Composing for children

Musicologist and music editor Primož Trdan in dialogue with composers Larisa Vrhunc, Bojana Šaljić Podešva, Brane Zorman

What particularities does creating for children bring for the composers, what limitations and innovation possibilities? How to compose an effective song, create a curious form and address the young audience? These and other subjects will be discussed by guests experienced with setting children's songs to music, instrumental composition, as well as experimental radio plays and sound installations for children.

Larisa Vrhunc studied music pedagogy and composition in Ljubljana, Geneva and Lyon. She has also taken part in several composition courses (S. Gubaidulina, B. Ferneyhough, M. Jarrell, K. Huber, H. Lachenmann, H. Kyburz, P. Dusapin and others). In 2000 she completed a course in computer music at IRCAM, Paris. She has a PhD in musicology and is a full professor at the Faculty of Arts (Department of Musicology) of the University of Ljubljana. For her work she was awarded several Slovenian and international prizes and awards, among them the Prešeren Fund Award in 2003.

Bojana Šaljić Podešva is a Slovenian composer. Her artistry is grounded in philosophic observations of humans and society. Her basic means of expression is electroacoustic music, including live performance in conjunction with acoustic instruments (chamber electronics). Throughout her opus she has been researching sound as an entity that impacts the listener both physically and psychologically. Her works span between full abstraction and complex semantic languages. Another important domain of her engagement is music in relation to visual and performing arts. She has presented her works at the International Rostrum of Composers, International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music, Synthese Bourges, ISCM World Music Days, Palma Ars Acustica, Prix Italia, winning several composition prizes for her concert works, scene and film music.

Brane Zorman is a composer, sound and radio artist, sound manipulator, curator and producer. He creates sound compositions for theatre, dance, intermedia and drama performances. He explores the possibilities of processing, presenting, perceiving, positioning and reinterpreting the spatial properties of sound. He records and interprets soundscapes, shaping them into hybrid-dynamic, electroacoustic sound sculptures with the aid of sophisticated tools. He is the cofounder of the CONA Institute for Contemporary Art Processing, the project radioCona, and the gallery for sound, bioacoustics and art STEKLENIK. Together with Irena Pivka he has created a series of soundwalks: Hodi mesto, HODI.TI / 2.WALK, Peskovnik, Vrt pionirk and the festival of soundwalks ToPot. His bio-acoustic composition The Tree Spirits I Touch won the 2022 Palma Ars Acustica award of the EBU (European Broadcast Union).

Primož Trdan (born 1986) is a musicologist, music editor and journalist. In 2012, he received the Prešeren Student Prize of the Faculty of Arts for his thesis on the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Janez Matičič, and in 2019 he completed his doctoral studies with his dissertation Slovenian Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art. He has published in the Muzikologie Proceedings, the Journal for the Critique of Science, and the Dialogues, and has written a chapter on electroacoustic and experimental music for the comprehensive History of Music in Slovenia IV. Since 2013, he has been the host music editor at the contemporary classical music editorial department of the Ars Program, where he covers a wide range of topics; from cooperation with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra as the editor of live broadcasts of the Kromatika series, to specialised programs on contemporary music.