Kornelije Kovač, the legendary Serbian composer, passed away yesterday, September 13, 2022, at the age of 81.
After his health began to fail, the famed music producer, composer, arranger and, first and foremost, pianist was taken to the hospital in Batajnica, Belgrade, on August 20, 2022, where his condition kept getting worse day by day, partly due to a COVID-19 infection.
Kornelije Kovač was known as a composer, pianist and arranger. He was born in Niš in 1942, and he wrote his first composition, Pusti trotoari, back in 1956, when he was just 14.
Kornelije and his brother Mihajlo came from a musical family. Their grandfather Kornel Kovač was a musician and worked as a conductor at the opera in Subotica, their father Josip played violin in the philharmonic and was also a music professor, and their mother was an opera singer.
Both brothers showed a big interest in music from early childhood. They both attended elementary music school and learned to play piano. Mihajlo became a member of the band Delfini, later turned to journalism, and from 2001 on served as the Yugoslav ambassador to Austria.
Classically trained, Kornelije soon got interested in rock and jazz too. He started his professional music career in 1961, when he formed his first band, BKB, in Sarajevo. The band played jazz wherever it could, which in 1963 even landed them at a jazz festival held in Bled, Slovenia.
After leading various orchestras around Bosnia, he joined Indeksi, the most popular pop outfit in Sarajevo at the time, who were in fact considered the Yugoslav pioneers of psychedelic rock. With them he set off on a two-month tour of Russia. In 1968 he moved to Belgrade and founded one of the most important Yugoslav bands of all time, Korni Grupa.
Korni Grupa released their studio debut “Korni Grupa” in 1972. They played numerous music festivals in the former Yugoslavia and across Europe, and one of their biggest appearances came in 1974, when they performed at the festival in Opatija. They took first place there and secured a spot at Eurovision the same year, held in Brighton, UK, where they finished 12th with the song Generacija 42 (also known as Moja generacija) (ABBA won that year with Waterloo). In 1974 they also released an English-language album under the name Kornelyans, titled “Not An Ordinary Life”, but Kornelije Kovač, unhappy with the Eurovision result and the lukewarm reception of the new album, decided to disband the group that same year. In 1975 the double live vinyl “Mrtvo more” came out on RTB. In 1977 Kornelije Kovač tried to put together a supergroup called K2, which was supposed to feature Josip Boček, Dado Topić, Sloba Marković, Čarli Novak and Ratko Divljak. It never came together. Sources say it was because of Topić’s hesitation. In 1979 the film music for the TV episode “1941”, which Korni Grupa had recorded back in 1971, came out on a separate vinyl record. The record, titled “1941.”, contains just two long compositions. The “1941” episode was part of the TV series “Jedan čovek jedna pesma”, directed by Jovan Ristić.
Later on, Kovač’s path also led to Spain. There he worked on lots of music projects as a producer, composer and arranger. He worked with TV stations such as TELE 5 and Antena 3, where he was the music director of the popular TV show “De Tu, A Tu”.
A successful solo career followed. In 1980 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he worked on many music projects and with stars of the British pop and rock scene, such as then-Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden and former Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones. He also collaborated with composer Hans Zimmer. He began writing music for film, theater and television too.
Kovač proved himself an exceptionally skilled and successful rock and pop composer. His compositions were released on many records, in Yugoslavia as well as in Spain, France, Finland, Norway, Greece and the USA, among others. Many of them went gold and platinum on Yugoslav soil.
After returning to Yugoslavia, he gathered old and new music stars in his own studio and kept working on many projects.
He wrote three books on music: “Tamne dirke” (2003), “Falko i druge priče” (2007) and “Fusnota” (2010).
Kornelije Kovač wrote many hits, or compositions recorded by other artists, among them: Zdravko Čolić, Lepa Brena, Generacija 5, Kemal Monteno, Davorin Popović, Neda Ukraden, Željko Joksimović, Zdenka Kovačiček and Severina.
Partizan fans will never forget him, since he also wrote the club’s anthem.
