Milana Milošević Smileski (b. 1992, Serbia) acquired her BA degree in composition and orchestration in 2016 from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, where she studied with Svetlana Savić. She completed her Doctoral academic studies in the same class in 2024 (Chamber opera Mimi). Her music was performed at the festivals KoMA, FESTUM, and International Review of Composers in Belgrade, and in the USA. She won the “Stevan Hristić” Award for the academic year of 2015–2016, as well as the 2018 award from the “Josip Slavenski” Fund. She was among the winners of the RTS Music Production competition in 2019; she won the 2nd Prize at the “Neda Depolo” competition of the Radio Belgrade 2 in 2019, and the 1st prize at the same competition in 2020. Milošević also won the prize of the Radio Belgrade anonymous competition for radio drama in 2019/2020 (in the category ’Abstract forms of radiophony’), and many other recognitions. She was involved in the adaptation of Vasilije Mokranjac’s scores. In 2021 she prepared the new orchestration and adaptation of Isidor Bajić’s opera Knez Ivo od Semberije.
About the piece
Zugzwang, piece for accordion solo, was composed in 2024. ‘Zugzwang’ is a German expression and it refers to the situation in chess when one of the players is forced to make a move which will free his position, while the other player is then in ’zugzwang’ since any move is detrimental to his position. The game for two players, oscillations in the game – zugzwang, pat, draw and checkmate as the goal of the game, are presented in musical terms in this piece as a dialogue of right and left hands, high and low registers, as well as dynamic oscillations and reaching the culmination.