Dr. Igor Karaca is a Bosnian composer and pianist of classical and jazz music. Most of Karaca's work has been for chamber ensembles and electronic media. He employs a wide variety of techniques, ranging from controlled aleatoric, free-jazz inspired textures, to more traditional, neoclassical style; he usually aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience.

After taking private music lessons, Karaca studied music at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo under Josip Magdic and Andjelka Bego-Simunic. He graduated in 1996 with a BM in music composition, and has since been a guest at different masterclasses in Europe, working with Boguslaw Schaeffer, Klaus Huber, Helmut Lachenmann, Marc-André Dalbavie and Marco Stroppa, among others.

In 1999 Karaca came to United States to study composition with Dr. Thomas Wells at the Ohio State University, from which he received his DMA in 2005.

Igor Karaca has written three symphonies, suite for concert band, concertante works for clarinet and piano, twenty electronic and electro-acoustic compositions, over seventy chamber compositions, including the award-wining Wind Trio, Between Walls for violin, clarinet and piano, and Handful of Dust for bass clarinet and piano. Karaca composed dramatic scores for three motion pictures: A House Over the Rainbow, Sarajevo War Diary and Tell Me Your Name Again, and three theater plays: Twelfth Night, Fate of a Cockroach and Requiem for "Bird" Parker.

Recent performances include premieres in the USA, Croatia, Serbia and the Netherlands, and other performances in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

He was also a member of Sarajevo Jazz Quartet, jazz quintet Happy End and Bosnian pop-rock band Punkt, for which he played piano, Hammond organ and electronic keyboards.

Currently, Dr. Karaca is teaching courses on music composition, counterpoint, music technology and music theory at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.

Compositions

"Amber Sonata" for Flute (or Soprano Saxophone) and Piano (2010)

"Amber Sonata" is inspired by the fantastic, surreal world of Roger Zelazny. It's a world of magic and technology, illusions and reality, a mixture of allusion, lyricism, and mythic imagery. Karaca's Amber for Flute (or Sopano Saxophone) and Piano is a kaleidoscope of ideas, always oscillating between classical tonality, modality and free atonality in a fresh and unpredictable way.


"Between Walls" for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (2008)



Between Walls is an experimental piece, belonging to the genre of computer-assisted algorithmic music. Three short articles from NY Times were used as a basic material for the piece, manipulated in real time through the use of a special algorithm programmed by the composer, and then translated - using a personal computer running MusicWonk2.2 into a musical data stream played on the violin, clarinet and piano.

Performed by Dr. Laura Talbott (violin), prof. Babette Belter (clarinet) and Dr. Zarina Melik-Stepanova (Piano), 2008.


"Scontri" - Electronic Music (2012)



Scontri ("Collisions") is a work very much of the avant-garde in its treatment of sonority and texture as primary structural elements. The sound elements comprise bells, percussion, human voice as well as bowed and synthesized sounds. The work progresses in opposing and colliding planes and volumes with simultaneous interplay of unrelated sonic elements that intervene at calculated but not regular time lapses.


"Mirage" for Flute and Vibraphone (2009)



Just like "Between Walls" above, "Mirage" is an algorithmic music composition. A poem by Amy Lowell (1874-1925) entitled Mirage, was used as a basic material for the piece. Words and letters of the poem were manipulated through the use of a special stochastic algorithm and then translated - using MusicWonk 4 software - into a musical score played on the flute and vibraphone. Mirage includes passages in which the instruments are not to be synchronized exactly. At cues from the score each instrumentalist may be instructed to move straight on to the next section or to finish their current section before moving on. In this way the random (aleatoric) element is carefully directed by the composer, who controls the architecture and harmonic progression of the piece precisely.