One of the most prominent Croatian jazz saxophonists, Mario Bocic, comes to the Croatian House Split with a quartet of top musicians and presents a new author's album "Wheel of Fortune" (Croatia Records).
Bočić is a multiple award winner. Status for jazz saxophone and permanent member HRT jazz orchestra, known for his warm, rounded tone, expressive improvisations, and music that comes directly from personal experience. His contemporary jazz draws on a rich tradition, but constantly questions and expands it through freedom and spontaneity.
At the concert in Split, he performs with his long-time collaborators: Hrvoje Galler (piano), Zvonimir Sestak (double bass) i Kruno Levačić (drums). It is a quartet with a strong mutual connection, in which improvisation, the moment and joint creation are the key elements of each performance.
The program consists of exclusively Bočić's original compositions from the album Wheel of Fortune – meditative, playful and stylistically diverse, inspired by nature, philosophical themes and inner states. Bočić's music comes straight from the heart – a sonic reflection of his feelings, experiences and worldview, and his performances are bold and convincing, with improvisations that are meaningful, passionate and always in the spirit of the moment. It is not conventional or sways to the usual way of listening, but intrigues, stimulates curiosity and beckons to listen carefully, exploring the sonic boundaries of contemporary jazz, while at the same time remaining rooted in the jazz tradition.
Mario Bočić has mastered the art of playing the saxophone, as well as the language of jazz, which is why he enters into performances unencumbered by thoughts about technique. His musical approach is based on direct communication with his collaborators, openness to surprises and sudden changes during the performance, with a dose of humor and nonchalance. His music comes directly from the heart, and his compositions are a sonic reflection of feelings, experiences, worldview, people around him, stories he has heard, and his own thoughts and intentions.
At a concert at the Croatian House in Split, Bočić presents the album Wheel of Fortune, his new discographic release published by Croatia Records. He performs with long-time collaborators and friends – musicians with rich experience with whom he shares mutual respect and a strong sense of community. He has assigned each member of the quartet an interesting and changing division of roles, different in each performance. All are imaginative improvisers, and improvisation is one of the key elements of Bočić's musical vision. Together they strive to turn the moment of the present into eternity.
This is contemporary jazz that explores the sonic boundaries within the rich jazz tradition, while remaining firmly rooted in its core values. On this album, Bočić presents himself exclusively as the author of his own compositions. His compositional taste was shaped by listening to the works of greats from various musical worlds, including Duke Ellington, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Count Basie, Maria Schneider, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Igor Stravinsky, Carla Bley, Antonio Vivaldi and Charlie Parker.
He writes his compositions with the piano, and each one is created for a clear inner reason and carries its own story. They are inspired by philosophical themes, but also by sensory stimuli: the scents of nature, views of the mountains and the city, stars, nighttime atmospheres, rivers, the sound of waves and seashores. Compositions from the album Wheel of Fortune they are deeply thoughtful, inventive, stylistically diverse, meditative, and playful.
Listening to this music, it is clear that Bočić has thoroughly studied the history of jazz, but also that he is close to saxophonists who have created their own musical world. Among them is Charles Lloyd, with whom he shares the vision of music as a spiritual discipline. Bočić directly refers to Lloyd's early period and his refinement in the composition Ndolah Cherry, although he displays similar subtlety in other works.
The album was recorded at Stefan Amerio's Artesuono studio, where Bočić has already collaborated with other musicians. He was particularly inspired by the collaboration with Dom Camerdello, Lloyd's long-time collaborator, who mixed the album and co-produced it. The performances are characterized by artistic maturity: they are devoid of the need for attractiveness and extravagance, they develop patiently and meaningfully, often in a ballad atmosphere and in a restrained dynamic range, but with a clearly expressed internal dramaturgy.
The dramaturgy is further shaped by the solos of all members of the ensemble, who are all excellent improvisers. Each piece brings a different story, a different rhythmic pattern, a different atmosphere and a different tone of musical conversation. There is nothing conventional or predictable in this music – it is intriguing, it stimulates curiosity and invites careful and multiple listening.
Bočić did not succumb to the widespread prejudice that musical energy is achieved through loudness. The power of his music does not stem from intensity but from the search for its essence, sincerity, depth and beauty. It is this energy that makes the project Wheel of Fortune unique on the contemporary Croatian jazz scene.
Mario Bocic (Karlovac, October 7, 1979) completed his primary and secondary music education in his hometown, where he won first prize at the national saxophone competition while still in high school. He graduated and received his master's degree in classical saxophone from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, and then studied jazz saxophone at the Conservatory for Jazz in Klagenfurt.
He taught at the Music School in Karlovac from 2004 to 2006 and at the Zlatko Baloković Music School in Zaprešić from 2009 to 2011. Jazz particularly interested him while attending the Summer Jazz School in Grožnjan and joining the HGM Jazz Orchestra Zagreb, with which he performed as a baritone saxophonist in Croatia and abroad and collaborated with numerous prominent jazz musicians, including Don Menza, Jim McNeely, Peter Erskine, Luis Bonilla, David Liebman, Michael Abene, Donny McCaslin, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Lew Tabackin, Joseph Bowie and John Hollenbeck.
In 2014, he represented Croatia in the European Broadcasting Union Jazz Orchestra at a concert in Prague. He has participated in the recordings of numerous award-winning discographies and is a multiple winner of the Status music award in the jazz saxophone category, awarded by the Croatian Music Union. He has also collaborated with the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, participating in performances Dundo Maroje i Orestius.
With the jazz ensembles he plays in – including the Croatian Radio and Television Jazz Orchestra, B's Funstallation, 4in3+1, Ivan Kapec Quintet, The Problems, Lasse Lindgren Big Constellation, Šimun Matišić Sextet, Zvonimir Šestak Groove Assembly, Vedran Ružić Quartet and The Bonebomb – he has recorded a number of albums and performed at numerous jazz festivals and concert stages in Croatia and abroad. Among others, he has performed at the Liburnija Jazz Festival, Siscia Jazz Festival, Ankara Music Festival, Last Minute Open Jazz Festival in Bale, Prilep Jazz Festival, Jazz Camp Kranj, Jazz Is Back BP Festival in Grožnjan, Zagreb Biennale, World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Hultsfred Festival in Sweden, McCormack's Ballroom in Leipzig, BP Club in Zagreb and the Porgy & Bess club in Vienna.
As a permanent member of the HRT Jazz Orchestra, where he has been employed since 2011, he has realized numerous projects and collaborations with distinguished guests, and he is often chosen as a soloist and interpreter of the character of individual works and their authors. He recorded an album with that orchestra Candid and presented himself at the eponymous author's concert, for which he signed all the compositions. The title of the concert Optimism for the whole world it came from the composition Candide for the whole world, named in French under the influence of Voltaire, but also as a response to the period of pandemic and social upheaval, out of the belief that music is a healing energy and that everything in the world is interconnected. Some of the compositions from this project were created during the time of self-isolation, and the orchestral arrangements were written by his friends and collaborators Emiliano Sampaio, Štěpánka Balcarová, Luka Žužić, Miron Hauser and Joe Kaplowitz, whom he chose according to their authorial style and musical affinities.
Davor Hrvoj
