Katarina Miljkovic (Serbia/USA) moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1992, where she completed her doctoral studies in music composition at New England Conservatory of Music and where she has stayed until the present as a full-time professor. Miljkovic’s interest in composing is based on connections between music, nature, science. She is the recipient of many awards for composition, including awards from the University of Belgrade, JosipSlavenski, VasilijeMokranjac and October Award for young artists. Her compositions are written for various ensembles, including symphonic orchestra, chorus, saxophone quartet, percussion, rock and funk bands, prepared piano and electronics. Her interest in connections between music and science led her to the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot’s essay The Fractal Geometry of Nature and his study of self-similar structures. The application of fractal principles to musical form resulted in her cycle, Forest, for prepared piano,  “…a dreamy piece, along the lines of Feldman or Brown… entirely captivating.” (Signal to Noise)

For Connie Jane, for electronics – The composition originated in 2015, after Nada Kolundzija commissioned the piece. The sound pallet consists of samples taken from various recordings of different music boxes at freesound.org. Sounds range from an old Fisher music box mechanism with metal chimes and a wind-up clock music box spring mechanism wind-up, to accidental clicks and an old music box playing a short song. The texture is organised in six layers, each having seven different temporal levels. Each temporal event consists of repetition of one sample with a distinct tempo and sample duration. The texture results in a counterpoint of repetitive blocks of sounds in which a music box song develops.

The 30 minute piece is divided in four sections. Section No. 3 reaches the maximum density gradually developed in the previous two sections.