Vida is the portrait album of Misha Cvijović, one of a young generation of composers from the former Yugoslavia who are shaping the contemporary music scene. The title joins meanings from different languages: life in Spanish, sight in Serbian, an archaic word for healing, and a Slavic goddess. Her music is just as many-layered, and the nine works here, written between 2013 and 2023, run from full orchestra to minimoog and tape.
Cvijović was born in Belgrade and works between Belgrade and Berlin as a composer, pianist, synthesizer player and sound artist. She studied piano in Novi Sad with Vladimir Ogarkov, composition in Belgrade with Vlastimir Trajković and then in Berlin at the Hanns Eisler school with Eun-Hwa Cho. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin plays under Enno Poppe. Five works were recorded for the CD with Ensemble Musikfabrik, mostly under Gregor A. Mayrhofer, with players such as the trumpeter Marco Blaauw and the accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti. Sebastian Berweck plays the minimoog, and the Trio Splitsignals Berlin, with the composer on analogue synthesizers, closes the disc. The orchestra and ensemble recordings are coproductions of Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the German Music Council, produced by Rainer Pöllmann.
The album is a triptych. It begins with early works: Lica Persefone (The Faces of Persephone, 2013/14), two scenes for orchestra set in Hades in winter and on earth in summer, then Tikkun Olam (2016) for string quartet and Cirque du Soleil (2017). The last, for trumpet, bass clarinet, marimba, vibraphone and double bass, uses the Balkan 7/8 rhythm in a kaleidoscopic sound world, with short acrobatic trumpet solos. Penumbra (2019), Carbon (2022/23) and Emotional Logic, Anger (2020/21) move beyond the classical mainstream, with structured improvisation and freer forms. Penumbra widens the ensemble with accordion, saxophone and electric guitar. With Iktsuarpok (2021/22) for minimoog solo and tape and Incandescent (2021) for trumpet, analogue synthesizers and electronics, the focus shifts to electroacoustic sound.
The booklet text is by Carl Rosman, who places her alongside Sara Glojnarić, Marko Nikodijević and Milica Djordjević. He notes a keen awareness of stage and physicality in a language that is gestural, eclectic and direct, though not without irony and ambiguity. Cvijović also writes for opera, theatre and film: her queer operetta Alles Liebe!, on a libretto by Philipp Amelungsen, received the Reinhold Otto Mayer Prize in 2025. It was premiered at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden.
CD, Wergo WER 6448 2, released in February 2026 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik, running 70 minutes.
