Milica Djordjevic

Milica Djordjevic or Đorđević (born 1984 in Belgrade, Serbia), is a composer of contemporary classical music and one of the most important representatives of the younger generation of composers in international musical life.

She lives in Cologne.

Life and background Djordjević grew up in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. As a young child she hoped to become a concert pianist or a painter. She went to classical gymnasium and specialized music school, which she decided to enroll during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, when her refuge was not a bunker but playing the piano for virually endless hours of air raids.

During teenage years she seriously considered a career in physics, theatre or art. Both painting and physics are still an important part of composer's life: her first impulse for sound representation, i.e. the notation, is a drawing and physics is inextricably linked to music.

Some of the examples of this very broad field of interest and inspiration are The Death of the Star-Knower – petrified echoes of an epitaph in a kicked crystal of time I&II from 2008/09: Djordjević fantasized about the concept of time crystals and worked with this idea in her first two sting quartets The Death of the Star-Knower – petrified echoes of an epitaph in a kicked crystal of time I&II from 2008/09. The concept of time crystals only became known in physics a few years later and was theoretically proposed by Frank Wilczek in 2012 and in terms of practical application, time crystals could one day be used as quantum computer storage.

Čvor for winds, brass, percussion and piano was finished in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Mit o Ptici for choir and orchestra has the most direct inspiration in literature – verse epos Bird by Miroslav Antić, whereas Jadarit, Concerto for Percussion and String Orchestra is politically engaged.

Djordjević graduated composition from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, where she also finished studies of Sound and Music Recording and Production as well as specialized training in electronic music. She finished postgraduateat the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, where she studied with Ivan Fedele and graduated with honors. She continued her professional accomplishments in Paris, where she was enrolled in composition and computer music Cursus1 at IRCAM and then in Berlin, where she finished 3rd cycle studies at HfM Hanns Eisler in the class of Hanspeter Kyburz.

Since 2025, Djordjević has been professor for composition at the Lübeck Academy of Music.

Djordjević's music is described as "rough, often even raw in the gesture", as a "vital tonal language that refuses less harmony and beautiful sound than that it gives the experience of the elemental quite pleasurably: tones of the earth’s emanations."

Awards In 2015, she won the Belmont Prize for New Music from the Forberg-Schneider Foundation.

In 2016, she won the Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize.

Her first monographic CD was published by WERGO in the Edition Contemporary Music (Edition Zeitgenössische Musik) of German Music Council (Deutscher Musikrat) and it won the Prize of the German record critics – Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2017.

In 2020 she was awarded Claudio Abbado Composition Prize of the Berlin Philharmonic.

In 2023 she was nominated for the German Music Authors' Prize for orchestra composition.

Music The music of Milica Djordjević is characterized by its contemporary style and expressive intensity. Her work incorporates elements from the Balkans alongside avant-garde techniques, distinct from traditional folk music. The compositions feature rhythmic structures and a physical presence. The music addresses themes that are often hidden or suppressed, focusing on direct expression rather than aesthetic ornamentation.

Djordjević's works are present at major European festivals, concert series and radio stations and are performed by renowned performers, ensembles and orchestras such as Berliner Philharmoniker, Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, ensemble modern, Ensemble Recherche, JACK Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten, Peter Rundel, Marco Blaauw, Ilan Volkov, Luca Pfaff, Teodoro Anzellotti, Enno Poppe, Alexander Liebreich, Peter Veale, Bas Wiegers, Clemens Schuldt, Sylvio Gualda, Francesco Dillon...

Works Source:

LARGE ENSEMBLE & ORCHESTRA Mali svitac, žestoko ozaren i prestravljen nesnošljivom lepotom [Little Firefly, fiercely illuminated and terrified by unbearable beauty] for symphony orchestra, commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation on the occasion of the Philharmonie’s 60th birthday (2023)

Nalet, for large ensemble (2023)

Jadarit, concerto for percussion and string orchestra (2022)

O drveću, nežnosti, Mesecu... for orchestra (2022)

Čvor, for winds, brass, percussion and piano (2021)

Mit o ptici, for choir and orchestra (2020)

Quicksilver, for symphony orchestra (2016)

Sky limited, for string orchestra (2014)

ZAPIS, for 12 percussionists (2013)

Put belih kostiju [The journey of a weather-beaten skeleton] for symphony orchestra(2009)

The Firefly in a Jar II, for symphony orchestra(2008)

The Firefly in a Jar, for chamber orchestra (2007)

CHAMBER transfixed. (2022)

transfixed: (2022)

FAIL again, for e-violin and e-organ (2022)

transfixed (2020)

transfixed’ (2020)

INDIGO R-offprint 1, for string quartet (2020)

Pod vodom raskršća snova (2019)

Indigo (2017)

Rdja (2015)

Phosphorescence (2014)

How to evade? (2011)

The Death of the Star-Knower, petrified echoes of an epitaph in a kicked crystal of time II (2009)

The Death of the Star-Knower, petrified echoes of an epitaph in a kicked crystal of time I (2008)

SOLO Treperenje, studija I [Flicker, study I] (2023)

Nailing clouds II (2023)

Jadarit II (2023)

Role-playing 1: strings attached (2019)

Nailing Clouds (2019)

Pomen II (2018)

...mislio bi čovek: zvezde [...würde man denken: Sterne] (2015)

umeš li ti da laješ? – ne-komunikacja za solo kontrabas [do you know how to bark? – non-communication for Double bass solo] (2010/11)

FAIL (2010)

VOCAL Hladan ti dah do grla, for voice and ensemble (2016)

I ti hoćeš da se volimo [Und du willst dass wir uns lieben] for soprano and accordion (2015)

Kakva mi je to pa igra for voice and percussion (2014)

Manje te u majke groze [one less horror for your mother] for soprano, bass clarinet, accordion, violin, viola and violoncello (2011)