MODART

Modart

MODART is a professional development project that provides opportunities for emerging composers to develop works for vocal ensemble, and which then receive public performance by The Song Company.

Biography: Nela Trifkovic

Nela was born in ex-Yugoslavia where she commenced her music studies in classical piano. At the age of 13 she entered a musical high school in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade where she studied for three years prior to moving to Australia with her family. In 1996 Nela was one of the youngest students at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) to commence her studies in piano at the Conservatorium. During her course of study under the piano lecturer Jana Kovar she was also noticed by the composition department and the Head lecturer Lindsay Vickery and in third year of piano, at the age of 19, Nela took up a second major in composition that soon proved to be her real playground in the music world. She has since then worked on a number of dance and theatre productions at WAAPA.

From 2002 to 2004 Nela completed a Masters Degree in the department of Creative Arts at WAAPA and started showing some more installation-oriented work frequently collaborating with different artists from the fields of both performing and visual arts. Nela's favourite collaborations include the Spring Equinox Jam Session (a sunset to sunrise piano performance with Associate Prof. Domenico de Clario) at WAAPA performed in 2003 and an installation performance The Song of Lazarus performed for the Day of the Dead in collaboration with the visiting Mexican artist Jesus Macarena–Avila at the Footscray Community Art Centre in 2004. Nela is currently developing an installation work YoU CaN SeIzE Me bY tHe Hair Of ForgettinG in collaboration with Yugoslav–Australian visual/installation artist Tatjana Seserko for the Asian Art Camp in Singapore held in November this year, and is co-musically directing and working under the supervision of David Howell (and MODART project partner) for the 2005 production of Hamlet by Melbourne-based theatre company 'Dancing with Strangers'.

Nela is currently living and working in Melbourne where she is a PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Centre for Ideas.

Program Notes: Lucifer, Aurora, Cain and Abel

Lucifer (alto tenor duet)

This is a vocal game rather than a song, for two players rather than voices. Sharing and chopping what is essentially one vocal line for a soloist (with an occasional attempt to make it a genuine duet) the singers sing for their presence in the game to win the bells and fight for the supremacy of the character Lucifer whom they both play but maybe neither is willing to really share.

Aurora

During the time of writing Aurora I was reading a lot about misplacement and arrivals to foreign lands. Creative people (and people in general) are always fighting something, regardless of whether it is external or within, and perhaps the most difficult moment comes when we recognise that both our sides have come together in agreement of rejection. This is why the two soprano parts are almost identical, but at times create discomfort through their similarities. Aurora is essentially a hymn, a cry, a scream of longing for the sunrise of motherland.

Cain and Abel

Simply an attempt to create a vocal vignette replaying a biblical story through the eyes of two gangsters and an early morning murder scene on some forgotten highway.