Croatian guitarist Robert Belinic will present a guest recital beginning at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 26, in Wattenbarger Auditorium.

Robert Belinic

A Center Stage event, the show is free and open to the public.

Belinic has performed widely across the United States, from New York City’s famed Carnegie Weill Recital Hall to the Washington Center for the Performing Arts in Olympia, Wash.

In addition to performing in the United States and his native Croatia, Belinic has also presented recitals abroad in Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Germany, Lichtenstein and the Czech Republic.

He won the 2001 Young Concert Artists European Auditions in Leipzig, Germany, and became the first guitarist to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York in 2002. Belinic was also the 2002 recipient of the Ivo Vuljevic Award for the best young Croatian musician.

He was born in 1981 in Zagreb, Croatia, and began playing the drums when he was only 3 years old. When he was 8, he starred in “Tale From Croatia,” the first film released in his newly independent nation. Belinic began to study classical guitar at the age of 11, and he graduated from the Leopold Mozart Hochschule fur Musik in Augsburg, Germany, where he is now pursuing postgraduate studies.