Andrej Goričar was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1971 . He works as a pianist, composer, professor, and arranger.
During his studies of piano on Ljubljana Music Academy, he won student Prešeren Prize, the highest student prize in Slovenia, for intepreting Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 for piano and orchestra with Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. He finished his studies at Ljubljana Music Academy performing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Slovenian Radio Orchestra and conductor Carl Davis.
From 1996 to 2002 he was headmaster of the St. Stanislav Music School in Ljubljana, where he also teached piano and established and conducted school’s very succesful orchestra.
From 1996 to 2007 and again from 2010 he is “resident pianist” of the Slovenian Cinematec in Ljubljana. Silent movies are one of his specialities; he performed as a pianist, improvising a wide spectrum of silent movies home and abroad in Europe and USA. He also composes orchestra scores for silent movies. He wrote orchestral music for the film Sunrise (Murnau, USA, 1927) . The symphonic orchestra score for the film V kraljestvu Zlatoroga (In the Realm of the Goldenhorn, J. Ravnik, SLO, 1931) was performed during celebrating 100 years of slovenian film with Slovenian Radio Orchestra and conductor Helmut Imig. In 2010 he composed music for the silent animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, GER, 1926). It has been performed at the Animateka International Animated Film Festival in Ljubljana the same year.
His works as a composer were performed by different soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras.
He also likes to compose music for theatre. Lately he had worked with one of the greatest slovene theatre directors, Vito Taufer.
In 2010 he won the 16. International Composing Competition “2 Agosto” in Bologna, Italy, with the composition Ex Anima for piano and orchestra.
