Dane Franolić is a third-year percussion student at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. He participates in international competitions and seminars and regularly performs at concerts. In 2023, he won six awards. He received first prize at the Percute Competition Catarroja in Valencia (Spain), as well as at the International Percussion Instrument Competition “Stevan Strunjašević” in Belgrade. He won second prize at the International Percussion Competition in Hallein, Austria. At the Filadelfia Festival in Tropea, Italy, he won first prize in the marimba category and the absolute first prize in the snare drum category. Tropea was also the location of his first solo performance outside Croatia. The year before last, he was awarded a Yamaha scholarship and participated as a scholar in Yamaha’s congress in Hamburg.
This year, he received a scholarship from the University of Zagreb for the second consecutive year. At the beginning of 2025, he performed at the IPEW Festival in Bjelovar and will later perform at the Music Biennale in Zagreb. The previous year, he participated in a concert series for young musicians at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. He represented the Academy of Music in Zagreb at the UniART Festival. This summer, he embarked on his first solo tour, performing twelve concerts along the Adriatic coast, from Pag through Makarska, Brač, and Vis, all the way to Lastovo. He ended the year with a New Year’s Eve concert at the Sacred Hearts in Pula. In 2023, he gave solo performances at the Academy of Music in Zagreb and the Percussion Evenings Festival in Križevci, as well as two concerts at the Filadelfia Festival in Italy.
