Alen Ilijic
| Alen Ilijic | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Born |
30 January 1975 Gevgelija, SFR Yugoslavia |
| Genres | Experimental, classical, noise, electro-acoustic, electronic, sound installation, visual |
| Occupation(s) | Composer and multimedia artist |
| Instruments | Percussion, piano, guitar |
| Years active | 1989–present |
| Labels | BMI, Ninety and Nine Records |
Alen Ilijic (Serbian Cyrillic: Ален Илијић), (born 30 January 1975 in Gevgelija) is a Serbian avant-garde composer and multimedia artist. He studied film music with Professor Amit Sen at City of Westminster College, and composition, orchestration, electronic music and sound engineering at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, with one of the most well-known composers, music theorists and modern music scholars in Eastern Europe, Dr. Srđan Hofman.
During his studies in London, as a singer-songwriter and guitarist, Alen Ilijic formed a band Zealot, in 1993. At the time, his musical expression was in the form of experimental rock, noise and Byzantine music. Zealot performed at Rock Garden, Hope and Anchor, Islington, Red Eye, Mean Fiddler, etc. With innovative sound Zealot had a big impact on British underground scene during the nineties. The band stopped performing in 1999, due to Alen's return to Yugoslavia, Serbia. From this point onward Alen Ilijic's interest was in Avant-garde movement, under the influence of Béla Bartók, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp and Serbian multimedia artist and composer Vladan Radovanović.
His album I have no coordiNATION was released in May 2014, for New York based label Ninety and Nine Records. The album contains eight compositions that were created between 1999 and 2013 in London and Belgrade. Besides three compositions that were performed live (Improvisation for piano, violin and amplifier, at Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, 2010, My suspicious look at The Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade, 2008, I have no coordiNATION, at Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra Hall, 2007), others were recorded and realized in Ilijic’s home studio. My suspicious look is aleatoric composition performed by Ilijic and Jean Geoffroy, produced by Italian composer Michelangelo Lupone. I have no coordiNATION was performed by pianist Neda Hofman and recorded by Srđan Hofman. As a retrospective, the album displays diversity of Ilijic’s creative work.
As a multimedia artist Alen Ilijic had two solo exhibitions in Belgrade: Stellar Refugee (2011), and NOISYGENES (2014). Exhibition Stellar Refugee contains prints of manual drawings, sound installation and a documentary film, dedicated to Gustav Mahler. NOISYGENES is a project conceived with abstract-expressionist paintings, symblic prints and performance, as a way to examine the concept of noise. Abstract-expressionist paintings carry an echo of Jean-Michel Basquiat's voice, which is present in Alen's gesture and use of words. Inseparable part of the exhibition was homonymous performance - improvisation for electric guitar and electronics. These projects were supported by Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information.