Snežana Nešić studied composition and accordion in Kyiv and at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (HMTMH) and Université de Montréal (Kanada). Between 2011 and 2023 she was an assistant professor of composition at the HMTMH, as well as a guest professor at music academies in Leipzig, Skopje and Montréal. In October 2023 she takes on the position of the composition professor at the Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium in Frankfurt.

Snežana Nešić is the chairperson of the Union of composers of North Germany (DKV), as well as the founder and leader of the ur.werk ensemble. As a composer she is the laureate of numerous international recognitions such as the Andrea Ceraso Rome Award 2022, 1st prize at the Molinari Quartet’s International composition competition, 1st prize at the Weimar Spring Festival, as well as the award of the International composition competition J. S. Bach in Eisenach. She has worked with numerous orchestras and ensembles such as the Orchester Symphonique de Montréal, ECM+, Quartet Quasar, as well as the opera house Chants Libres and Opera Hannover. The Montréal Opera will perform her new augmented-reality opera in the coming season.

About the piece

The gestuality of the piece Danse Mystique is based entirely on the movements of the dervish dance: just as he spins at the same time around his heart and around the divine axis of the world, music fragments in my piece “swirl” around their harmony axis. Gradual speeding leads towards the “ék-stasi” (ecstasy) and some sort of music dematerialisation, especially at the moment when specific melodic lines are transformed into “luminous” tremolos. Concerning the focal characteristic of this music, I would like to mention above all the type of “longing” which is best described by the Persian Sufi poet Rumi when he says: “I could not have known what love is if I had never felt this longing. Anything done to excess becomes boring, except this overflow that moves toward you.”