Biography
Giovanni Cavallin, after whom the VIMM clarinet competition is named, was born in Sarajevo in 1932 and completed his early schooling and basic musical education in Banja Luka. In 1952 he moved to Zagreb, where he studied at the Faculty of Philosophy — graduating in 1957 — while attending the School of Music. That same year he became the first clarinet student in Josip Nochta’s class at the Zagreb Music Academy, graduating with honours in 1962 with a full recital at the Croatian Music Institute. He qualified as a professor in 1964 with a thesis on the clarinet as a concert instrument, and in 1965–66 a French government scholarship took him to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with Ulysse Delécluse, with further refinement in Nice under Jacques Lancelot.
From 1958 onward he taught clarinet and chamber music at the Pavle Markovac Music School in Zagreb. His students collected 55 competition awards — 19 first, 25 second and 11 third places — and three times won first place in Croatian chamber-music competitions. For young players he wrote the exercise collection “50 Daily Clarinet Exercises”, and at his initiative Croatian composers Vidošević, Miletić, Marković and Klobučar wrote clarinet quartets gathered in the album “4 Quartets for 4 Clarinets”, expanded in 1998 with works by Cosetto and Paar into “Six Quartets for Four Clarinets in B”.
As a performer he gave 107 solo appearances, including 16 premieres of works by Croatian composers, with the RTZ Orchestra, the Zagreb Chamber Orchestra, the Sarajevo Philharmonic, the Dubrovnik Orchestra and others, and served as solo E-flat and B-flat clarinettist for the Zagreb Philharmonic, the RTZ Orchestra and the Zagreb Opera. He spent a decade in the contemporary-music ensemble ACEZANTEZ and played in the newly formed Croatian Army Orchestra from December 1991 to June 1992.
He also founded the wind orchestra of the Pavle Markovac school, which he led for fifteen years and which won three first prizes. His recognitions include the republic award “4 Gold Stars” for achievements in primary education, the lifetime achievement award of the Croatian Society of Music and Ballet Pedagogues, and the title of professor-mentor (1993). He contributed to national curricula for wind instruments, judged at national music-school competitions, and is a member of the Croatian Composers’ Society and an honorary member of the Croatian Clarinet Society. His sons both took up the clarinet: Radovan, a VIMM lecturer, is a soloist in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Lucijan completed his clarinet education in Zagreb. Davor Reba, VIMM’s organizer, is among his former students.