2025 ITG European Regional Conference

Varaždin, Croatia | 5-7 September, 2025

Davor Križić

Concert

Trumpeter, flugelhorn player, and composer Davor Križić was born in 1966 in Zagreb, where he completed grammar school and music school. He studied at the Jazz Department of the Music Academy in Graz. In 1990, he won the Best Young Jazz Musician award at the Jazz Fair in Zagreb. He has performed numerous concerts with small ensembles and as a soloist with large orchestras. He has been a permanent member and soloist with the Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) Jazz Orchestra (since 1989), and he has performed with numerous Croatian and international musicians, including Ernie Wilkins, Boško Petrović, Matija Dedić, Krunoslav Levačić, Saša Nestorović, Joe Kaplowitz, Miro Kadoić, Johnny Griffin, Lena Conquest, Ed Thigpen, Art Farmer, Alvin Queen, Martin Drew, Ron Ringwood, Christian McBride, Alan Broadbent, Charles Tolliver, Alex Sipiagin, Jon Faddis, Lasse Lindgren, Boris Kozlov, Lars Möller, Ernie Watts, Ignacio Berroa, the Greentown Jazz Band, Milko Lazar, the RTV Slovenia Big Band, the RTV Serbia Big Band, the Cantus Ensemble, and many others.

He is a respected studio musician and a permanent member of the band Cubismo, with whom he recorded the album Motivo Cubano in Havana in 2000, collaborating with members of the famous Afro-Cuban All Stars. He has recorded several albums domestically and internationally, and as a guest soloist, he has appeared on numerous albums by prominent Croatian jazz, pop, and rock musicians. As a composer, Križić gained recognition in the mid-1990s, writing for the Boilers Quartet, which he has been a member of since its founding. He released albums with the quartet, including Some Blues (1997), Abstract Lights (1999), and St. Miles Infirmary (2000) in collaboration with Boško Petrović, and with the expanded Boilers All Stars ensemble, the album That’s It (2003), as well as Boilers Big Band – Live in ZEKAEM (2005). With the Boilers Quartet, he performed at numerous concerts in Croatia and abroad, including the Kenny Burrell and Benny Golson Jubilly Jazz Tour (1999) and a concert held in London at the Festival of Central European Cultures (1999), which the prestigious English magazine Time included in its annual review of significant cultural events. The quartet won the Porin discography award in 1999 for Best Jazz Composition, To the Lite, a collaboration between Križić and Dedić from the album Abstract Lights, and in 2004 for Best Jazz Album with the expanded Boilers All Stars ensemble for the album That’s It. In 2014, he released the album Davor Križić Experiment, which won the Porin award in three categories. For his original album Insite with the Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) Jazz Orchestra, he received the Porin award (2023) in all three categories. His musical achievements have been the subject of numerous reviews and critiques, and he has appeared in numerous radio and television programs promoting jazz music.