Biography

Marko Nikodijevic was born in 1980 in Subotica, Serbia, and received his earliest musical education at that city’s music school. In 1995 he began to travel to Belgrade for composition lessons with Srdjan Hofman, and in 1997 enrolled as a full-time student of composition at the University of Arts there, working first under Hofman and then (2002–2003) with Zoran Erić. In 2003 he moved to Stuttgart, first of all as a member of the summer composition academy at Schloss Solitude and then to undertake master’s studies in composition with Marco Stroppa at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst (2003–2005). In Belgrade he had also taken courses in physics and non-linear mathematics, and his music makes extensive use of fractals, chaos theory, and algorithmic methods, as well as with instrumental and digital sound synthesis and increasingly with electronica, DJing and techno-aesthetics.

Nikodijevic has continued to make his home in Stuttgart, although a series of prestigious stipends and residencies have taken him to – among others – Weimar in 2005, to Salzwedel in 2009, to Baden-Baden in 2011, and in 2012–2013 to Paris, where he currently holds a scholarship at the Cité internationale des Arts. His works have been featured in the 2006 World New Music Days in Stuttgart and the 2009 UNESCO Rostrum of Composers in Paris (Recommended Work both in the general category and in the category of composers under 30). He was awarded the prize of the International Young Composers’ Meeting in Apeldoorn in 2003, the composition prize of the 3rd Brandenburger Biennale in 2008, and in 2010, after two previous honourable mentions in Gaudeamus Music Week, he was the winner of the Gaudeamus Prize for his orchestral work cvetić, kućica…/la lugubre gondola.

Nikodijevic’s music has been heard at festivals including musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Warsaw Autumn, musica (Strasbourg) and MATA (New York), and most recently at the Witten New Music Days and the Donaueschingen Festival. grid/index and gesualdo abschrift/antiphon super o vos omnes were composed and premiered under the auspices of the International Ensemble Modern Academy’s 2010–2011 master’s degree programme. Other important premieres have been given by the Ives Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Insomnio, Ensemble ascolta, the Brandenburger Symphoniker and the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, and his orchestral works have also been taken up by the Holland Symfonia, by the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien under Peter Eötvös and by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.