Vox Harmonica

Tatjana Milošević Mijanović is a composer and professor of composition. She teaches at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka. She is the recipient of numerous awards, while her electroacoustic composition Tribute for Fort Honswijk was performed as part of the UNESCO Waterproof project.

 

The piece U mome oku encompasses three songs that, despite sharing the same literary template, stand in sharp contrast to each other in terms of atmosphere, makeup and expression. The first song brings archaic stylisation through the melodic progression of a minor second, a male vocals glissando, and an interval with a bass perfect fifth, gradually developing the form. The second song emphasises homophony and directs the focus to the articulation of the lyrics, while the third, evoking the spirit of a hymn, gradually builds up from a low to high register. The accordion here takes on a manifold role – from highlighting the melodic and rhythmic contours of the vocals, to solo sections and timbre effects that expand the soundscape of the composition.

 

kada bi samo jedna suza

zasjala u mome oku

jedna majušna suza

 

ta bi me vrela kap

pretvorila u slap

i ja bih bila huk

i krik

i buk

i lastavica

na krilima od svetla

do samog sunca bih stigla

 

kada bi samo jedna suza

zasjala u mome oku 

jedna majušna suza

 

Vanja Nikolić

 

Berislav Šipuš is a Croatian composer, conductor and pedagogue. After studying at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, where he currently teaches, he studied composition with Gilbert Bosco, François–Bernard Maché and Iannis Xenakis, and conducting with Vladimir Kranjčević, Željko Brkanović, Krešimir Šipuš and Milan Horvat. The libretto of Cruda Amarilli is taken from Il Pastor fido [The Faithful Shepherd], an intricate pastoral tragicomedy written by Giovanni Battista Guarini.

 

George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist and trombonist, a Professor at Columbia University, Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), a fellow of prestigious academies, and recipient of numerous awards and honours. His research projects include improvisation, interactive media, experimental and computer music, particularly how these areas intertwine with the dynamics of race, gender and decolonisation.

 

In the piece Lone Coast, he lends voice to the devastated communities and people who were forced to leave their homes after Hurricane Katrina. Based on writer Nathaniel Mackey’s poem Lone Coast Anacrusis, it explores nomadism – from a musical, intellectual and social point of view. In Mackey’s experimental practice, music becomes writing, and writing becomes music: the idea of music as “quintessential migrancy”, a fundamental form of change and adaptation animates his portrayal of nomadic life in a dystopic, drowned landscape, a broken world reminiscent of the aftermath of a hurricane. The text also places at the centre the Ohlone, a Native American people of Northern California, whose name inspires the title. The music traces Mackey’s philosophy, inviting the listeners, as he frames it, “to become aware of the unconscious, unintended, and auxiliary meanings, implications and resonances... writing is a mix of saying what I mean to say and finding out what else the writing might say”. Such an attitude towards experience – a survival tactic we could adopt in everyday life – is further reinforced by the music’s subtle rejection of complacency, comfort and refuge. It urges the listener to consider the consequences of losing a sense of lightness of being in an increasingly unstable world, a world in which new forms of mobility and connection are becoming crucial to our present-day condition.

///

During the concert, before the performance of Lone Coast, there will be an artist talk with composer George Lewis on stage. The conversation will be moderated by MBZ artistic director Davor Vincze.