Helena Skljarov (born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1993) completed her studies in musicology at the Academy of Music of the University of Zagreb in 2017 with a thesis on the analysis of 20th-century music. In 2020, she completed her studies in composition at the same university under the supervision of Professor Berislav Šipuš with her opera »Nothing. Almost« for voices, orchestra and electronics.

As part of the Erasmus programme, she studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Lyon with Martin Matalon in 2019/2020.

While still a student, she received numerous awards, including the Rudolf and Margita Matz Scholarship from the Croatian Composers’ Society (2018) and the Rector’s Prize for her composition Pulsar, which premiered in 2019. And in June 2020, she was artist in residence at the festival in Aix-en-Provence, where she also attended masterclasses with Garth Knox and Kaija Saariaho. Her string quartet ‘Silence’ was selected by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) for the World New Music Days in Shanghai and Nanjing in 2021.

Helena Skljarov’s first solo multimedia exhibition was shown at the Music Mission Vision Festival in Zagreb in 2022. A year later, she founded the Serious Ensemble Zagreb, of which she is the artistic director. In 2024, she was selected as a member of the programme committee for the Cantus Ensemble, led by Berislav Šipuš, at the Croatian Composers’ Association.

Helena Skljarov has now written over 50 compositions. Her work currently focuses on interdisciplinary art forms, performances and, in particular, works at the interface between visual art and music.

As a musicologist, she has published over fifty articles and analytical texts on contemporary music. She also regularly publishes concert reviews and score analyses.