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Biography: |
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Boris Kovac, born in 1955, is a composer, instrumentalist and multimedia artist from Novi Sad, capital of the multiethnic region Vojvodina in the Pannonian Plains. This area was known as a legendary crossing point for all sorts of migrants from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and is still characterized by the juxtaposition of Catholicism, Islam and Slavic Orthodoxy. Boris writes and directs music for chamber groups, and many of his projects are connected with theatre. In 1982 the composer created the Ritual Nova Ensemble, an ever-changing, flexible group made up of musicians as well as visual artists, dancers and performers. Since 1989 he has been the leader of the "Chamber Theatre of Music OGLEDALO" from Novi Sad.
After staying in Italy, Slovenia, Austria and Canada for several years, Boris Kovac returned to Yugoslavia in order to participate in the cultural reconstruction of his home country through numerous projects in the reflourishing theatre scene. Like Bela Bartok 70 years before, Boris Kovac stands at the cultural intersection between traditional music culture and the young contemporary music scene of Yugoslavia. By leading his RITUAL NOVA ensemble, LaDaABa orchestra, Chamber Theatre of Music OGLEDALO, and Academy of Fine Skills, as well as working with students, he attempts to re-establish the contemporary music/theatre scene in his country.
He has shared his artistic talents at approximately 30 festivals around the world, for new music and contemporary theatre.
"Our advantage is that people from 20 different nationalities lived together in the Pannonian Plains, so today no one can say from which folklore my music comes exactly. Anyway for us, living in an urban situation, having no contact to the little villages, it is not comprehensible where the music comes from. But I think that is not even necessary: decisive is, to use the sources as food for my own creativity." Accordion, violin, bass and drums are played by half-Serbians, half-Hungarians and half-Macedonians. The guitarist is Roma and the clarinettist a Serbian who lived in the Vojvodina for several years and took over many musical techniques from the Hungarians and Romanians. "Anamnesis, Ecumenical Mysteries", dedicated to mystics N. Berdjiaev and G. I. Gurdjieff, was premiered by Ritual Nova at Ljubljana's Druga Godba festival in June 1993, featuring musicians from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The performance took place in the city's Catholic church, although Kovac's musical vocabulary contains the profane as well as sacred. It reveals the composer's Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian roots and discloses similarities with the darker side of Rock In Opposition (bands such as France's Art Zoyd and Belgium's Univers Zero), as well as with the Third Ear Band, combined with the manifest influence of Béla Bartók and Balkan folk music. As Boris Kovac stated, "Music is the last consolation between heaven and earth."
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