15.7. 20:30 Congress Centre:

 VELVETSPACE (Cello Attacca! and Zvezdana Novaković,voice)

Price:15€

Zvezdana Novaković is a Slovenian artist who explores the limits of her musical and performative expression within traditional folk, jazz, classical, and electronic music, and the performing arts. Her musical language is influenced by the tradition of the Slavic and Balkan countries and the technique of the open voice of the throat, which is a mixture of her own expression combined with improvisation. She learned folk songs from her Serbian and Slovenian grandmothers, and perfected her knowledge of Bulgarian folk singing with her Master’s degree in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In search of a resonant singing of open voices, she set out to explore other folk songs of Slavic and Balkan cultures too. She has collaborated and learned from authentic singers from Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Bosnia, Poland, Croatia, and Slovenia. The product of five years of research is the Slovena Voices project, in which her new compositions of folk songs resonate.

Cello attaca! is a cello ensemble made up of the current and former students of Slovenian cellist Karmen Pečar - Koritnik. For many years, Karmen Pečar - Koritnik has acted as a concert master of the Cellomania project, which was started and led by Croatian cellist and pedagogue Valter Dešpalj. Having grown up in an environment that supported socializing and playing music together with other cellists, she wished to share this valuable experience with her students and encourage them to enjoy the beneficial effects of active listening and playing in a chamber group on their development and growth.

The Cello attaca! ensemble was given its first opportunity to perform by Festival Bled and its artistic director Jernej Brence. Since then, the ensemble has grown in size and repertoire, and this year it has finally received its first invitations to perform on concert stages across Slovenia.