Zoran Erić

Biography

Zoran Erić was born on 6 October 1950 in Belgrade. He started his musical education in Karlovac, Croatia, playing piano and violin. Erić studied composition in Belgrade with Stanojlo Rajičić at the Academy of Music (now Faculty of Music). During the studies he attended international summer courses at Orff-Institute in Salzburg (1976) and Witold Lutoslawski’s master class of composition in Grožnjan (1977).

He teaches at the University of Arts – Faculty of Music in Belgrade since 1976 (full-time professor of composition since 1992). He held seminars and lectures in children music creativity (Grožnjan 1979, 1980 with Milan Mihajlović), composition (Conservatory Eiresia, Athens 1996, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London 2000, Summer School Sombor 2009) and electronic music (WUS project, FMU Belgrade 2004). Erić has been the member of juries for international competition "Premio Valentino Bucchi" (Rome), 1990, International Jeunesses Musicales Competition (1986 and 2007) as well as a selector of the festivals Music in Serbia (1987) and International Review of Composers (1994). He was Vice-Dean (Faculty of Music 1992–1998) and Vice-Rector (University of Arts 2000–2004). He is presently Head of Department of Composition (since 2007), member of the Executive Board of Serbian music copyright agency SOKOJ (since 2000) and artistic director of Belgrade Music Festival BEMUS (since 2011).

Composers Ana Mihajlović, Jelena Jančić, Goran Kapetanović, Tatjana Milošević, Božidar Obradinović, Szilard Mezei, Vladimir Pejković, Ivana Ognjanović and Branka Popović, among others have studied in Erić’s class. He has also worked with Aleksandra Vrebalov, Ana Sokolović, Anja Đorđević, Marko Nikodijević, Ivan Brkljačić, Svetlana Savić and Milan Aleksić.

Erić's music has been performed widely across the world at major festivals and venues including Prague Spring International Music Festival, City of London Festival, Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Ohrid Summer Festival, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA 94), BEMUS, ISCM World Music Days, Barbican Hall, Cankarjev dom (Ljubljana), Rector's Palace Atrium (Dubrovnik), Konserthuset (Stockholm), Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall (Zagreb), Kammermusiksaal der Berliner Philharmoniker, Church of St. Sophia (Ohrid), Wigmore Hall, De Ijsbreker, Sibelius Academy Chamber Music Hall (Helsinki), etc. by international artists including Belgrade Strings, St. George Strings, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Kreisler Strings, Zagreb Soloists, 12 Cellisten der Berliner Philharmoniker, Camerata Serbica, Collegium musicum female choir, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Živojin Zdravković, Dušan Miladinović, Keneth Jean, Pavle Dešpalj, James Judd, Uroš Lajovic, Aleksandar Pavlović, Bojan Suđić, Darinka Matić-Marović, David Takeno, So-Ock Kim, Malachy Robinson, Jon Bogdan Stefanescu, Marija Špengler, Arisa Fujita, Nebojša Ignjatović, Sophie Langdon, Miloš Petrović, Emanuel Pahud, Ljubiša Jovanović, Youngchang Cho, Aleksandar Madžar and Dejan Mlađenović among others.

As a composer with significant record of stage music Erić also had a very good artistic partnership with choreographers and directors like Lidija Pilipenko, Sonja Vukićević, Haris Pašović, Gorčin Stojanović, Nikita Milivojević, Vida Ognjenović, Nebojša Bradić, Milan Karadžić, Dejan Mijač, Boro Drašković, Ivana Vujić, Ljiljana Todorović and Egon Savin among others.

Erić received numerous awards for his work.

Notable Works

Music for theatar (incidental)

Film scores

Style

Erić's opus includes different genres. Already in his early works he expresses a tendency towards clarity, formal perspicuity and the synthesis of a "different images", establishing the bases of his own musical expression in the choreographic piece for orchestra Behind the Sun's Gate and Concerto for Orchestra and Soloists. The need to shape his musical expression as his own synthesis of total sound surrounding him, already evident in Mirage, is developed by in the compositions Erić wrote about two years later: the ballet Elizabeth the Princess of Montenegro and the choir Subito.

His work during the 80s is marked by three key compositions: Off – as music beyond his own vocabulary until that time, Cartoon – as a play of basic emotional clichés and rudimentary gests of movement and Talea Konzertstück – as a "gliding" towards open sensitivity.

In the 1990s Erić created the five-part cycle Images of Chaos (1990—1997) in which he sharpens and sublimates the principles of his mature musical expression. The cycle contains: The Great Red Spot of Jupiter, The Abnormal Beats of Dogon, Helium in a Small Box, I Have Not Spoken and Oberon Concerto. The modelling of chaos, "a process rather than a state, becoming rather than being", served as a paradigm to Eric's tendencies to create the personal image of a non-transparent and chaotic entity. The music is "processed" through the phases (movements) Unawareness, Resistance, Anger, Wondering and Acceptance which became a general “formal map” of all compositions from the cycle Images of Chaos.

In the same period as the cycle Images of Chaos (from 1989) he started to compose music for theatre and film. Both types of Eric's production, theatre and film music and the "classical" works (from the Chaos cycle as well as his music after 2000 – Six Scenes – Comments, Con suono pieno, Who shot a Seagull? Don’t you remember, you shot a seagull! (A. Chekhov), Seven Glances at the Sky, Entr'acte, B’n’R (Blues & Rhythm)), are specifically amalgamated and mutually imbued by common compositional-technical moves.

Awards and Prizes

Discography