© Florian Ganslmeier
 

Belmont-Preis 2015
for Contemporary Music

Milica Djordjević
composer from Belgrad and Berlin

www.milicadjordjevic.com

Statement from the Board of Trustees

The music of the Serbian composer Milica Djordjević is contemporary in a manner that can be almost terrifying.

Expressive vehemence lurks beneath its thin veneer. Raw, archetypal voices, recognizable from the sonic world of the Balkans, radically shape her subject-matter with the resources of the avant-garde, far removed from folk music. Heavily rhythmic and almost physical in its presence, the atmosphere erupts with searing rigour like a grandiose and purifying thunderstorm.

Her music is at once alien and familiar - alien in that it releases darkness, fear, things hidden and suppressed; familiar in that it brings these things to an explosion and causes their splinters to glisten.

It has nothing to prettify, but much to say.

 

The full text of the speech for the BELMONT Prize 2015 can be found here.