Ivica Percl Passed Away

Yesterday morning, after a long and heavy illness the famous Croatian chansonnier passed away

After a long and heavy illness, in the early morning hours, a famous Croatian channsonnier Ivan- Ivica Percl passed away at the age of 62, says in the statement of Croatian Composers' Society (HDS).

Ivica Percl (1945) was a multi talented artist – composer, guitar player, chansonnier, poet, cartoonist, painter, organiser and artistic host.

He always used his influence for other people, particularly for the young, so he for years organised and hosted Croatian Composers Societty Musical Forum. He initiated the  opening of music scene in Musical Youth Club Podroom thus creating for a number of his colleagues, a chance for introducing themselves and gaining artistic recognition, HDS mentions. It adds that he would perform with equal enthusiasm in representative concert institutions of his home town Zagreb or in village culture clubs, spreading till the last days of his life his unsurpassable optimism and a conviction that each person has a need for culture and art. His involvement in the Homeland War 1991 was, as they stress in HDS, self-understood. He would visit battlefields performing his war and patriotic chansons for Croatian army nits.

He leaves over two hundred and fifty chansons to lyrics of eighty five Croatian poets behid, and his own fifty poems. He will be most widely remembered by Stari Pjer (the Old Pierre), the chanson by Dordje Novkovic, which he had first performed on Zagreb Festival in 1968 and it has remained his trade mark ever since.

He was awarde for his merits in creating and promoting Croatian culture in Croatia and abroad, with the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the effigy of Marko Marulic, and he received a high plaudit Zagreb City Defence for his credits in the Homeland war.

The last send-off of Ivan-Ivica Percl will be on 20 March at 15:40 at Zagreb Mirogoj Graveyard.