Ivana Stefanović (1948) studied violin and composition ad the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and specialized at IRCAM in Paris. She worked for the Serbian Broadcasting System. She founded Sound Workshop in 1985, and taught at the Faculty of Music and Center for Women’s Studies. She was the director of the culture program at the Center for Democracy Fund, and the art director of the Belgrade Music Festival. Her composition have been performed in France, Denmark, Finland, England, Holland and many other countries, and at prestigious international festivals. For her artistic achievements she was awarded several times at home and abroad (Students’ October Award, Prix Monaco, Sterija Award for Music, Miloš Crnjanski Award for the book of prose A Road to Damascus...) She is regularly writes music articles for many newspapers and magazines.

Since 2007 she is the state secretary at the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia.

- Play Strindberg, Third String Quartet

There are two reasons why this composition differs from my previous in many respects. The first. It was created in 1993, the year which was, for many of us, one of the hardest. It thus happened that suddenly I discarded much of the “description of the ugly” from my music. The life itself sought for consolation, not description. The second. Music was written for a theater play. In the auditorium of Atelier 212, without heating, the rehearsals were going on for Strindberg’s The Father. I wrote the music in a way that surprised me. I wrote the music for the whole play, a whole composition for the whole drama, not the passages intended for this or that scene, or transitions between the scenes. I planned to use what I would need later on, but I had to depict that cold space in its entirety. And the time. And duration.