Skender, Ivan Josip: Circles, for Clarinet and Percussion

IVAN JOSIP SKENDER
/ composer, conductor /
(Varaždin, 18 March 1981)

Ivan Josip Skender was born in Varaždin in 1981. After graduating from the Music High School and Comprehensive High School in Varaždin, he enrolled in composition studies at the Music Academy in Zagreb in 1997, in the class of Željko Brkanović, as the youngest composition student in the history of that Academy. In 1999, he also enrolled in the conducting studies in the class of Vjekoslav Šutej. From 2010 to 2012, he attended two-year postgraduate studies in orchestral conducting in Vienna with Uroš Lajovic. His compositions have been performed in nearly every European country, as well as in the USA, Canada and Mexico. His wide and versatile opus includes compositions for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choirs, music for theatre, musicals and a single opera Šuma Striborova (Stribor’s Forest), which, with its 27 performances, became the most performed opera at the Music Biennale Zagreb. He was the first composer to represent Croatia at the European MusMa Multimedia Festival (Music Masters on Air, 2012). He was awarded the Stjepan Šulek Award in 2017 for his piece Phantasmagoria.

As a conductor, he has collaborated with many Croatian and foreign orchestras and choirs. He worked at the Opera of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb as a choir conductor (from 2005 until 2014), and then as the conductor (from 2014 until 2019). He made his debut with the opera L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti at the Musikverein in Vienna in 2011 and then at the Opera of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb in 2012. He debuted with the opera Tosca at the Stattstheater in Braunschweig in 2016. In 2009, he became assistant to Professor Uroš Lajovic at the Music Academy in Zagreb, where he is currently an associate professor at the Department of Conducting, Percussion and Harp and the Department of Singing. He was a member of several committees for competitions and reviews of Croatian music amateurism. Since 2019, he has been a member of the program board of the Music Biennale Zagreb, and in 2020 was appointed a member of the Assembly of Representatives of the Croatian Composer’s Society.