A pianist, composer and sound designer who digs deep into his pieces to find heartfelt truths in his sound, Marko Ivic finds inspiration in everyday moments, moulding them into vast atmospheres. Bringing roots from Venezuela, Croatia and Italy, Marko was educated in classical piano at the University of Zagreb, going on to earn a Master’s degree in Live Electronics from the Amsterdam Conservatory. Meditative and subtle, his sound is infused with a deep appreciation for the intricacies of sound.
As soft and as expressive as ever, Marko Ivic’s latest composition ‘Black Spring’ is a heartfelt and dark outpour of emotions, conveyed through the tenderness of a piano. Taking a slow-burning approach to this track, Marko sets the scene steadily, building up a sense of endlessness as the core movement barely changes. This seemingly gives him the ability to turn on the tension at a moment’s notice, with a simple delay feeling initiating the gradual slope into a huge climax, expanding his reach on the piano for powerful low hits and twinkling high-frequency shimmers.
Introducing melodies among the now almighty repeated pattern, the track continues to morph and entangle within itself, still with the same face, but a much more powerful being within it. Taking a moment of reflection the track then takes as much time to fall away as it did to build, a new sense of purpose in each echoing note. Disappearing, a moment captured, then lost.
“I wrote Black Spring for a theatre piece with the same name, written by Espen Hjort in 2020,” Marko explains, “The play is about the end of a love affair. After a sudden breakup, the main character goes for a walk, in order to find comfort in nature. But nature is just gone. He spends the night looking for it, but it has disappeared completely. I was motivated by Espen’s parallelisms between a love story and the ecological catastrophe we are witnessing today. Black Spring tries to capture the depth of a love story amidst the destructive forces surrounding it, while still looking up for a beam of light to hold on to. Its a beautiful exemplification of our complicated love story with planet earth.”
‘Black Spring’ is out now!