Accomplished musician, teacher, author and children’s theater director
holds Doctorate in piano performance from Rice University
| Dr. Loreta Kovacic, who is fondly referred to as the “Alchemist”, is an accomplished musician, teacher, author and children’s theater director. Her spirit is what makes her a true alchemist in that she has the uncanny ability to transform the seemingly normal into true gold. This ability is reflected in the children she works with, inspiring a new level of confidence through music and performance! Loreta holds a Doctorate in piano performance from Rice University, but is widely known for her performances from small local stages to Carnegie Hall. Her critically acclaimed work, Brother Tadpole, garnered her a Grammy nomination. When she’s not performing she plays, composes, teaches, directs and creates original children’s musicals at her piano studio in the Houston Heights. In 2013 Loreta completed her first music theatre instructional book “Alchemist da Capo”, an original and innovative music theatre program for children 18 months to 6 years old, currently used at Esperanza daycare in Houston. Copies of this book are available for order via email . She is planning to complete her unique Alchemist Piano method book for Beginners and Intermediate piano students by the end of 2014.  Loreta with her daughter Maya
Following her passion and inspired by her daughter, who has dyslexia, and her husband who has Parkinson’s decease, she decided to create a non-profit theatre program that welcomes and encourages children with dyslexia and adults with Parkinson’s decease to help them gain confidence and inspire their creative side. This all original children’s musical theater, Alchemist Piano Theatre, or APT, located at 2905 Reagan street in Woodland Heights. Alchemist Piano Theatre performance space is inside Esperanza School campus on 1100 Roy street, off of Washington and Shepherd in Houston Heights. Other performance venues include Discovery Green park and various schools and churches in Houston.  Her songs have been played on Croatian radio and TV, Houston’s radio KUHF and KPFT and the International Space Station. Along with her theatre work Loreta enjoys performing music for the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Georges Melies at venues like Discovery Green and MFAH. She often performs with APT band and APT children singers and actors; especially with theremin player and husband, Joe Parani, also known as “Brother Tadpole”. Joe acts in every APT show, adding a dimension of comedy, improv and all around great time in theatre!!! He is a space flight trainer at NASA, but at APT, he creates magic with children on stage!  “Known for her virtuoso performances from Boom Boom room to Carnegie Hall, she is also recognized as an author of imaginative children’s music. Her style is inspired by music from around the world, a unique, international mixture of influences. This self proclaimed “Texas Slav” calls her own style “Slavic & Western”. She moves from classical to pop and jazz genres as fluidly as her fingers dance around the ivories”Houston Press |
| CROATIAN NATIVE CALLS HOUSTON HOME From Carnegie Hall to the Boom Boom Room: Loreta Kovacic’s wandering musical journey BY DAVID THEIS 4.9.10 | 7:19 am SHARE TWEET1 EMAIL PIN News_David Theis_Loreta Boom Boom Room Get Directions – 2518 Yale St. Houston Just the other day, the earnest bohemians sipping their coffees and tapping at their laptops over at Antidote Coffee got a musical treat. A woman among them who was not so earnest — her flamboyant eyewear gives her away —- pulled a toy-like musical instrument out of her bag and began to play. The instrument, a melody horn, consists of a “laptop” keyboard maybe two feet long, and a plastic tube that the player blows into as she tickles the ivories, producing an accordion-like effect. The effect was both very cool and very random. But when the performer, Heights resident, Shepherd School of Music PhD, and unique presence in the Houston music scene Loreta Kovacic, asked if I knew the tune, I had to say, “no.” “It’s the Internationale,” she smiled behind her tinted glasses. “It was bigger than the national anthem back home.” She paused a beat then smiled again. “Just call me Comrade Loreta.” “Back home” was Zagreb, Croatia. … It was her priest uncle who first taught her to play the organ when she spent summers with him at his parish on a lavender-covered Dalmatian island. “He’d pump and I’d play, and vice versa,” she says. From there she studied piano in the government music schools, which were “very structured. They developed skill but didn’t inspire creativity.” For inspiration Kovacic turned to an 81-year-old woman composer. “If you want to be creative, just write your own music,” Kovacic remembers her saying. “I was shocked, to tell you the truth, to hear an old woman say that.” In high school she helped form a rock band that had a national following. She played the Polymoog Synthesizer. “I was the first female rock electronic keyboard player in the country,” Kovacic says. …  By 1986 she had come to the U.S. to study piano. Her Ph D studies brought her to Rice. She married and had two kids, and now she hopes she never has to leave. |
Za vsaku dobru riječ
| Based on Croatian song Fala (Thank You).
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