Branka Popović (b. 1977) graduated from both Musicology and Composition departments (composition studies with Zoran Erić) of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. She obtained her Master of Music Degree in Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (composition studies with Judith Bingham). She stayed for another year at the Guildhall as the Composition Fellow. She completed her doctorate studies in composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, under the supervision of Zoran Erić.
Her pieces have been presented at events such as the World New Music Days (Bratislava, 2013), Reims Scenes d’Europe (2016), Átlátszó Hang (Budapest, 2017), International Spring Orchestra Festival (Malta, 2016), Festivalul International Meridian 2014 (Romania), 4th International Biennial of Contemporary Music in Koper 2014 (Slovenia), International Review of Composers, Sir Harrison Birtwistle Festival, Brass Spectacular Glasgow, City of London Festival. She has collaborated with many prominent performers and new music ensembles including Stephen Gutman, Ellen Ugelvik, Austrian Ensemble for New Music (Salzburg), Ansamblul devotioModerna (Romania), ARTéfacts Ensemble (Greece), Auris Quartet, ensembles Construction Site, Studio 6, St. George Strings, Metamorphosis, LP Duo, RTS Symphony Orchestra, Academic choir Collegium musicum etc.
Her first chamber opera Petersburg was premiered in June 2012.
Branka Popović is an Associate Professor of composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. Between 2010 and 2015 she was associate of Radio Belgrade 3. From 2015 she has been the artistic director of International Review of Composers. She has received many awards and recognitions in the country and abroad.
In 2002, she won the prize of the International Summer Academy Prague-Vienna-Budapest for her trio Dream (I. S. o. F). She received the award for best music of the 56th Belgrade International Festival of Documentary and Short Meter Film in 2009 (Tačka prekida, dir. Igor M. Toholj). At the International Rostrum of composers in Tallinn 2015, her piece Lines & circles… was selected among ten recommended works. She was selected to participate in the project CEEC Composers Fieldtrip to China 2016/2017/2018, and in December 2017 her piece The Music of the South for chamber ensemble was performed by the National Chamber Orchestra of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She won second prize at the London Music Society Composition Competition in 2017 for her piece Stardust for viola nad chamber orchestra. In December 2018, within the frames of the project Hearing China IV, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra performed her piece In That Place Wholly Faraway, under the baton of Zhang Liang.
About the piece
u_turn for cello and piano was composed upon incentive of the cellist Đorđe Milošević, as a part of the project entitled Emocije i temperamenti, within which new pieces were composed inspired by one emotion and one type of temperament. My piece consists of two extremely contrasting segments, whereas the first segment “depicts” the emotion of anger, and the second – sanguine temperament. The second part of the piece is based on a quotation of a motive from the song Life’s What You Make It by Talk Talk, from 1985.