Slavko Šuklar was born in 1952 in Murska Sobota, Slovenia. He holds two degrees from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, first in Music Theory, and then in composition (BA with Petar Ozgijan and Aleksandar Obradović, MA with Srđan Hofman).

He taught Music Analysis at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad as associate professor, in 1991 he became professor of Composition and Orchestration. As guest professor he taught Orchestration to students of Musicology and Conducting in Belgrade for one year. In 1994 he was elected the head of Department for Composition and Conducting in Novi Sad. He was the president of the Composers Association of Vojvodina. For a number of years he was a member of the Program Committee of the Yugoslavian Composers Review in Opatija; in 1996 he became a member of the board of the Authors’ Agency.

He lives now in Velenje, Slovenia where he works in a secondary school of music and is intensively engaged in the musical life of Murska Sobota in the PAC Club (Pomurje Academic Center). He is the founder of the ensemble Camerata Velanensis Velenje. He was chosen by the rector of the Maribor University to be the president of an expert group for the establishing of Academy of Music in Velenje under the auspices of the Maribor University, due to open in 2009.

The oeuvre of Slavko Šuklar consists of over 60 compositions written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, soloists, electronic music, compositions for acoustic instruments and electronics, multi-media projects, choral works, a large number of pieces for accordion orchestra, music for documentary films, TV serials, radio dramas, puppet shows. His compositions have been performed at all major festivals and concerts in former Yugoslavia and today’s Serbia, in the USA, Austria, Russia, England, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Israel, Hungary, Germany, Slovakia, 6th International

Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music in Amsterdam, World Music Days 2002 in Hong Kong, World Music Days 2003 in Ljubljana etc. A month ago, a CD titled Lux in tenebris with the music of Slavko Šuklar was released by EDSS (Editions of Slovenian Compositions).

Slavko Šuklar received important awards for his achievements: Second Prize at the International Review of Composers Karlovci – Novi Sad for the work Vocaliseconcertante, Second Prize at the International Review of Composers in Belgrade for Concertodoppio, award of the jury of Yugoslav Broadcasting System on the last Opatija Review in 1990 for Concertoperamici, Special Prize of DHW Trossingen (Hohner), Germany, several First Prizes of the Ministry of Culture of Vojvodina…

- Flaura ’94 for flute and electronics was written in 1994 and dedicated to the superb flutist Laura Levai Aksin which she performed together with the composer in 1995 at the International Review of Composers in Belgrade. Flaura ’94 was subsequently performed in various festivals and concerts in Slovenia by the Slovenia flutist Karolina Šantl Zupan, who recorded the piece for the ARS Program of Radio Slovenia, the recording which also features on new Šuklar’s CD.

The composition makes use of excerpts from the text and several modulated segments from the well-known piece by Witold Lutoslawski Paroles Tissés, and the flute is treated, among other ways, as an instrument through which one can “speak” very well. Electronic fits in a subtle way into the central part of the composition; at the climax, the flute is disassembled and only its head is used for playing. The recapitulation uses segments from the exposition which bring the material to the point of disappearance, to the spoken stanza of Claude Chabron »Qui se merveille«.