensko Mŭžko Horo, Oficirsko Kolo, Savamalsko Kolo, and Trgovačko Kolo.