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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 BA 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, sixteen electronic and electro-acoustic compositions, over seventy chamber compositions, including the award-wining Wind Trio and Handful of Dust for bass clarinet and piano. Karaca composed dramatic scores for two motion pictures: Sarajevo War Diary and Tell Me Your Name Again, and three theater plays: Twelfth Night, Fate of a Cockroach and Requiem for "Bird" Parker. 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. |
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Compositions | |||
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"Amber Sonata" for Flute (or Sopano Saxophone) and Piano (2010) |
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| "Amber Sonata" for Flute (or Sopano Saxophone) and Piano (2010).pdf - complete | |||
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"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. | |||
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"Between Walls" for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (2008) |
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| "Between Walls" for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (2008).mp3 - complete | |||
| "Between Walls" for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (2008).pdf - complete | |||
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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. | |||
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"Phantom Wings" - Electronic Music (2006) |
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| "Phantom Wings" - Electronic Music (2006).mp3 - complete | |||
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Soaring to the depths of our universe, gallant spacecraft roam the cosmos, snapping images of celestial wonders. Some spacecraft, such as Gallileo or Cassini, have instruments capable of capturing radio emissions. When scientists convert these to sound waves, the results are sometimes eerie to hear. Phantom Wings is a collage of filtered sound samples Cassini spacecraft collected near Jupiter in January 2001, radio emissions Galileo gathered from Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, in 1995, as well as ghostly planetary plasma waves collected by NASA's Voyager 2 in 1979. One can also hear wispy, glistening synthesized textures blending with vast meandering, droning space sounds. This electronic composition is meant to affect consciousness - but not intrude on it. | |||
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"Mirage" for Flute and Vibraphone (2009) |
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| "Mirage" for Flute and Vibraphone (2009).mp3 - complete | |||
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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. | |||
©2009 by Igor Karaca
All Rights Reserved
Igor Karaca is a member of Society of Composers, Inc. SCI is dedicated to the promotion of composition, performance, understanding and dissemination of new and contemporary music.