Igor Karača - Mantra

Igor Karača is a Bosnian composer and pianist of classical and jazz music. Most of Karača's work has been for chamber ensembles and electronic media. He employs a wide variety of techniques, ranging from controlled aleatoric, free-jazz inspired textures, to more traditional, neoclassical style; he usually aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience.

After taking private music lessons, Karača studied music at the Academy of Music in Sarajevo under Josip Magdić and Andjelka Bego-Simunić. He graduated in 1996 with a BM in music composition and has since been a guest at different masterclasses in Europe, working with Boguslaw Schaeffer, Klaus Huber, Helmut Lachenmann, Marc-André Dalbavie and Marco Stroppa, among others. In 1999 Karača came to United States to study composition with Dr. Thomas Wells at the Ohio State University, from which he received his DMA in 2005.

He was a member of Sarajevo Jazz Quartet, jazz quintet Happy End and Bosnian pop-rock band Punkt, for which he played piano, Hammond organ and electronic keyboards.

Dr. Karača teaches courses on music composition, counterpoint, jazz improvisation, orchestration, technology and theory at Oklahoma State University. He is a Visiting Full Professor of Music at Sarajevo Music Academy, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“Both Mantra (2012) and its "sequel" Secunda pars (Latin for "Second Part," 2014) belong to the genre of computer-assisted algorithmic music. Selected Vedic mantras and Biblical Psalms were used as basic material for the compositions, manipulated in real time through the use of a special algorithm programmed by the composer, and then translated - using a personal computer running ArtWonk software into a modal stream of notes played on the saxophones. These two works are dedicated to the h2 saxophone quartet.”
- Igor Karača