Ivan Jevtić

Ivan Jevtić (1947, Serbia/France) was born in Belgrade. He won honours and postgraduate degrees from the Academy of Music in that city in the composition class of Stanojlo Rajičić (1973). He took advanced classes with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory and with Professor Alfred Uhl in Vienna. He has been the laureate of several international composition competitions, and his works have been performed by eminent musicians ( including Maurice André, André Navarra, Gerard Caussé, André Henry, Gene Pokorny, Manfredo Schmiedt, Pascal Gallet, Eric Fritz, Stephen Burns, , Roberto Gatto, Roberto Duarte, Eric Aubier, Radovan Vlatković, Thierry Escaich, Mira Yevtich, Irena Grafenauer, Xenia Jankovich, Aleksandar Madzar, Marielle Nordman, Svetlana Tirmenstajn, Mladen Djordjević, Bernard Soustrot Bojan Sudjić, Guy Touvron…), all over Europe, in North and South America, Russia, Japan and China. He has sat on several international juries where his compositions have been selected as set pieces ( Paris, Narbonne, Lunéville, Belgrade, Arles and Geneva).
From 1997 to 1999 he taught composition and orchestration at the Federal University of Pelotas (R.S) in Brasil.
Ivan Jevtic composed more than 100 works, notably chamber music, concertante compositions (more than twenty concertos for various instruments) and symphonic works. His compositons have been published in Paris by the famous Editions A. Leduc, G. Billaudot and Chant du Monde, as well as by the Swiss Editions Bim. His music can be heard on over 20 CDs edited in Serbia, France, Germany, Sweden, USA, Japan… In  2003 he was admitted to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Srpska akademija nauke i umetnosti, SANU) as a corresponding member and became a full member in 2012.

Atmosphères, for piano. The work was composed in Paris in spring 1984, at No. 5, Rue du Thann, near Parc Monceau.
Its immediate source of inspiration was the “beating of raindrops” on the roofs of Paris, because at the time I inhabited one of Paris’s many mansards… The space was quite small, but I was in direct contact with nature: the wind, birds, rain, heat, and the sun… However, the raindrops served only as the initial note for a rather dramatic work, which sought to express the life of the composer at the time.
One of the tracks (toward the end) is also dedicated to our great composer Vasilije Mokranjac, who left us precisely around that time… Perhaps some will also note in the piece a few chordal sets borrowed from the great French composer Olivier Messiaen, but that is hardly surprising given that he was a teacher of mine and I still have a great deal of respect for, and fond memories of, him…
In formal terms, the piece constitutes a series of blocks made up of various spiritual states of the composer, because life and truth dictate one’s creativity.