Zoran Erić

Zoran Erić (Serbian: Зоран Ерић , [zǒran ěːrit͜ɕ] ; 6 October 1950 – 20 January 2024) was a Serbian composer based in Belgrade. He taught composition, orchestration, theater and film music at the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia.

Zoran Erić was born in Belgrade on 6 October 1950 . 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. 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).

Erić taught at the University of Arts – Faculty of Music in Belgrade since 1976, as full-time professor of composition since 1992. At the university he was vice dean of the Faculty of Music from 1992 to 1998, and vice rector from 2000 to 2004). He was head of the department of composition since 2007. He held seminars and lectures in children's 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 was member of juries for international competitions it in Rome in 1990, International Jeunesses Musicales in 1986 and 2007. He was a member of the executive board of the Serbian music copyright agency SOKOJ since 2000, and artistic director of the Belgrade music festival BEMUS since 2011.

Among his students are composers Ana Mihajlović, Jelena Jančić, Goran Kapetanović, Tatjana Milošević, Božidar Obradinović, Szilard Mezei,[10] Vladimir Pejković,[11] Ivana Ognjanović[12] and Branka Popović.[13] He also influenced Aleksandra Vrebalov,[14] Ana Sokolović,[15] Anja Đorđević,[16] Marko Nikodijević,[17] Ivan Brkljačić,[18] Svetlana Savić[19] 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),[20] 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), among others. Performers have included Belgrade Strings, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, 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,[21] Sonja Vukićević,[22] 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. He died on 20 January 2024, at the age of 73.[23]

Erić's compositions include:

Erić focused on incidental msuic for theatre plays:

Erić composed works of many different genres. Already in his early works he expresses a tendency towards clarity, formal perspicuity and the synthesis of "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 sharpened and sublimated 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 Erić's tendencies to create the personal image of a non-transparent and chaotic entity. The music was "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 Erić'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.

Erić received many awards, especially for his nnnnntheatre and film music.