Trumpeter, wingman and composer Davor Križić was born in 1966 in Zagreb, where he graduated from high school and music school; he is a great trumpet player - a soloist, a feeling player who plays with understanding, and is always reliable in big band trumpet section. He performed numerous concerts with small ensembles and as a soloist in large orchestras. After studying at the Jazz Department at the Music Academy in Graz, he performed with almost all Croatian musicians such as, among others, Boško Petrović, Saša Nestorović, Matija Dedić, Kruno Levačić, Miro Kadoić and many others, as well as distinguished foreign jazz musicians such as Ernie Wilkins, Johnny Griffin, Lena Conquest, Ed Thighpen, Art Farmer, Alvin Queen, Martin Drew, Ron Ringwood, Greentown Jazz Band, Big Band RTV Slovenia and many others. He is a respected studio musician, permanent member of the Latin bands Cubismo and Boilers Quartet, and leader of the band Davor Križić Experiment. He recorded a number of sound carriers in the country and abroad. As the leader of the trumpet section, he was the representative of the Croatian Radio in the EBU Big Band at the 2001 concerts in the Netherlands. He has been a permanent member and soloist of the HRT Jazz Orchestra for many years. Joining that orchestra was Križić's first real jazz job. After receiving the award for the best young jazz musician at the Jazz Fair in Zagreb in 1990, he was a multiple winner of the Status and Porin awards.

Porin, together with the HRT Jazz Orchestra, received the award at last year's award, in all three jazz categories. They won for Best Jazz Album ("Insite"), Best Jazz Composition ("Waltz Through the Night") and Best Jazz Performance ("To the Lite"), both from the album he released Aquarius Records. The project started on May 8, 2019, when Križić performed with the HRT Jazz Orchestra in the Gorgona Hall of MSU, as part of the HRT Jazz Cycle. With that concert, he marked thirty years of activity. They prepared the modified program for the album they recorded during 2021 and 2022 in the HRT studios. In addition to the great orchestra, conducted by Miron Hauser, tenor saxophonist Saša Nestorović, drummer Kruno Levačić, pianist Matija Dedić, vibraphonist Šimun Matišić and double bassist Ivar Roban Križić and the Vedasa singing group The Messengers participated as guests in some performances on the recording.

It was always important for Križić to represent and promote the jazz tradition, such as, for example, the music of Duke Ellington, whose composition "African Flower" he chose for this program. The concert will mainly feature Križić's compositions.

Križić established himself as a composer in the mid-1990s by writing for the Boilers Quartet, of which he has been a member since its foundation. It is right now hardbop the approach of that composition determined most of his creativity. On this track, his early works were particularly noted, many of which are documented on the albums: "Some Blues", "Urony" and "Believin'" on the CD "Some Blues" by Boilers, as well as "To the Lite", which he signed with Matija Dedić, with whom he also worked on the music for the film "Ledina" by Ljubiša Samardžić, and "Vesna" on the CD "Abstract Lights", as well as "Yeah Man" on the CD "That's It" Boilers All Stars. Some of these works gained cult status and he recorded them several times in various arrangements. He always brings them in a new way, transforms them, perfects them and adapts them to the musicians he plays with at that moment. For example, he recorded the composition "Some Blues" for the CD "That's It", as well as "Davor Križić Experiment", and various versions of the composition "Yeah Man" for the albums "Live in ZeKaeM" by Boilers Big Band, "St. Miles Infirmary" by Boško Petrović and Boilers Quartet and "75 years of HR, 45 years of TV" by Big Band of HRT. He also composes for his band Davor Križić Experiment, with which, in addition to "Some Blues", he also recorded new compositions - "Davor's Tune" and "Echoes of a Dream" - just one of the pieces he dreamed of for the CD of the same name. Namely, Križić often wakes up in the middle of the night and writes down the ideas that appear in his sleep, and then analyzes and refines them. In all these compositions, and many of them are in the repertoire of the HRT Jazz Orchestra, one feels that he has mastered all the secrets of jazz, that he has studied the tradition of African-American music: from blues, New Orleans jazz, spirituals and gospel, through swing, bebop and free - jazz to new achievements. For example, the composition "Believin'" has a spiritual character, and "Days In Havana", which he recorded for the CD "Motivo Cubano" of the band Cubismio of which he is a permanent member, is a real Latin gem. In his compositions, Križić convincingly conveys his inner world, the joy and love that jazz music arouses in him. These are exciting and stimulating works that entice performers to spontaneous, direct communication, creating music of the moment that enables unforeseen situations. Namely, when Križić imagines his compositions, he is always guided by the thought that jazz is freedom.

He always transfers this idea of ​​freedom to the musicians he works with. Namely, many of his compositions were created, or were shaped by experimenting with collaborators, including in the ensemble the significant name - Davor Križić Experiment. The composition relies on the jazz tradition, especially the hardbop approach, but also contemporary versions of African-American music. Regardless of which of these idioms they venture into, all members of the ensemble burn out in exciting improvisations. Although the program includes compositions and arrangements of works by famous jazz authors such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and Charlie Parker, the band members also perform compositions by other authors, including those by Križić. Križić allows collaborators in the project to explore their own possibilities and discover new ways to develop as jazz musicians. The band's work is designed in the form of a jazz workshop where musicians of different generations meet, looking for a way to a new sound and their own style.

Križić is also in performances with big band was always inclined to experiment. Namely, he bases his creativity on musical research, he always ventures into something new, into situations in which he is sometimes not sure of the outcome, at least not at the beginning, but he has the feeling that he can make, give and organize something in them. For him, it is an interesting experience of combining different types of instruments, different colors, different ways to present musical ideas. Accordingly, he strives to perfect the way of creating music, which is based on quick reaction and immediate experience, merging with music and the inner universe that music represents. In fact, in its operation it is a process that has no end. For the transformation of compositions that he originally wrote for a smaller ensemble, and are now in big band context, he chose colleagues from the HRT Jazz Orchestra: trombonist and pianist Luka Žužić and pianist and tubaist Joe Kaplowitz.

Križić's music, but also his life, is strongly influenced by spirituality. In fact, the two intertwine. For him, jazz music and the way people dedicate themselves to it are forms of worshiping God, something sublime. This is most clearly manifested in the composition "Believin'", one of his oldest, created back in the eighties. Since then, it has changed in all phases and traveled throughout his career. He performed it with the Boilers and the Boilers All Stars ensemble, as well as big band in a different arrangement, but also with Cubism. In that composition, he combined two different cultures: the West and the East. Namely, it comes from Vedic songs and hymns. Basically, the melody and the way he realized it and then transformed it, he came up with the idea of ​​combining it with the gayatri mantra, a hymn to the Sun. In the performance of that composition, he was joined by friends with whom he has been studying and singing the Vedas for years. Together with them, a jazz orchestra and Žužić's arrangement, he made an interesting journey. Two of them will perform at the concert in Split vedasa: Nikola and Hrvoje Marjanović.

This is exactly why "Insite" is a suitable name for the album that Križić recorded with the HRT Jazz Orchestra. The name is significant because it is associated with an inner experience and knowledge that is achieved through effort, love and dedication. For him, it is a journey into the inner universe, something he has been engaged in and studied for many years.