Tibor Szirovicza about the Fund

Young composer Tibor Szirovicza writes about his scholarship from Fund “Matz” in the year 2011, about his activities in 2011 and his plans for the 2012:

The beginning of the year 2011 started with the performance of the composition Shaula that I graduated with at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert hall on the 18^th of January – Zagreb Philharmonic and conductor Alun Francis. For me that was some kind of totally new experience (rehearsals with the big orchestra) and thanks to Maestro Francis a very pleasant and instructive one too.

In April 2011 I worked for some time with my colleagues from the Theatre Academy on composing the music for the short film Prva! (The First!) by director Silvija Ćapin. The film was shown at the Pula Film Festival (July 2011).

In September I continued my collaboration with the academic sculptor Stipan Kujundžić on a new project Glazbala (Musical Instruments). Our collaboration started the year before with the exhibition Preslojavanje (Layers) for which I composed the electronic composition Consuctio. The project Glazbala (Musical Instruments) is an exhibition of the contemporary gusle – original author’s works by the sculptor Kujundžić that are based on the old traditional instrument of some areas of Croatia. We worked together on the process of developing acoustical specificities of the instruments so that in the future they can be available to the potential performer (gusle player). One of the possible projects in 2012 is a composition for the ensemble of Kujundžić’s gusle in combination with electronics. For the exhibition Glazbala (Musical Instruments) I made the electronic composition Transfonija in which only sounds of gange and traditional gusle are used. Exhibition’s curator is prof. Mario Beusan, the texts were written by musicologist Maja Milošević and the exhibition was shown at Gallery ULUPUH in December 2011.

Currently I work on the composition for piano/chamber ensemble/electronics (I’m still not sure for which ensemble it will be in the end). Thanks to Fund Matz and some other financial sources, I succeeded to buy a few parts of the electronic equipment and some software that I already use in my every day work and without them my future activities would be unthinkable.

In the year 2012 I plan to write music for one film, I will also start a collaboration with a young neuroscientist with whom I will try to show the connections between human brain and music with the help of MRI images of the brain – I will be able to say more about the concrete details of this experiment in the future, if it is successful.

I would like to say something more about the end of the year 2011 when Croatia signed the Accession Agreement with the European Union, so I hope that recent entrance into EU will enable applications and realizations of some new international projects, multiple financial sources, better connections with the foreign artists, bigger market and many more advantages for art and culture.

Tibor Szirovicza, January 2012