Milica Ilić | composer | pianist-repetiteur-teacher

Milica Ilić | biography

Milica Ilić, PhD (Belgrade, 1985) finished her BA studies in Piano in the class of prof. Dejan Stošić at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. During studies she won two faculty awards. She finished Specialist studies in Chamber music in the class of prof. Jasna Tucović and obtained her PhD diploma in the class of prof. Zorica Ćetković, based on the research of Debussy's music for piano duo, in June 2013. In the period between 2013-2015 she was a student at the International Opera Academy in Ghent, specialising in the field of operatic accompaniment, and from 2017 until 2019 she was a contract student of Composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

She attended masterclasses by Natalie Dessay (France), René Jacobs (Belgium), Dietrich Henschel (Germany), Charlotte Margiono (Netherlands), Guy Joosten (Belgium), and many others.

Before she was employed as collaborative pianist at the Solo Singing Department of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade (April 2011 until present), she worked as a piano accompanist at Music School "Mokranjac" in Belgrade (2007-2011). Since 2016 she is a visiting lecturer at the ArtSciene department of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, teaching together with R. Pravda in Sound Worlds. In October 2024 she was appointed a member of the artistic board of the Opera Studio Borislav Popović of the National Theatre in Belgrade.

She worked as a repetiteur in several opera productions in Serbia and abroad — Don Giovanni (W.A. Mozart), Daphne (R. Strauss), Frühlings Erwachen (B. Mernier), Zanetto (P. Mascagni), La voix humaine (F. Poulenc), and she conducted two opera titles — Maddalena (S. Prokofiev, Ruski Dom, Belgrade, June/October 2016) and Weisse Rose (U. Zimmermann, Dorcol Platz, Belgrade, September 2016). She was the official accompanist at the Jeunesse Musicales competition for Solo Voice (Belgrade, 2013), as well as at the masterclasses of Marijana Mijanović and Zoran Todorović. In summer 2019, she attended the Women Opera Creators Workshop, led by Katie Mitchell at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. She is a member of the Association of Music Artists of Serbia.

Milica is a very active performer — playing a wide repertoire ranging from baroque to contemporary music. Her goal as a performer is to test the boundaries of the concert form, experimenting wih interdisciplinarity, various theatrical forms and treating the field of music as a continuum — erasing the borders between different musical genres and using them all to construct new types of performances suitable for the contemporary world and its audiences.

Apart from being an active performer and pedagogue, Milica is also an active composer. Three of her large-scale pieces stand out: XX — mono-opera for a schizophrenic voice and tight strings (premiered in Belgrade, 2021), (a)Mantis Religiosa, a chamber thriller opera in three episodes (performed in Belgium and Serbia) and Higher, a musical theatre piece for baritone, actor and a choir of shouters (performed in Indonesia and Serbia), which she also produced. Her opera Džumbus (The mess) was performed in various cities in Bulgaria and Montenegro in the season 2019/20. Her Entirely Ordinary Suite is published on the CD Tragovi in December 2020, performed by Nemanja Stanković (cello) and Maja Mihić (piano), and her Fantasy Dances for Two Pianos was published on the CD Let's dance! in 2018, performed by Görög Sisters piano duo.

Milica is developing a musical language that addresses the world of today without abandoning the richness of traditions. She creates through recycling, reusing, deconstructing, playing with stereotypes, known narratives — thus combining them in unexpected ways. There are no borders between classical, contemporary, pop, folk and other musical styles or genres: only fluidity. Humour is essential to her creation, no matter how emotional/political/technical of otherwise her music can be. Being also an active performer, Milica insists on the fact that musicians have the right to enjoy the music they play.

Milica lives and works in Serbia and the Netherlands. She speaks fluent English and Spanish, Dutch and French at the level of B1.