Jug K. Marković (1987, Serbia) Marković holds degrees in composition from the classes of Vlastimir Trajković and Zoran Erić at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade as well as a degree in archaeology from the Faculty of Philosophy in the same city. Music by Marković has been performed in Serbia, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Iceland, the US, and at major international festivals, such as Donaueschinger Musiktage and Aix-en-Provence Festival. Marković has pursued further education at master-classes led by renowned composers such as Michael Finnissy, Eno Pope, Mark Andre (formerly Marc André), Fabien Lévy, John Corigliano, Raphaël Cendo, and Georges Aperghis, and seminars and academies of contemporary music at Darmstadt, Paris (IRCAM), and Graz (Im-puls), where he collaborated with Klangforum Wien, the Austrian contempo-rary music ensemble, on his piece motherTongue, which will be performed at this year’s Review of Composers. With his work Vokativ (Vocative) for orchestra he represented Serbia at the 65th International Rostrum of Composers, where he received, as the fifth seed, an official commendation from the festival’s international jury. He was the 2017 laureate of the TENSO Young Composers Award, the winner at the 2017 Anton Matasovsky Composers Competition in Vienna, he won first prize at the 2016 Hong Kong International Composers Competition, special award at the 2016 Busan Maru International Music Festival in South Korea, as well as the 2015 Josip Slavenski Award. During 2017 he was a composer in residence at Snape Maltings (Aldeburgh Music) under the supervision of the British com-poser Michael Finnissy. Marković has also won a residence at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, where later this year he will begin his first operatic project.

motherTongue is a piece I wrote as a sublimation of my then (as well as current) musical fascinations. I have never sought to dissociate myself from my models; on the contrary, I want them to be heard and reflect-ed in the music I write. In other words, when I’m composing a new piece, most of the music I’m passionate about finds a way to peek out, but, of course, always filtered by subjectivity and my personal sensibility.
motherTongue is my implicit homage to Gérard Grisey, as well as a reflection of my boundless love for the music of Maurice Ravel. This is espe-cially true of Gaspard de la nuit and the String Quartet, parts of which are re-contextualised and thus transformed, built into various facets of my music. Last but not least, the piece also features some deeply hidden layers of traditional Serbian melos.
I would like to emphasise that the superimposition, combining, and juxta-posing of all those layers is neither programmatic nor planned in advance, but, on the contrary, intuitive, spontaneous, and impulsive. My method of composi-tion accepts the power of subjectivity and personal discourse with open arms.