*Because of limited seating in the hall, please pick up your free ticket in advance or reserve your ticket via e-mail to the address info@mbz.hr (that ticket can be picked up at the concert location 1 hour before the performance).
The New Music Group (GNG) of the Elly Bašić Music School from Zagreb is the ensemble of the Youth and Contemporary Music project since November 2007, and has been led by Professor Maja Petyo Bošnjak, with the support of her colleague Berislav Šipuš, since its founding. While at first glance it may seem like an independent project within the music school’s curriculum, the history and interests of the New Music Group of the Elly Bašić and the MBZ have been interwoven at many levels. Namely, in 1971, Maja Petyo Bošnjak attended the Biennale workshop where she experienced the performances of Heinz Holliger and Siegfried Palm. It was this encounter that aroused the love of new music and led to the idea of founding an ensemble such as the GNG, as she later did. Since 2009, the Elly Bašić’s GNG has appeared regularly at the MBZ and has premiered pieces by contemporary Croatian composers, but the ensemble is also trying to reach younger and younger audiences through the MBZ’s LITTLE big ones festival program.
Music school Elly Bašić, through various school subjects in elementary and high school program, including the Group for New Music by Maja Petyo Bošnjak and the Exercises In Composition, currently led by the composer and music theorist Sara Jakopović, allows students to develop and perform their own compositions, as will happen at this concert. In addition to exemplifying the concept of graphic notation, facilitating the challenges of improvisation and artistic interpretation, presenting various techniques of performance or, for example, the use of electronics, Group for New Music Elly Bašić also provides incentive stimulus and education and MBZ provides time and space to present results of this education to a wider audience and for the students to hone their artistic skills. Thanks to the rich history of performing or presenting their own music at one of the international centers of new music, the students themselves, as time has shown, often become professional musicians or highly successful amateur musicians, and even if they are no longer active in (new) music, they remain its fans. Most importantly, they grow into individuals open to progressive artistic ideas, and they embrace artistic versatility in other aspects of their daily lives as well. The idea underlying the festival and expressed in its Proclamation is thus fulfilled: that new music, however unusual in everyday life, surely is a part of it, changing and enriching it.
Ana Vučković, violin
Nina Čvrljević, violin
Katarina Vuzem, violin
Emanuela Jerković, flute
Roko Vinožganić, flute
Helena Habeković, saxophone
Noa Šekoranja, trumpet
Grga Nježić, piano
Matej Basić, percussion
Lucia Kaplowitz, violin
mentor of Composition Practice class at the Elly Bašić Music School: Sara Jakopović, M.Sc. mus.
mentor of the New Music Group at the Elly Bašić Music School: Maja Petyo Bošnjak, Prof. advisor
Leon Lončar, Context No. 1 Speech and Improvisation Op. 2 No. 5, for chamber ensemble
Grga Nježić, After, electronic composition
Ljerka Florschütz Sedlanić, Dolce far niente, for piano solo
Lucia Kaplowitz, The Switch, for mixed quartet of open instrumentation
Grga Nježić, Falling, electronic composition
Lucia Kaplowitz, Mirage, for violin solo