Darija Hodnik

Daria Hodnik Marinković (Daria HodMar) is a musician with many years of experience on the scene. She worked with some of the most famous artists from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her first contact with music was through her family; she started playing piano at the age of 7 and performed at children’s festivals in Sarajevo and Zagreb. In 1995 she graduated from "Elly Bašić" music high-school and enrolled at the Music Academy in Zagreb - Department of Musicology, which she successfully completed in the year 1999, with a degree of graduated musicologist, music publicist, and professor of music history. In the same year she won the distinguished Rector's Award of the University of Zagreb for archiving music items of the Dubrovnik's Cathedral. While studying at the Academy, she began working in recording studios and singing backing vocals. Daria recorded her first song, which marked a beginning of a long and productive career at the Rockoko studio in 1995 with Nikša Bratoš with whom she developed a successful long-term cooperation and friendship. At the same time she began singing backing vocals in another music publishing company, Tutico, run by Zrinko Tutić, and worked with all Tutico's artists at the time – Severina, Maja Blagdan, Željko Bebek, etc.. An interesting thing to mention is that her first public appearance at a concert was in 1996 in Dom Sportova where she performed as a back vocalist of Crvena jabuka in front of the audience of 15,000 people. Her cooperation with Crvena jabuka has continued and strived since then, but she also began performing at various music festivals in Croatia, including Zagrebfest, Splitski Festival, Dora. Until this day she performed on all Porins, the Croatian discography awards, since its foundation. In the year 2000 Daria HodMar entered into a successful collaboration with Dino Merlin, as a permanent member of his band, and travelled across Europe, America, and Australia. Since then she was a backing vocalist on all Dino Merlin's albums and has an exceptionally successful collaboration with him nowadays. Her cooperation with Gibonni started in 2001. She was a backing vocalist on his very successful album Mirakul, and performed with him in large cities on tour which followed the record, alongside famous names like Tony Levin on bass and Manu Katche on drums. The cooperation with Gibo has been thriving ever since, both in studio recordings and concerts so Daria recorded backing vocals on his following albums: Unca fibre, Acoustic-Electric, Toleranca. Another notable example of successful cooperation is the one with Severina. Daria HodMar was a backing vocalist on almost all of her albums and performed on many tours (in the period 1996-2013). Besides the ones mentioned, she performed with all big names of the Croatian music scene, such as: Oliver, Nina Badrić, Novi Fosili, Zrinko Tutić, Rajko Dujmić, Gabi Novak, Tereza Kesovija, Arsen Dedić, Petar Grašo, Ivana Banfić, Vanna, Danijela Martinović, Jelena Rozga, Miroslav Škoro, Boris Novković, and many others. She has been a supporting vocalist to other stars of Balkan region, such as: Zdravko Čolić, Dino Merlin, Toše Proeski, Kemal Monteno, Aleksandra Radović, Sergej Ćetković, Željko Joksimović, Hari Mata Hari, Plavi orkestar, Željko Samardžić, and many others. Lately, most of her concert performances are with Zdravko Čolić on all his big concerts. She also successfully cooperates with musicians on Croatian jazz scene, she sang lead vocals on Luka Udjbinac’s albums with an international band the Voices of Nature, and successfully collaborates with Jazz Orchestra of the Croatian national television (HRT). Along with Dragan Brnas, Vladimir Pavelić, and Ivana Čabraja , Daria is a member of a vocal quartet called Absolute A, which performed at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Their quartet became a trademark of many highly rated Croatian national television (HTV) programmes such as Studio 10, Zvijezde pjevaju (Croatian version of Just the Two of Us), Ples sa zvijezdama (Croatian version of Dancing with the Stars), which all got high praise for vocal interpretations, but it is little known that these four people are the lead vocalist in these shows. There are also other strings connecting Daria with Croatian national television and radio (HRT). She has been employed as a music editor in the Classical Music Department of Croatian Radio. In 2013 her long-standing wish and plan came true when she finally realised a joint project with her husband, one of the most respected Croatian drummers, Dado Marinković (Parni Valjak), and released her first independent single for Aquarius Record - the song called Iza tvojih riječi (Behind Your Words). The music composer is their long-time friend and Daria's colleague Dragan Brnas - Fudo, while the author of lyrics is another close friend, Maya Sar.