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About
Milko Lazar is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. After graduating from music high school, he studied jazz and classical piano and saxophone at the College of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (Austria) and harpsichord (baroque music) at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Netherlands).
For fifteen years he regularly worked in the Big Band of RTV Slovenia as the first alto saxophonist and soloist, conductor and composer.
During his jazz period, he worked with many of his own ensembles (Quatebriga, Royal Society, Štefbet Rifi, Milko Lazar Quartet) and with many world-famous jazz musicians such as Maria Schneider, Herb Pomeroy, Peter Herbolzheimer and Mathias Ruegg. With his ensembles he has performed at many famous festivals such as Perugia Jazz Festival, Leverkussen Jazz Festival, Jazz Nad Odra - Wrotzlav, Ljubljana Jazz Festival, Hannover Expo 2000, Alpentone Festival - Altdorf (CH) and many others.
Milko Lazar has recorded more than forty LPs and CDs with various bands and twelve original CDs.
He regularly composes for the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra.
His symphonic works have been conducted by conductors such as Marko Letonja, Walter Proost, Olari Elts, Loris Voltolini, Anton Nanut, George Pehlivanian, Luca Pfaff, David Itkin and David de Villiers. He regularly collaborates with renowned musicians such as Bojan Gorišek, Mirjam Kalin, Aldo Kumar, Tibor Kerekes, Matej Grahek, Vasilij Meljnikov, Igor Mitrovič and others.
His works have been performed by renowned domestic and foreign ensembles throughout Europe, the United States, South America, China and Russia, including at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York City.
In 2005 he founded the piano duo “Gorišek Lazar” with pianist Bojan Gorišek, in which they mainly perform music for two pianos by Milko Lazar. They performed all over Slovenia and also abroad. They have performed three times in the USA (New York - Merkin Concert Hall, Steinway Hall, UN Palace, Klavierhaus, Washington - Kennedy Center, Chicago - Piano Hall), Germany, Sweden, Hungary and Austria. Among other things, he orchestrated the compositions of the Siddharta group for their concert at the Ljubljana stadium with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to composing for various chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras, he also regularly creates music for films, theaters and dance and multimedia projects.
In 2008, in collaboration with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, his original CD with symphonic works was released. Recently, he has been collaborating regularly with renowned dancer and choreographer Edward Clug. Together they created the successful ballet “Pret-a-porter”, “Four Reasons”, which premiered on October 22, 2008 in Lisbon in collaboration with the Portuguese National Ballet, and in an extended version with the ballet HNK in Zagreb on March 27, 2009. They also created the play “Pocket Concerto”, which premiered in Stuttgart at the end of April 2009. In 2010, they created the play “Watching Others” and premiered it in SNG Maribor. In all performances, the music is performed live. From 2010 to 2011, Mettis Bukvarna-Mettis Muzika released his three original CDs with the latest chamber music - “Pret-a-porter Variations”, “4 Reasons” and “Koda Chopin”.
Among many other awards, he received the Prešeren Fund Award in 2005 and the Župančič Award for his compositional work in 2010.