Vladimir Tosic (b.1949) and Gjon Gjevelekaj (b.1951) are the only two professional composers in this album who are not guitarists. Tosic is a professor at the Music Academy in Belgrade, and as a minimalist composer wrote an interesting number of solo and chamber guitar pieces using his own characteristic style. Gjevelekaj belongs to the Albanian part of the population living in the city of Pristina, in Kosovo.
(Uros Dojcinovic: Guitar Compositions from Yugoslavia. Vol.IV Serbia, 2004)
Vladimir Toši? (b.Belgrade, Serbia, 1949), composer, multimedia artist and professor at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. He graduated as a composer from the same faculty in the class of Vasilije Mokranjac.
Artistic work: Vladimir Toši? appeared as an author while still studying at concerts in his country (Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana) as well as abroad (France, Hungary, Italy, USA). Of all the significant concert appearances the following can be singled out: a number of recitals in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Zagreb, 1978-1994; three appearances at the Zagreb Musical Biennial (1983-1987) and abroad at the Festival of Experimental Music in Bourges (France 1982) and the New Music and Art Festival in Bowling Green (Ohio, USA 1987, 2000), International Glass Music Festival in Philadelphia (USA, 2000) festival Musica Nova in Sao Paulo (Brasil, 2000, 2001), New Music Miami ISCM Festival (Miami, 2002), Spaziomusica Festival, Sardegna (Italy 2003), International Festival of Contemporary Music, Lima (Peru, 2004), Deutsches minimal music festival, Kassel, (2005), New Music Festival Duluth, (USA, 2006), International New Music Festival in Las Vegas, (USA, 2006)… Vladimir Toši?c won first prize at the composition competition Thomas Bloch (Paris, 2000).
Stylistic orientation: The basic approach in his artistic endeavour is the reductionistic principle of composing. All his pieces are based on particularly small number or various elements, sometimes even a single one (timbre, rhythm, harmony...).
One of the essential and remarkable characteristics of the creative work of Vladimir Toši? is the processual organization. Thus his composition is created by a gradual development or the initial core with the use of a chosen procedure and no abrupt changes or clashes or different musical materials. The sound material is more often than not based on the tones of harmonic series since it is both neutral and comprehensive prototype of sound. The compositions are mainly of a symmetrical arc form with a simultaneous rise and fall of the parametres. Therefore almost every composition of Vladimir Tosic may be said to have certain significant and noticeable common characteristics: processual organization, symmetrical arc form, repetition and insisting on timbre.
Web: http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/tosic (2012)