Davor Vincze is a composer of contemporary music whose artistic focus lies on meta-reality and musical mosaicking. Inspired by technology and science fiction, he searches for hidden acoustic spaces or ways to blur the real and the imaginary, often using electronics and AI tools. Working with mosaics (multiple copies of fragmented sound gestures), using technique he calls “microllage,” he searches for fluid sounds that allow for non-binary, ambiguous, or “androgynous” interpretations.
The world premiere of Vincze’s piece Ashes will be performed at MICF by Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound.
“It was inspired by a visit to a Taoist temple during the Chinese New Year, where I saw a space filled with the smoke of incense sticks, accompanied by the sound of low gongs and the rattling of bamboo kau chim sticks that foretell good fortune,” Vincze says. “It brought back two childhood memories: the war in Yugoslavia and the first time I heard David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes.” Somehow this many associations all fused into one, and I wrote a piece that explores the extremes of the sonic spectrum. The image I wanted to portray is that of looking forward through a veil of falling ashes that obscure the view at hand. It is a piece about hope and belief of a better future, as one notices the world getting more and more entangled in conflicts.”
After completing his composition studies in Graz and Stuttgart, Vincze specialized in electronic music at the Ircam and finally completed his doctorate at Stanford University. His compositions have been performed by renowned international musicians like Ensembles Decoder, Modern, Mosaik, and Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Talea and Slagwerk den Haag, JACK Quartet, Secession and No Borders Orchestra at festivals such as Présences, Impuls, MATA, Manifeste, Darmstadt and others. In 2023, he completed his Arts Fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2014, Vincze founded an international festival for contemporary music – Novalis. Since 2023 he serves as co-director of the Music Biennale Zagreb. His works are published by Maison ONA in Paris.
Vincze won Alain Louvier Prize, Stuttgart Composition Competition and 2nd prize at the Pre-Art Composition competition, Impuls Festival competition, and has been awarded many stipends in support of his studies and creations of new works. In 2020/21, he was the winner of Boris Papandopulo Prize for the best Croatian composer of contemporary music, winner of the European Contemporary Composition Orchestra competition, winner of the best audiovisual work at the International Competition Città di Udine (Italy), as well as one of five awardees of New Music, New Paths competition in Hong Kong. He was also selected for the artist residency at both the Institute of Electronic Music in Graz (2021) as well as at SWR Experimentalstudio (2022).
His piece XinSheng was selected for Noperas! production in Germany, and a new expanded version under the new title, Freedom Collective will be premiered in three theatres in Germany in 2024 (Gelsenkirchen, Bremen and Darmstadt). Vincze will continue to develop this interdisciplinary operatic project as part of his post-doctoral research that he started this year (2023) at Hong Kong Baptist University.
For more information about Vincze and his music, visit https://db-vincze.com