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Release Date: March 27, 2020
Catalog #: NV6276
Format: Digital & Physical

Extension

Svjetlana Bukvich composer

Navona Records presents European/American composer Svjetlana Bukvich’s latest masterpiece: EXTENSION, a multifaceted collection of pieces that use technology, music, and the motions of dance to both deconstruct and reimagine ideas of genre and cultural division. In EXTENSION, listeners traverse ten innovative pieces that are both deeply personal and universal.

Bukvich describes herself as aiming for a “no-genre-borderless-flow” with her music and, on a larger scale, in the structures of human society. Indeed, she captures that spirit immensely: hybridizing musical languages from American minimalism, art and progressive rock, and German classicism, to Italian polyphony, Russian romanticism, jazz, and ethnic idioms, she creates a cinematic, ‘fictocritical’ sound that is entirely unique but at once familiar.

From the opening  whispers  of  the  electric  violin  in The  Beginning to  the  evocative  title  track  Extension  which  mingles  both  voice  and  synth,  the  album  is  a  sweeping  conversation  between  the  natural  and  technological, the language of sound and the language of numbers. The piece Once You Are Not a Stranger appears in three iterations: instrumentally, vocally, and as an orchestral reprise. The meditative return of the piece emphasizes the expression of its title — in the acceptance of profound loss and the redemptive possibilities that extend out of it, there is no division, and no one is a stranger.

The composer herself knows the world’s need for connection all too well — her past includes an escape from her home in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the midst of the Civil War before finding her way to America where she continued her pursuits in media arts. In her youth Bukvich has lived in Ethiopia and Scotland, experiences which, along with the rich sounds of the Balkans, also influenced her sonic ideas. EXTENSION offers an opportunity for reconnection through dismantling, rebuilding, and exploring concepts of time, style, and musical history. Composed and in part performed by an artist of notoriety since her childhood, and exquisitely mastered by the famed Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering Studios, EXTENSION both challenges and welcomes in each listener.

Listen

Hear the full album on YouTube

"At times a thing of beauty, at others a thoughtful self-reflective piece of modern art, Extension is an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable album."

Darren Rea

Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 The Beginning Svjetlana Bukvich Susan Aquila, electric violin-Viper; Svjetlana Bukvich, voice, zither harp, electronic sound, SFX design; David Rozenblatt, percussion 6:21
02 Utopia Svjetlana Bukvich Philip Hamilton, voice; Susan Aquila, violin; Jacqueline Kerrod, electric harp; Svjetlana Bukvich, piano; Patrick Derivaz, electric bass; Wylie Wirth, drums 3:35
03 Extension Svjetlana Bukvich Kamala Sankaram, mezzo-soprano; Samille Ganges, contralto; Svjetlana Bukvich, synthesizers, tuning design, SFX design 4:16
04 Once You Are Not a Stranger (Version for String Quartet, Electric Bass & Electronics) Svjetlana Bukvich ETHEL String Quartet | Kip Jones, violin; Corin Lee, violin; Ralph Farris, viola; Dorothy Lawson, cello; Patrick Derivaz, electric bass; Svjetlana Bukvich, electronic sound 4:10
05 Graves Svjetlana Bukvich Philip Hamilton, voice; Jacqueline Kerrod, electric harp; Nikola Radan, alto flute; Richard Viard, acoustic guitar; Svjetlana Bukvich, piano, electronic sound; Wylie Wirth, drums 6:43
06 Tattoo Svjetlana Bukvich Kamala Sankaram, mezzo-soprano; Svjetlana Bukvich, piano, electronic sound, lyrics 4:29
07 Stairs Svjetlana Bukvich Raphael Saphra, cello; Joseph Brock, double bass; Svjetlana Bukvich, Moog synthesizer, electronic sound, SFX design 2:40
08 Once You Are Not a Stranger (Version for Voices, Piano & Electric Bass) Svjetlana Bukvich Janis Brenner, voice; Svjetlana Bukvich, piano, voice, lyrics; Patrick Derivaz, electric bass 2:00
09 Nema te Svjetlana Bukvich Jane Manning, soprano; Bojan Gorišek, piano; Kamala Sankaram, mezzo-soprano; Svjetlana Bukvich, synthesizers, SFX design, lyrics 4:27
10 Once You Are Not a Stranger (Version for String Orchestra, Electric Bass & Electronics) Svjetlana Bukvich Shattered Glass String Orchestra; Patrick Derivaz, electric bass; Svjetlana Bukvich, electronic sound 4:31

Music composed, arranged, engineered, mixed, and produced by SVJETLANA BUKVICH
Co-produced by MICK GOCHANOUR

Recorded at Q Department and Pencil Factory in New York City NY

Additional Engineers ROY HENDRICKSON on Once You Are Not A Stranger PATRICK DERIVAZ on Graves

Music mastered by BOB LUDWIG at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland ME
Executive Producer SVJETLANA BUKVICH

Photography by ROBERT HERMAN
Graphics by MIXUPNYC

Art Direction MIXUPNYC, SVJETLANA BUKVICH

©2020 CBCO Music [ASCAP] All rights reserved

SPECIAL THANKS
to David Frost, Bob Ludwig, The EAR Classical, Denise Marsa, Drazen Bosnjak, Robert Herman, Mick Gochanour, PARMA Recordings, Carolyn Dorfman, Janis Brenner, Jeanette Stoner, and to my friends and family for their support and insight.

Tracks 1-3, 5, 6, 9: Originally Commissioned by Carolyn Dorfman Dance
Tracks 4, 8, 10: Originally Commissioned by Janis Brenner & Dancers
Tracks 7: Originally Commissioned by Jeanette Stoner and Dancers

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw
A&R Director Brandon MacNeil
A&R Morgan Santos

VP, Audio Production Jeff LeRoy
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Sara Warner

Artist Information

Svjetlana Bukvich

Composer

Svjetlana Bukvich first came to the attention of the European music world following her appearances as featured soloist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto at the age of 16, and the following year with Edinburgh George Heriot’s Symphony Orchestra with the 2nd Concerto. Driven by a need to express beyond interpretation, Bukvich studied at the Music Academy - University of Sarajevo, where she earned degrees in Composition and Musicology.

Notes

ex·ten·sion

/ˌikˈsten(t)SH(ə)n/

noun

a part that is added to something to enlarge or prolong it; a continuation.
the action or process of becoming or making something larger.
an application of an existing system or activity to a new area.
the action of moving a limb from a bent to a straight position.

The music for EXTENSION stems from dance, physical and abstract. It highlights several commissions I have received in the last five years from three extraordinary contemporary dance companies in the United States: Jeanette Stoner and Dancers, Carolyn Dorfman Dance, and Janis Brenner & Dancers. In these works, I focused on gestures and patterns culled from the tension of cultural interdependence in societies in erosion and re-imagined them in sound. These motions I then gave back to dancers to embody and unlock. We all realized that, tossed back and forth, these ideas opened up a powerful tool for lifting trauma stored in bodies and for elevating spirit. These collaborations still deepen my sense of space, structure, and history in my own work as they continue to be performed and re-staged in the United States and abroad.

The title of the album is three-fold: it reflects on my experience of the cyclical nature of working with technology in movement and sound, and of working in multiple mediums. I extend myself by allowing the body movement and sound to be stored and handled in languages created with numbers. Similarly, those “frozen” gestures become free time and time again, showing up in my present and making it new. I also like adjusting connections between fields not necessarily apparent at first, and embracing their extensions. I found that by doing so new spaces open up, like vines intertwining, branching out… And ultimately, a sense of extending is present every time a person steps into another person’s shoes. The choices are to feel and learn, or shut down. I’d like to believe that this album helps the former, and that it creates a modicum of empathy in a reverse engineering kind of way.

The experimental nature of society in Yugoslavia (the “melting-pot”), where I grew up, coupled with the solid education I received there in classical music and in general education, gave me a sense of curiosity about the world and the tools with which to explore it. My thirst for looking at things from different angles was intensified with my pursuit of electronic music and media in the United States. I also lived in Scotland and Ethiopia in my formative years. On EXTENSION, I deconstruct, rebuild, repurpose, imagine, and re-imagine. Musicians from different backgrounds and with expertise in different genres share in the intimate space of a composition. To me, what they are sharing ultimately is an understanding of and a bending of time, which in turn bends the understanding of history. The hybridization of musical languages such as American minimalism, art and progressive rock, German classicism, Italian polyphony, Russian romanticism, jazz, and ethnic idioms in this recording makes it a comforting space for me personally. I'd like to think that it offers structures that point toward a no-genre-borderless-flow, a place where human existence free of tribalism and doctrine is possible. The way new space can be created is by imploding models that don't work. Music is probably one of the fastest highways that can teach us that.­

— Svjetlana Bukvich

Lyrics

Svjetlana Bukvich lyrics

For several reasons, I
I love you so
Reasons, I

If I can not love you I can not live
For reasons I can not explain
If you come closer
And look within, I

I love you so
Reasons, I

Svjetlana Bukvich lyrics

Once
Once
Once you
Once you’re not
Once, once you
Once you’re not a
Once you
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you
Once you’re not
Once you, once
Once you’re not a
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a
Once you’re not a
Once you’re not a
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger
Once you’re not a stranger

Svjetlana Bukvich lyrics

Nema te
Nema gore ravne
Nema zore rane
(You aren’t here, you aren’t there
There is no flat mountain
There is no early dawn)

Videos

Svjetlana Bukvich - "Once You Are Not A Stranger" ft. Shattered Glass Ensemble

Svjetlana Bukvich - "Once You Are Not A Stranger" ft. ETHEL

Svjetlana Bukvich - "Interior Designs" ft. Carolyn Dorfman Dance