Ante Grgin - Clarinet Concertino

Concertino for Clarinet & Wind Band by Ante Grgin
Conductor: Matthew McCutchen
Clarinet Soloist: Tony Negron
Ensemble: Florida Wind Band
Ante Grgin was born in Kaštel Novi, PR Croatia, FPR Yugoslavia, and started his early training at the School of Music in Split. He completed his undergraduate (1969) and graduate (1974) studies at the Belgrade Music Academy, under the tuition of renowned professor Bruno Brun. Grgin was the second, and, later, principal clarinetist of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and is a member of the New Music Ensemble. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has played in the country and abroad (France, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Belarus, China etc.) and took part at various festivals, such as: BEMUS, The Days in Honour of Mokranjac, Marble Sounds and others. Grgin has composed a number of pieces for piano, violin, viola, flute, clarinet, saxophone, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, horn. His compositions are characterized by tendency towards free forms, style models of jazzed symphony, evergreen harmonies, Balkan folklore rhythms and highly emphasized melodic as a part of instrument nature to which Grgin has dedicated his performing and creative work.
Grgin is now a full professor of clarinet and chair of the Department of Wind Instruments at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, where he taught from 1995 to 2014, and at the Faculty of Arts in Niš.
Program Note by composer