Since autumn 2015 I have been re­sear­ching the life and work of one of the most impor­tant and ori­gi­nal Yugo­slav avant-garde com­po­sers of the 20th cen­tury: Josip Štolcer Slavenski. 

After studying in Budapest at the renowned Zen Academia (1913–1916), where he was a master­student of Bella Bartók, and gradu­ating from the Prague Con­ser­va­tory (1918–1921), Slavenski moved to the roa­ring Belgrade of the 1920s.

He composed music for sound films of famous Prague and Berlin-based production companies, established contact with the renowned German publishing house Schott & Söhne and researched one of the first electronic music in general. Basically, he was one of the first to own a Trinitron, one of the first electronic devices that could produce music

What is certainly most impressive and what makes Slavenski so unique is his approach: On one hand, Slavenski was very open to the social upheaval of European modernity, on the other hand, he was in love with the diversity and ancient folklore traditions and customs of the Balkan peoples. With this as a starting point, Slavenski created until then completely new and unusual works which, at first, meet with misunderstanding and often contradictory assessments by a large number of contemporaries. 

Works were created in the spirit of socialism, but he quickly withdrew and stopped composing. He died on November 30, 1955 in his home in Belgrade.

This dilemma of the forgotten maestro piqued my interest all the more. I began my research work in 2015 in Slavenski's hometown of Čakovec, where I got access to a considerable collection of his work at Međimurje County Museum. I later got in touch with the Serbian Music Association in Belgrade, which keeps and administers his entire legacy. As an artist, I don’t want to stop at theory or research, I started to organize an event every year for Slavenski’s birthday on May 11th.

Be it an exhibition, workshop, concert or online presentation, every year I take a new approach with the aim of showing a work on that date that was inspired by him.

Accordingly, it is important to me to involve people from the fields of art and music in the project. To me it is essential to collaborate with museums, music schools, musicians, other events, musicologists, galleries and artists.