Jasna Veličković wins the Stevan Mokranjac Award

Jasna Veličković has won the Stevan Mokranjac Award for her piece Underneath, that she wrote for the hyper-organ in Orgelpark Amsterdam: a baroque organ with a digital console that allows composers and organ players to discover new sound worlds – with the baroque palette as a starting point. Established in 1994, the Stevan Mokranjac Award is the most significant award for contemporary composition in Serbia.

From the jury report: “In her piece Underneath, Jasna Veličković creates multiple hyperrealities: that of the extended organ itself, that of the silent electromagnetic field inside it, which she makes audible for the first time with the help of hand-made coils and their positioning inside the instrument, and that of the entire sound of the instrument in the Orgelpark. These realities cooperate, breathe together and permeate one another, from the micro-level to the macro-formal dramaturgy.

This piece is a sublimation of Jasna Veličković’s long-time work with what is ‘below’ the threshold of audibility,: the acoustic shadow of both the instrument itself and the digital electronic reality. 

Jasna Veličković uses coils to discover inaudible sound currents. She even created her own instrument Velicon to explore the sounds of electromagnetic fields. She confidently and boldly treads these lesser-known paths of our acoustic and musical world. In her exciting sound explorations, she maintains a strong presence as a composer. Her musical flow is clear, transparent and dramaturgically exciting, with a powerful performance gesture and stage presence. In Underneath, she confronts us with the organ in its multiplicity, both aural and historical. We listen to a 21st-century organ fantasy: the instrument in all its strength and complexity flickers along with the invisible song of electromagnetic forces.”