A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Miloš Raičković

Milos Raickovich (Милош Раичковић, Miloš Raičković), composer and conductor, was born in Belgrade (Serbia, Yugoslavia), in 1956. He has lived and worked in Belgrade, Paris, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Hiroshima and New York, where he now resides. While in Belgrade, Milos Raickovich was the founder of the Ensemble for Other New Music (1977), as well as one of the founders of the Belgrade Youth Philharmonic, later known as the Borislav Pascan Youth Philharmonic (1977). He has also worked as an assistant conductor at the Belgrade Opera House.

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Raickovich’s music has been performed in numerous venues in Europe and the USA, including the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Zagreb Music Biennale, Europhonia Radio Festival, Carnegie Hall, La MaMa Etc. and Miller Theater in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers of Raickovich’s music are the Moscow Symphony Orchestra (M. Raickovich, conductor), Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (Donald Johanos, conductor), Beach Cities Symphony in Los Angeles (Barry Brisk, conductor), RTS (Belgrade Radio) Symphony Orchestra (David Porcelijn, Milen Nachev, Bojan Sudjic and Milos Raickovich, conductors), Ensemble Divertimento (Milan), Margaret Leng Tan, Dorothy Lawson, Reiko Watanabe, Gloria Cheng, Jed Distler, Beth Levin, Christopher Oldfather, Tatjana Rankovich, Dusan Bogdanovic, and Nada Kolundzija, among others.

Milos Raickovich studied composition with Vasilije Mokranjac, Olivier Messiaen and David Del Tredici; and conducting with Borislav Pascan, Pierre Dervaux, Barry Brisk 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. His choral work "Parastos" is published by Boosey & Hawkes. Milos Raickovich has also written music for film, including the score for Evans Chan’s "The Map of Sex and Love," which has been nominated for the best original film score at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in 2001. A member of ASCAP, Milos Raickovich has received three CAP awards from the American Music Center.

Milos Raickovich’s early compositions, written in the late 1970s, can best be described as minimalist, ascetic and meditative. Since 1979, his music has evolved into a style that combines Minimalism with Classical forms, a style that he calls “New Classicism.” The Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed describes Raickovich’s New Classicism as "...neither ironic nor naive but, instead, a unique postmodern response to both Minimalism and multiculturalism. It is surely possible to hear Schubert, Haydn or Rossini in Raickovich's "New Classicism"; but under Schubert, Haydn or Rossini lie Eastern European folk music, Minimalism, Messiaen, and, deeper still the Pacific Rim and its cultures. All are part of Raickovich's remarkable musical roots, but they operate in the background, nested like the windows on a computer screen.” Raickovich has composed solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal and choral works, as well as music for film, dance and theatre. Since 1999, Milos Raickovich has written a number of works with antiwar message. Critic Steve Smith described Raickovich’s antiwar pieces in Time Out New York: “Some of the works are wistful and poignant, while others are jarring and volatile; all are inventive, provocative and timely.”

Milos Raickovich’s orchestral music is released on Mode Records, on the CD NEW CLASSICISM,featuring pianist Margaret Leng Tan and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Critic Raymond Tuttle writes: "This is one of the strangest discs that I've heard all year. That's a compliment. Strongly recommended to both the informed and the unwary." (Fanfare)

Raickovich’s CD B-A-G-D-A-D (Albany Records), features a collection of antiwar pieces. Critic Jeff Simon writes: “In its decidedly unassuming and unremarked way, this disc may be a major milestone of classical music in our era. Here is the first truly haunting music to come from resistance to the war… Seldom does politically inspired music have the power and beauty of this.” (The Buffalo News)

Milos Raickovich’s CD FAR AWAY (Albany Records) was released in 2010: "Milos Raickovich’s program covers music from as early in his career as 1979 and as late as 2006. The earliest piece, Flying Trio, begins with the yearning and flowing ‘Lonely Rider’. Pushed along by the piano’s earnest efforts, the violin and cello play simple, classical melodies reminiscent of Schubert with moments of Beethoven. ‘Anger and Love’ is passionate and tempestuous. The violin bows malevolently while the cello reaches high and low before a quiet lullaby appears. B-A-G-D-A-D, an antiwar piece written in its original version in 2002, is the only piece on the program that uses a diatonic scale. Raickovich spreads a simple motive through his piece with care before erupting into rapturous orchestra hits that become displaced. A loud section is expected in an antiwar piece, but composers often get carried away. Raickovich’s execution is controlled, mournful, and no more bombastic than it need be. The solo sections for flute, oboe, and harp are rustic and pleading. El Contorno Variations is a work for cello and piano based on a five-note scale and written for Evan Chan’s film The Map of Sex and Love. Raickovich includes East Asian motives and techniques to approximate traditional Asian instruments. The seven variations of the dark, bleak, theme offer lightly prepared piano, plucked strings, slides, and echoes. Winter Waltz has the approachable nature of one his composition teachers, David Del Tredici, and the sensibilities of Tchaikovsky. Composed with only five tones, the piece swirls as its traditional waltz motif is passed to different instruments." (American Record Guide)

From New Music Online Library


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Marko V. Jaric

Marko V. Jaric was born on March 17, 1952 in Belgrade. He completed his elementary school education in Belgrade and attended the Air Force Military High School in Mostar where he graduated in 1970 as the best student of his class. Subsequently he enrolled at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics where he received a degree in physics in 1974, graduating as the best student of his generation. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 at the City University of New York with professor Joseph Birman, one of the most prominent physicists in solid-state physics, as his thesis advisor.

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Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0