Producer and musician Ivona Eterović, artistic name tonota, began her musical journey in the electronic rap duo Playground Hustle, after which she started working independently, expanding the genre boundaries of her musical expression. Tonota's unconventional approach to club music, along with more frequent experimentation and avoidance of club rules, results in an interesting combination of ambient and bass music, occasionally influenced by traditional music.
Playground Hustle was her first project she started in 2016 with Magdalena Slović. Focusing on the wondrous combination of experimental rap and electronics, the duo released two self-published EPs, “Pikule” (Marbles) and “Kolovoz” (August). Their album “IGLE” (NEEDLES) even prompted a collaboration with Shot and Kandžija, renowned Croatian rappers. Playground Hustle performed at several regional festivals such as HGF (2017), Ferragosto JAM (2018), Seasplash (2018 and 2020), Reunited (2019), as well as various clubs across Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, and Slovakia.
In 2018, Ivona launched her solo project focused on electronic music and sound experiments, not limited to a specific genre. Two years later, under the artistic name tonota, she published her first solo release, an ambient track “sve se kretalo i sve je stalo” (everything moved and everything stopped). In 2021, the track was included in the “Collective Reverbs” project by the collective Živa Muzika, as part of which it was remixed by Late Dinner. That same year, she produced her first foreign edition, “ŽEN – opet gange (tonota remix)” (gange again) under the UK label Loose Lips. Another track found its way onto the same compilation. – “Crème Brûlée”, a track which is also on the humanitarian compilation “Grounded”, sponsored by the Grounded Festival from Ljubljana and aimed at raising awareness of achieving peace in war-torn Ukraine.
In 2021, tonota started collaborating with singer-songwriter Sara Renar whose album “Šuti i pjevaj” (Shut Up and Sing) she produced and partially composed. The album received critical and public acclaim, while various portals described it as Sara’s most mature achievement to date. After that Ivona was booked to produce albums for other artists. She is currently doing albums for two artists (Stephany Stefan and Mi Vida).
tonota has already in 2021 started attending music workshops, out of which the workshop “Sound diffusion in multichannel sound systems” held by Miodrag Gladović and organised by KONTEJNER stands out. The following year, during her residency at Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts in Norway, tonota composed a multichannel composition “uncertainty”, funded and produced by KONTEJNER, bureau of contemporary art praxis. The composition was premiered at the experimental sound event “Gibanja” (Motions) organised by KONTEJNER, followed by a performance at the Vienna Acousmonium in Ljubljana a year later. The piece was also performed in 2023 at the Opening Week at BEK Bergen in Norway.
As a psychologist, tonota began to develop a concept of “Musical Portraits” (Glazbeni portreti) as part of the Open Studio programme at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, at the beginning of 2023. By combining psychology and personality tests with experimental music, she continues to develop a sound system to create individual musical portraits.
After her first encounters with film music, she composed a couple of leitmotifs for documentary “Aunt Mama” (Teta mama) released in 2021 by the Trigon Production and continued to immerse herself even deeper within the field of film and theatre sound production. Then, in 2022 she composed music and worked on sound design for animated short “Druga koža” (Second Skin) by Dora Klanac which was screened at Animafest and Croatian Film Days and “Znatiželja ubila mačka” (Curiosity Killed the Cat) by Andrea Miletić which was also screened at Croatian Film Days. In the next few years she did sound and music for “Toranj” (Tower) by Morana Marija Vulić, Fabula Rasa by Dora Klanac and “Beštije” (Beasts) by Andrea Miletić.
As she continued to compose incidental music, she began to work on bigger projects. She broadened her interests by composing music for dance performances “There is no white rabbit here” choreographed and performed by Koraljka Begović, Mia Stark, Nastasja Štefanić and Tea Hlušička, premiered at the Zagreb Dance Centre in 2023, and “Changes and That” at the TALA Dance Centre. The play was choreographed by Aleksandra Janea and Sintija Kučić and performed by Nastasja Štefanić Kralj and Eleanora Magdalena Vrdoljak.
