Milos Raickovich (Miloš Raičković), composer and conductor, was born in Belgrade in 1956. He has lived in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York. Today, Raickovich divides his time between New York and Belgrade. While in Belgrade, Milos Raickovich was the founder of the Ensemble for Different New Music (1977), as well as one of the founders of the Borislav Pascan Youth Philharmonic. Raickovich’s music has been performed in Europe, the USA and Japan.

Milos Raickovich studied composition with Vasilije Mokranjac, Olivier Messiaen and David Del Tredici; and conducting with Borislav Pascan, Pierre Dervaux, and Herbert Blomstedt. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from The City University of New York, and has taught at several universities in the U.S. and Japan.

Raickovich’s music is released on CDs: New Classicism (Mode Records), featuring the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer; B-A-G-D-A-D and Far Away (Albany Records). The Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed describes Raickovich’s music as “a unique postmodern response to both minimalism and multiculturalism.”

About the piece

Kolo Vidovdansko (literally: Kolo Dance for the St. Vitus Day) (2019) is a short piece for orchestra written in the spirit of Serbian folk music. A single musical phrase (written in a six-note scale) is repeated and fragmented, and alternatively appearing in its Major (loud) and Minor (soft) versions. Vidovdan, a feast day on June 28 dedicated to St. Vitus (who is considered an eye healer among the South Slavs), is the date of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, as well as some more recent historical events. Vidovdan is here symbolically represented through contrast and interfusion between one loud, clear and lush version, and another, dark and muted version of the same melody.