Milko Lazar

Milko is a composer and composer and multi-instrumentalist and hails from Maribor, Slovenia. Born in 1965, he studied jazz, classical piano, and saxophone at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, as well as harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. For fifteen years, he was associated with the big band of the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija as a saxophonist, conductor, and composer, which also recorded his concerto for piano and jazz orchestra on CD in 2001. As a jazz musician, he has collaborated with Maria Schneider, Herb Pomeroy, Peter Herbolzheimer, and Mathias Rüegg, among others. In addition to works for orchestra and chamber music ensembles, he regularly composes music for films, theater, dance, and multimedia projects. Between 2010 and 2012, four CDs were released on the Mettis label, providing a comprehensive insight into Lazar's chamber music oeuvre. In 2024, the ZKP label finally released a CD recording of his music for Matjaž Farič's ballet Moški Z Nožem (The Man with the Knife) by the Slovenian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In April 2025, the Slovenian Philharmonic under Uroš Lajovic premiered his Ballet Imaginaire for accordion, Lazaronator (an electro-acoustic instrument), and orchestra in Ljubljana.

Milko Lazar's collaboration with Edward Clug began with the composition of music for Clug's pieces Prêt-à-porter and Four Reasons, which were premiered in Lisbon in 2008 by the Companhia Nacional de Bailado. Lazar's original compositions subsequently included Clug's story ballets Faust (Zurich 2018), The Master and Margarita (Moscow 2021), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Berlin 2025), as well as numerous shorter pieces. For Clug's production of Coppélia (Basel 2023), he composed additional pieces to go along with the original music by Léo Delibes.

Among other awards, Milko Lazar received the Prešeren Foundation Prize from the Slovenian state in 2005, the Župančič Prize from the city of Ljubljana in 2010, the Ksenija Hribar Prize from the Slovenian Association for Contemporary Dance in 2021 and the distinction for Best Musical Score at the Artists Forum Festival of the Moving Image 2024 in New York City for music composed for the video project Misericorde by video artist Nataša Prosenc Stearns.

(Information as of December 2025)