GORAN BREGOVIC

Born in Sarajevo of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father. After a few years of (very unenthusiastic) music studies at the conservatory (violin), Goran forms his first group "The White Button" at the age of sixteen. Composer and guitar player ("I chose the guitar because guitar players always have most success with girls"), he admits his immoderate love for rock n'roll. "In those times, Rock had a capital role in our lives. It was the only way we could make our voice heard, and publicly express our discontent without risking jail (or just about)..."

Studies of philosophy and sociology would most certainly have landed him teacher of Marxist thought, had the gigantic success of his first record not decided otherwise. Follow fifteen years with his group "The White Button", marked by marathon-tours and endless sessions of autographing in which Goran plays youth idol in Eastern countries until he's sick and tired of it.

At the end of the eighties BREGOVIC takes time away from this permanent hustle-bustle to compose music for Kusturica's "Times of the Gypsies", and to make his childhood dream come true: to live in a small house on the Adriatic coast. The War in Yugoslavia shatters this, and many other dreams, and Goran has to abandon everything to find exile in Paris…

MUSIC FOR MOVIES

Coming from the same background, the same generation, survivors of the same experiences, Goran BREGOVIC and Emir KUSTURICA formed a tandem which didn't need words to communicate. After "Times of the Gypsies" Goran had a free hand to compose the original soundtrack for "Arizona Dream". The music lives up to the film - poetical, original and incredibly enhancing. "One of the great things about Emir's movies is that they show life exactly as it is - full of holes, hesitations and unexpected events. It's this imperfect, unorganised side that I wanted to preserve above all. Even the songs recorded with Iggy are very under-produced. There's just his voice and behind it a gypsy-orchestra blowing into old pre-war trumpets and cow's horns. It's really very simple." What Goran doesn't say is that it's probably one of Iggy's best performances over the past ten years. What he doesn't say either is that this apparent simplicity belongs only to artists of exceptional talent.

Patrice Chereau entrusts him with the music for "La Reine Margot", Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Goran delivers a majestic piece with rock accents.

The music for Emir Kusturica's "Underground", Palme d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, was also signed by Goran. But not the following film. A three year collaboration on "Underground" has worn everyone out and Emir has to find a whole new team for his next film "White Cat Black Cat".

Recently Goran composed spicy music with a "kletzmer" aroma for the "Train de Vie" of Radu MIHAELANU acclaimed by the critics in Venice, Sao Paulo, Berlin and by the public everywhere it was shown. He has since devoted himself to the interpretation of his own music and lent himself to a second stage-career. Without, however, completely abandoning the movies : Nana DJORDJAZE " 27 Missing Kisses " in 2001, Unni STRAUME " Music for Weddings & Funerals " in 2002 (music and main masculine part).

MUSIC FOR THEATRE

"Silence of the Balkans" was a very ambitious multimedia project performed in 1997 at Thessaloniki, under the direction of Slovenian Tomaz PANDUR with video images by Boris MILJKOVIC . Then a collaboration with Teatro Stabile from Trieste for whom he wrote the stage music for a very unusual "Hamlet", and Goran Bregovic starts enjoying writing for the theatre. Follows a collaboration with one of the most "in" Italian directors, Marco BAILANI for whom, commissioned by the Festival NOVECENTO in Palermo, he writes the music for "The Children's Crusade" (created November 1999). Recently Bregovic wrote music for a stage setting of Dante's "Divine Comedy" (conceived as a triptych, of which the first part Inferno was premiered at the THALIA THEATRE in Hamburg in January 2001, followed in February 2002 by Purgatory and Paradise). The director is Goran's long time work complice, Tomaz PANDUR from Slovenia.

MUSIC LIVE

For over ten years, since he abandoned pure rock in 1985, the music of BREGOVIC had never been performed live. This all changes in 1995 when, with a band of ten traditional musicians, a choir of fifty singers and a symphonic orchestra, he undertakes a series of concerts in Greece and Sweden followed by the concert given October 26th at the Forest National of Brussels for an audience of 7500. Very few gigs in 1996 as the idea of a hundred and twenty performers on stage scared organisers.

In June 1997, the group is reduced to fifty musicians for a two hour concert with the music he composed for films. And it's one success after another. He undertakes a triumphal tour throughout Europe with his Wedding and Funeral Band presenting live his most beautiful pieces from the famous " Ederlezi" (Time of the Gypsies) to the " In the Death Car" (Arizona Dream) and the energetic "Kalasnikov" (Underground) taking off as delirious audience echoes the with the powerful "Juris" (Charge ! !). The number of entries - between 3,500 and 10,000 per concert - and the concert given May 1st at the Piazza St. Giovanni in Rome in front of 500.000 people confirm that his music now has a real impact on an international level.

Goran BREGOVIC continues his career, and the young local rock star of the 70s and the 80s asserts his authority as a mature, successful, international composer.

MUSICAL COLLABORATIONS

Like a happy grown up child, Goran is amazed to be collaborating with such important performers from diverse cultures - people he would have asked for an autograph not so long ago : Iggy Pop, whom he totally reinvents (Arizona Dream 1993), Ofra Haza (La Reine Margot,1994), Césaria Evora (Underground 1995), Scot WALKER in UK, Setzen Aksu in Turkey, George Dalaras in Greece, Kayah in Poland..

SELECTED RECORDINGS:

" Le Temps de Gitans " Polygram/Universal
" Arizona Dream " Polygram/Universal
" Toxic Affair " Polygram/Universal
" La Reine Margot " Polygram/Universal
" Underground " Polygram/Universal
" Ederlezi " compilation Polygram/Universal
" Bregovic & Kayah" BMG Poland
" Songbook " Polygram/Universal
" Music for Films " Polygram/Universal
" Tales from Weddings and Fune

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Giovanni FERETTI of the legendary italian group CSI, art director of " Bolongna 2000 ", asked Goran BREGOVIC to be the ambassador of music from the orthodox countries for a night-long fiesta on June 27. Goran called it "Hot Balkan Roots" and invited three brass bands (one from Bulgaria, one from Rumania and another one from Serbia) and a group of Russian female voices. A joint concert of BREGOVIC and CSI topped it all and the party was repeated on June 29 at the prestigious NUOVO AUDITORIUM DI ROMA.

To start off his Italian tour in Summer 2000, Goran concocted a "Big Wedding in Palermo" for the Santa Rosalia Celebration on July 14, for which he shared artistic direction with the famous musicologist and composer from Naples, Roberto de SIMONE. For just one very special night, Goran a assembled artists from countries that he calls his " musical feeding-ground " - between Budapest and Istanbul. To Goran's music and to images of video director from Belgrade, Boris MILJKOVIC, Slovenian and Greek dancers danced under direction of a gifted Rumanian choreographer , Edward CLUG. And once again he called on the brass bands (a wedding with no brass band is no wedding) to lead 80 brides and bridegrooms each from opposite parts of the beautiful town of Palermo to the central square where, around three in the morning, they met with Clug's professional dancers and Goran's Weddings and Funerals Band for a long final wedding dance.

In June 2002, Goran BREGOVIC united three star singers from three religions with the Moscow orthodox choir, a string section from Tetouan in Morocco, and his Weddings and Funerals Orchestra, for a special project called "Tolerant Heart" on the theme of reconciliation in the St. Denis Basilica (near Paris). Lucciano Berio invited the same project to his Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome in July, a concert in the Milan Duomo is planned… and it can be said that another side of "contemporary music" composer has been added to Goran's career.

AND NOWADAYS

After tours across Europe and South America during the whole of 2002 and four triumphant concerts in Paris in November (two in the underground "Bataclan" and two in the temple of classical music "Théâtre des Champs Elysées"), Goran starts work on his new project: "Bregovic's Carmen with a Happy End", the first Carmen with a Balkan accent. The piece will be a combination of fake documentary film (collaboration with a wonderful film director, Milos RADOVIC) and naïve theatre with live music - of course - and will be premiered in Italy in March 2003.

"Carmen" tours in the Spring, concerts in Scandinavia, France, Rumania, Spain, a rendering of "Tolerant Heart" at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fez, Morocco in June, then Summer Festivals across Europe… gypsy life continues for this eclectic composer figure.

LAST MINUTE:

Goran's concert has been awarded the prize for last year's BEST FOREIGN ACT in Argentina!

material taken from Goran Bregovic homepage