Miljenko Prohaska

Miljenko Prohaska (17 September 1925 – 29 May 2014) was a Croatian composer, music arranger and orchestra conductor.

A respected double-bass player, He was mainly known for founding a number of prominent Croatian orchestras and for his longtime service as the conductor of the Radio Zagreb Dance Orchestra (the present-day Croatian Radiotelevision Big Band Orchestra).

Biography Prohaska was born in Zagreb and he first began learning the violin at a children's music school in Zagreb. He went on to enroll at a secondary music school where he was educated as a contrabass player and graduated in 1951, before continuing his studies at the Zagreb Music Academy and graduating in 1956 from the music teaching department. Since the mid-1950s until the late 1980s Prohaska was a contrabass player with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio Zagreb Symphony Orchestra, the Yugoslav Radio Orchestra, the Zagreb Jazz Quartet and many other musical ensembles. Some of his compositions premiered at the Carnegie Hall in New York City and in Paris and were performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra. the Vladimir Nazor Award for Life Achievement (1988) and the Porin Award for Life Achievement (1995).