Dr. Ivan Elezovic, associate professor of music, in the College of Liberal Arts, is the recipient of the Mississippi Artist Fellowship Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission. The grant is for local artists who demonstrate the ability to create exemplary works in composition.
“This award is a recognition of my work and its continuous quality for the past five years. It has been a privilege to have my compositions performed domestically and in various parts of the world by working with very talented musicians,” said Elezovic, who is also composition chair for the College Music Society Southern Chapter.
Recognizing artists for their excellence, the highly-competitive fellowship is only given to a limited number of applicants each year.
Elezovic said the fellowship requires a rigorous application process in which artists submit anonymously. The quality of his submitted compositions is reflected in the comments by commission panel members, who described him as having “a strong application with an extensive history and educational background.”
One panelist remarked that Elezovic “presents excellent ingenuity in the field and fastidiously composed pieces.”
He was also called an artist who “works across traditional instruments and uses the production process as part of the art form, which is aesthetically important.”
Additionally, Elezovic’s work samples showed “a wide variety of ensembles, as well as an interesting variety of sound spectrums; panelists were pleased to see the level of detail included in the work sample descriptions, particularly direction to specific parts of the composition.”
Elezovic was recommended for the maximum available funding.
Born in Serbia, Elezovic studied accordion and piano performance in secondary school. He received a bachelor’s in music composition from the University of Manitoba at Winnipeg (1997). He then received a master’s in composition from McGill University at Montreal (2000). Elezovic attained his Doctorate of Music Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2006).
To read more about Elezovic, click here.