Miha Gantar

Miha Gantar, solo piano
(Slovenia)

artist-in-residence/Clean Feed Records

Although a young pianist just starting out on his promising professional career, Miha Gantar reveals undoubted artistic talent that makes him stand out among his peers. After studying for a spell at The New School in New York, he returned to Europe, more accurately, to the Netherlands, where he continued his work, both playing concerts and recording with celebrated names in new jazz and free performance. What's more, for his debut album he has leapfrogged the ranks and negotiated a release of a box of five albums with Clean Feed. We’ve never seen anything like this before! Such impressive credentials cannot be ignored, so we have offered space for the young artist to present part of this extensive work live at three different concerts. Miha Gantar thus returns to the Jazz Festival Ljubljana, but as a more mature musician whose vision is not a gradual emergence, but an immediate demonstration of all the potentials and ideas of this young and ambitious artist. It takes courage and determination, qualities that have been badly missed so far. May his music blossom forth also before the Jazz Festival audiences. More than a project, Solo for an author is a long-term research and creative process, an infinitely changing expansiveness, a way of life. In this process, Gantar creates, develops, examines and transfigures his own sound code, the nucleus of his aesthetics, the pillar supporting all other processes and his works. A special place in this universe is allocated to exploring the origins of the composer’s creativity in an in-depth relationship with his instrument, developing the artistic discipline whilst striving for virtuosity. Innovation as a link between tradition and modernity – evolution through practice; a fundamental guideline that lends substance to the featured works.