Location: Concert hall Hrvatski dom Split - Concert Hall Ivo Tijardović (Tončićeva 1, 21000 Split)
 
Time: February 23, 2024, at 7:30 PM

Davor Križić, Trumpet & HRT Jazz Orchestra

Trumpeter, flugelhorn player, and composer Davor Križić was born in 1966 in Zagreb, where he completed high school and music school. He is an outstanding trumpeter, a feeling musician who plays with understanding, and is always reliable in the big band trumpet section. He has had numerous concerts with small ensembles and as a soloist in large orchestras. After studying jazz at the Jazz Department of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, he performed with almost all Croatian musicians, including Boško Petrović, Saša Nestorović, Matija Dedić, Kruno Levačić, Miro Kadoić, and many others, as well as esteemed foreign jazz musicians such as Ernie Wilkins, Johnny Griffin, Lena Conquest, Ed Thighpen, Art Farmer, Alvin Queen, Martin Drew, Ron Ringwood, Greentown Jazz Band, Big Band RTV Slovenia, and many others. He is a respected studio musician, a permanent member of the Latin ensemble Cubismo and the Boilers Quartet, as well as the leader of the Davor Križić Experiment ensemble. He has recorded numerous albums in Croatia and abroad. As the leader of the trumpet section, he represented Croatian Radio at the EBU Big Band concerts in the Netherlands in 2001. He has been a long-time member and soloist of the HRT Jazz Orchestra. Joining this orchestra was Križić's first real jazz job. After winning the award for the best young jazz musician at the Jazz Fair Zagreb in 1990, he was a multiple winner of the Status and Porin awards.

Križić has always considered it important to represent and promote the tradition of jazz, such as the music of Duke Ellington, whose composition "African Flower" he chose for this program. The concert will mainly feature Križić's compositions.

As a composer, Križić gained recognition in the mid-1990s by writing for the Boilers Quartet, of which he has been a member since its founding. The hardbop approach of this ensemble determined a significant part of his creative work. His early works, many of which are documented on albums such as "Some Blues," "Urony," and "Believin'" on the CD "Some Blues" by Boilers, as well as "To the Lite" co-authored with Matija Dedić, with whom he also collaborated on the music for the film "Ledina" by Ljubiša Samardžić, and "Vesna" on the CD "Abstract Lights," along with "Yeah Man" on the CD "That's It" by Boilers All Stars, have gained cult status and have been recorded multiple times in various arrangements.

Križić's music and life are strongly influenced by spirituality. In fact, the two are intertwined. For him, jazz music and the way people dedicate themselves to it are forms of worshiping God, something sublime. This is most clearly evident in the composition "Believin'," one of his oldest, created in the 1980s. Since then, it has changed in all phases and traveled throughout his career. He performed it with Boilers and Boilers All Stars ensemble, as well as with the big band in another arrangement, and with Cubismo. In that composition, he merged two different cultures: West and East. It comes from Vedic songs and hymns. Essentially, in melody and the way he realized it, and then transformed it, he came up with the idea to combine it with the Gayatri mantra, the hymn to the Sun. In the performance of this composition, he was joined by friends with whom he has been studying and singing the Vedas for years. Together with them, the jazz orchestra, and Žužić's arrangement, he embarked on an interesting journey. Two Vedas scholars, Nikola and Hrvoje Marjanović, will perform at the concert in Split.

This is why "Insite" is a fitting title for the album he recorded with the HRT Jazz Orchestra. The title is significant as it evokes an internal experience and realization achieved through effort, love, and dedication. For him, it is a journey into the inner universe, something he has been studying for many years.


Tickets for the performance can be found at the link: shop.adriaticket.com