Composer/Arranger

Alongside with his core performing profile, Mihael Paar has been likewise successful in the field of music composition. Capacity to conceive and form highly original material coupled with his boundless fantasy and subtle humor, defines him as a composer and puts the lasting hallmark on each of the works coming from his pen. Whether it is original piece, rework, arrangement or just a small improvised cadence, Paar’s ‘touch’ remains both distinctive and receptive.

He discovered the world of finding his own music quite early, having started to compose at the age of thirteen. Briefly afterwards, public performance of his works followed, with the single-movement clarinet quartet Adagio being also published. By the time he was twenty he wrote intensively, producing considerably mature pieces to great acclaim earned both by his teachers, performers and the audience alike.

His style is characterized by the mixture of postromantism and neoclassical furnished with idioms of jazz and popular music, while simultaneously exploring other genres. Often in a free form, he has composed about twenty solo and chamber works, with piano and clarinet being the most dedicated instruments. Small portion of his opus occupies works written in the classical harmony style, which finds its value primarily as a didactic material and at the time served in the development of his composing style. His works have been performed throughout Croatia, having also won the 3rd Prize at the International Piano Composition Competition in Barletta, Italy.

Today Mihael focuses primarily on various types of original adaptations, arrangements, reworks, modifications and transcriptions. His unique approach towards the well known themes has made a name for him and  an arranger in demand likewise. The unique arrangements he produces redefine the works to the extent of another musical entity while preserving the very essence of the original. Mihael’s handwriting has also left a special mark on the clarinet literature which he complements with numerous cadences, fermatas, ornamentation ideas as well as small composing implementations and modifications, all of them, hopefully, to approval of great masters.