Ljetnje refleksije (Summer Echoes)

Milica Lundin, piano

Deana Pataković, piano

Maja Đurić, photography

 

Three artistic souls, Deana Pataković, Milica Lundin and Maja Đurić, amongst them two pianists and an artistic photographer, combined their forces led by the common artistic vision.

Milica and Deana are known for performing solo compositions, as well as the pieces intended for four hands which tend to illustrate the following: the churning of water, sea waves, birds, boats, summer parades, fireworks in addition to the general festive mood. For the most part, the pieces go way back to the period of Impressionism and Romanticism, with the exception of the piece intended for four hands written specifically for this occasion by the young artist Draško Adžić. The projection of slides by the photographer Maja Đurić, which will add to the space a lot of authenticity through her choice of visual representations and photographs of the sea, is also a part of the overall concept of the programme.

Deana Pataković was born in Belgrade. There, she graduated as the best in her generation from the Faculty of Music Arts as well as also obtaining her Master’s degree in the class of the professor Mirjana Šuica Babić. She further refined her skills and continued her education in London under the Professors John Bingham (Trinity College of Music) and Kendall Taylor (Royal College of Music). As a scholarship holder, during 1991 and 1992, she studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, France and that in the class of the Professor Francoise Buffet.

Deana has received several prestigious awards, celebrating her excellence in performing classical music. Amongst the awards are: October Prize of the City of Belgrade for Youth, the Bold Flower Award (an award for the exceptional youth from the era of Former Yugoslavia), the “Emil Hajek” Award, the Jelena Pavlović Foundation Award for the Best Graduation Concert. She has given the audience almost 800 solo concerts. Still a student, her performances were aimed at promoting classical music, which was also a mission of her group “Muzička omladina” with their platform for young talents “Orfej”. She has performed as a soloist with the renowned orchestras of the region and collaborated with famous conductors such as: Jovan Šainović, Vanča Čavdarski, Stanko Jovanović, Bojan Suđić, Vesna Šouc, Pavle Medaković and Anton Kolar.  From 1994 to 2000, she performed a series of recitals in the various Serbian cities in the organization of “Jugokoncert” as well as in Skopje, Dubrovnik and at the “Theatre City” Festival Budva.

Prominent are her solo concerts in the international music scene in England at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, in addition to those at prestigious music festivals in London, Molveno (Italy), Litchfield, Birmingham, Norwich and Edinburgh. She also performed in France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Jordan, Eritrea and Kuwait. When it comes to her performances with the foreign orchestras, her concerts with the Jordan Symphony orchestra in Amman, the Festival in Jeras and those at the “Murten Classics” festival in Switzerland in collaboration with the Prague Philharmonic and conductor Thomas Rezner are the most widely-recognised.

She celebrated 25 years of her career with a concert to remember in the hall of the Belgrade City Assembly in April, 2011. She was a special music guest at the Victoria Hall in Geneva and at the “Martin Ennals” competition in 2012. Every year, as a part of the traditional Piano Festival, she presents herself to the audience in Geneva together with other pianists from Switzerland which it gathers. She has been holding recitals regularly as a part of the Geneva Music Festival since 2015.

Deana has released three CDs with piano music by Serbian and foreign composers. She worked as a piano professor, holding the status of the assistant professor, at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and at the Jaques-Dalcroze Institute (Geneva). She has been employed as the piano professor at the International School in Geneva’s Music Centre.

 

Maja Đurić

Maja Đurić is an art photographer, art historian and theoretician as well as a full professor. She graduated in History of Art at the University of Belgrade, obtained her Master’s degree in Prague as well as PhD in Media Theory at the Faculty of Arts in Belgrade. She teaches photography and art history, concerns herself with publishing scientific and professional texts, and in CANU’s lexicographical editions her name is mentioned as the editor for the branches of photography and art. Her authorial work combines the precision of the documentary with poetic atmosphere, especially reflected in the  motifs of the sea, light and Mediterranean landscape. For the purposes of the Summer Echoes concert, her photographs are those that accompany the musical flow of the program in the form of the visual echoes of water, waves and a myriad of summer scenes.