Milica Jelača Jovanović, DMA
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PA 172
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About
Doctorate of Musical Arts: University of Michigan
Master of Music: Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory
Bachelor of Music: University of Belgrade
A “superb pianist with tremendous character… a supremely responsive musician”, Milica Jelača Jovanović enjoys a multifaceted career as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and educator.
Born into a family of professional musicians (a pianist and a classical accordionist) in Belgrade, Serbia, Ms. Jelača Jovanović began giving recitals at the age of 8. She has appeared as a soloist with Seattle Philharmonic in Benaroya Hall, with Bainbridge Symphony, LUCO, Whatcom Symphony, Western Washington University Symphony, Sioux City Symphony, and Radio TV Belgrade Symphonic Orchestra, in concertos by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Price and Prokofiev (I, II and III). She opened the 2018/19 Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra season in Benaroya Hall, Seattle, as a soloist in Chopin E minor Concerto, and the 2023/24 Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra season with Florence Price Concerto. In 2025, to mark 50 years from Shostakovich’s death, she will perform as a soloist in his Piano Concerto No. 1 with LUCO.
She has played solo recitals and chamber music concerts throughout the United States, as well as in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Prague (the Czech Republic), Paris (France), Constanţa (Romania), Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia), Katowice and Krakow (Poland), Lübeck and Eckernförde (Germany), Bolzano (Italy), Dubna, Moscow, Novoagansk, Raduzhni, St. Petersburg, Surgut (Russia), Beograd, Vrnjacka Banja, Kikinda, Negotin, Niš, Novi Sad, Priština, and Valjevo (Serbia). Her solo performances include the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert series in Chicago, Les AMIS concert series in Toronto, the Jugokoncert Concert Series and Centar za Muziku Concert Series in Beograd, Serbia, and the prestigious Music Festivals in Serbia “Vrnjci”, “Novosadsko Muzičko Leto”, “BEMUS”, and “Mokranjčevi dani”.
Critics described her performances as "extraordinary" and “poetic” and called her a “pianist of great energy and charisma”.
Besides winning numerous Serbian and Yugoslavian national piano competitions at a young age, Ms. Jelača Jovanović won prizes at several international competitions, including the inaugural 2005 Iowa International Piano Competition and the First Prize at the 23rd Bartók-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition in Virginia in 2003.
Her recording of works by Prokofiev, Karača, Radovanović, Briggs, Radić, Sommer and Bartók, entitled Bright Moodswas released in 2012 under the MSR Classic label and the critics praised the "beauty", "expressiveness" and "refinement" of her interpretation.
In 2006 she organized the “Schumann Madness Festival“ in Bellingham to mark the 150th anniversary of Robert Schumann's death, while one critic called her Schumann “the best in the world”.
She has been interviewed and has recorded for various radio and television programs in the U.S. (KMRE 88.3 FM, Bellingham, WA, Northwest Focus Live King FM 98.1, NPR WFMT Chicago, LOOP 25 TV channel, NPR WJFF Radio Catskill), Serbia (Radio Belgrade Programs I, II, and III, Studio B, TV Belgrade, Politika TV, Art TV), Romania (Neptun Art TV) and Russia (Raduzhni Television), and was profiled along with other musicians of note in books by Gordana Krajačić entitled “Muzička Pinakoteka”(2003) and “Muzički Svetionik” (2021).
Ms. Jelača Jovanović holds a Master of Music Degree and Artist Diploma from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and a Doctorate in Piano Performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently a Professor of Piano and Coordinator of the Keyboard Program at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, USA. Her teachers include Logan Skelton, Penelope Crawford, Mikhail Voskresensky, Elena Kuznietsova, Igor Laszko, Olga Janković and Mirjana Jovanović.
Dr. Jelača Jovanović has given numerous master classes, workshops and presentations for piano teachers and students in the US, Canada, Russia and Serbia, and was adjudicator at many piano competitions, including the US Music Teachers National Association State and Northwest Divisional Competitions, Zemun International Piano Competition in Zemun, Serbia, Global Outstanding Chinese Artists Association International Piano Competition in Vancouver, Canada, the Frances Walton Ladies Musical Club of Seattle Competition, Chopin Northwest Festival in Seattle, the Vancouver Women's Musical Society Piano Competition inVancouver, BC, the US Open Piano Competition in Oakland, California, University of Washington Piano Concerto Competition, as well as numerous Convention Recital Competitions for Washington State Music Teachers Association chapters.
Robert Schumann: ABEGG Variations
Roger Briggs: Impromptu
Press
Fanfare Magazine, USA, July/August 2013.) Review of BRIGHT MOODS CD, by Peter J. Rabinowitz
Colin Clarke was enthusiastic about this collection when he reviewed it in Fanfare 36:2, and for good reason. Or, more accurately, for two good reasons: First, the repertoire—five unfamiliar postwar works (including three first recordings) sandwiched between two early 20th-century staples—is simultaneously attractive and offbeat...
Second, as is obvious from just the first minute or so of the Prokofiev Sarcasms, Milica Jelača Jovanović is a superb pianist of tremendous character. Clarke referred specifically to her “ability to change mood instantaneously”—and her quick reaction time was the first quality that struck me, too. A supremely responsive musician, she’s capable of rapid shifts of touch, ready to move from passages of tremendous vigor and rhythmic kick to moments of seductive suppleness, equally at home in passages of sunlit simplicity (say, the almost Mikrokosmos-like A-Major Prelude by Radovanović) and in the heaviest proclamations (note the way she presents the dark tread in the last of the Radić preludes). Her fingers are strong (listen to the feline volatility at the beginning of the third Sarcasm or the bite in the motoric Allegro con moto at the center of the Radić)—and she manages to toss off the most complex rhythmic superimpositions with startling clarity. She’s got a splendid sense of color, too, which allows her to make the most of the night-music in the first movement of the Sommer and the fourth of the Bartók.
"Good engineering—and excellent notes by Edward Rutschman who, like Briggs and Sommer, is a colleague of Jovanović’s in the music department of Western Washington University. Quite a department—and quite a CD. Warmly welcomed."
"Magnificent feeling of every tone…deeply experienced performance… testified to the richness of the young pianist’s ideas, creating a spectrum of sonorities…” G.K. Koncertni Blic, Beograd.
“Magnificent and Inspired…[The performance]…confirmed a deep understanding and experience of the work, splendid concentration, memory and spiritual energy possessed by young artists which she unselfishly gives, resulting in the most complete artistic experience.“ V.M. Jedinstvo, Pristina.
“The special quality of her interpretation lies in an excellent communication with the orchestra, and in the possession of a refined musicality and sparkling virtuosity, which is never an aim in itself but is woven into the entire work with skill and discernment.” G.K. Casopis Vojske Jugoslavije, Beograd