Vuk Kulenovic is a contemporary composer and teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts. He teaches counterpoint, orchestration and directed study at Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...

. He actively composes and has commissions from around the world. His influences are wide-tanging, including jazz, Indian ragas, Balkan folk music, rock and many other contemporary styles. He has written over 100 works for symphony orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choral and vocal pieces, ballet, and scores for film and stage music.

Early Years

Vuk was born in Sarajevo

Sarajevo

Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....

 in Yugoslavia in 1946. He studied piano and composition at Ljubljana Academy of Music with Alojz Srebotnjak in Slovenia and later at Belgrade University with Enriko Josif. Later he studied in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

, Germany under Milo Kelemenin. During his studies, the popular approach to composition was in 12-tone technique brought to the world by Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

. This had little influence on Kulenovic and he wrote in the minimalist style before it was given then name and popularized by composers such as Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

 and Phillip Glass. He taught at Belgrade University 1979-1990 where he himself received his Masters of Music.

Coming to America

In June 1992, Kulenovic organized a protest against the policies of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...

 in Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

, composed of musicians and artists, the first of its kind. Consequently his actions were noticed by the media and put him in an unfavorable position with the government he was protesting against. After experiencing destruction of his property and receiving a call for execution by an extremist newspaper he, his wife, and two sons fled the country to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with a Fulbright scholarship provided by the New England Conservatory in Boston. After lecturing at local colleges in Boston(as well as other schools) he made the decision to make his home in Boston and began teaching at Berklee College of Music in the autumn of 2006.. He continues to teach at Berklee and remains an active composer.

Music

In Berklee Today of Spring 1997 Vuk is quotes as saying "my music was always closer to popular genres in a way. For instance, there are rock elements in my string orchestra piece Mechanical Orpheus and in Boogie, a piano concerto."

Thoughts on Electric Symphony

'I’ve been a professor at Berklee College of Music for more than 10 years now; the piece is essentially a combination of many different musical styles. As I walked through the hallways of the school, I was constantly engaged by the sound of electric guitars or South American percussion instruments, synthesizers, and so on. Groups playing blues or bebop, in fact, all-possible styles of music. Berklee is full of those sounds. Before my time at this school, I was a professor at various conservatories; my academic background is indeed from those types of so called, “classical music” institutions. However, in many of my previous works over the years, I was already traveling into these different musical styles, from Indian ragas, different types of world music, even jazz and rock. One of my piano concertos, “War Boogie”, is maybe the most obvious example that comes to my mind, of a piece from my immediate past, which already dealt with these influences, not normally found in so called, “classical music”. The idea for the Electric Symphony itself came to me one morning as I heard a group of students playing electric guitars at Berklee; I immediately realized that I had to write for that instrument. It was in that same week that I began to compose the work. I ended up sending part of the unfinished score so that it would be considered for a grant; in the end, I received the largest possible amount for such a project within Berklee.'

Pieces for Solo Instruments

1. Boogie Piano Concerto
2. Vanishing Landscapes Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (1994)
3. Concerto Grosso for Cello and String Orchestra (2001)
4. Adoration of Moon for chamber orchestra and solo violin
   (2005)

Film Scores

Here is a list of Films Vuk Kulenovic is given credit for from the Internet Movie Database.

1. Iskusavanje djavola (1989)
2. In the Name of the People (1987)
3. Kraljeva zavrsnica (1987)
4. Davitelj protiv davitelja (1984)
5. Dorotej (1981)
6. Covjek, covjeku (1973)

Other Films

1. South Africa: Beyond a Miracle (2001)
2. Prelude to Kosovo: War and Peace in Bosnia and Croatia (1999) (Co-composed with Alexis Gavras & Vedran Smailovic)

Quotes

"Kulenovic is one of the most important and interesting composers working in the area -- or anywhere -- today." - Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe

Links

1. "Electric Symphony" on www.cdbaby.com
2. Official Myspace Page
3. Unofficial Interview by Roberto Toscano
4. Night Wanderings by Apostolos Paraskevas - Features Vuk's "Vanishing Landscapes