Draft:Dean Kopri

Dean Kopri is an academic musician from Croatia where he works as a tamburitza (Croatian national instrument) teacher in a music school and as a conductor of the most successful junior tamburitza orchestra in Croatia and beyond. He has been awarded with ten "Oskar of Knowledge" awards for exceptional achievements in the music field based on his work with young musicians and has won numerous first prizes in national and international competitions as both a mentor and a conductor including the Annual award of the Croatian Society of Music and Dance Educators in 2021 and Annual award in recognition of exceptional achievements (2019).

Born in 1986 into a musical family, Dean started learning music from a young age playing piano and tamburitza, but was soon composing his own music. Dean likes to say that he inherited two things from his parents - a love of conducting from his mother, and a passion for composing from his father.

Dean has composed a number of compositions for various ensembles, with several awarded by the Croatian Tamburitza Association (Tambura Variations in 2017 and Memento in 2020). Together with his sister, Dean wrote a pop-rock musical "Legend of a Rose Town" which premiered in 2015. He also composed a soundtrack for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for Honey-tongued Theatre Productions, London, and for the musical show "Kiteenarium" which was performed in Kitee, Finland, in 2017 for Finland's 100th birthday. Between 2014 and 2019, Dean was a music director of Kitee International Music and Art Festival in Kitee, Finland.

Dean's latest work is the soundtrack for Propagation: Paradise Hotel video game by WanadevStudio from Lyon, France. He is featured as a guest musician on Peter Connelly's "Tomb Raider: The Dark Angel Symphony" album with his version of a Tomb Raider-inspired theme. He is a composer for an awarded animated short Tomb Raider: The Myth of El Hawa featuring Jonell Elliott (voice of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 4-6). He's also an official composer for the end credits theme from the Tomb Raider Reloaded game.

Dean is a recognized composer in the Tomb Raider community.