shut up and listen! 2025
PAST_20 → NEXT_∞
Friday, October 17, 2025 @ echoraum, 8:00 PM
Josip Kalčič: Duboki Do / Deep Valley
sound projection
Josip Kalčić’s Duboki do (1974) is an electronic composition realized at the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade using the EMS Synthi 100. The work is particularly remarkable for its ability to evoke a soundscape with an analog synthesizer that references natural acoustic phenomena. Elements such as bird-like songs, bell-like sounds, and microtonal frictions reminiscent of traditional Balkan music emerge not through direct recordings but through synthetic generation.
This approach to natural or ethnomusical sound worlds through electronic means gives the work a particular tension between artificiality and acoustic illusion. In this sense, one could describe Duboki do as a radiophonic work without radio—a composition that embraces the aesthetics of electroacoustic broadcast productions without being bound to the medium itself.
[Ksenija Stevanović, Radio Beograd 3]
Josip Kalčič
Josip Kalčič (born February 12, 1912, in Trniče near Maribor, died September 1995 in Belgrade) was a Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian composer, conductor, and a significant pioneer of electronic music in Yugoslavia. After his musical training in Celje, Ljubljana, and Zagreb, Kalčić was imprisoned during World War II due to his connections to the anti-fascist resistance and deported to the concentration camps of Stara Gradiška and Jasenovac. Following his liberation at the war’s end, he assumed important cultural and musical positions, including roles as choir director and senior staff member at Radio Belgrade.
His extensive oeuvre comprises 575 works in total, including chamber, orchestral, and choral music, as well as innovative electronic compositions. Kalčić’s works were performed at prestigious international music festivals, such as the Zagreb Music Biennale and the BEMUS Festival in Belgrade. He received numerous awards for his musical activities and is now regarded as a significant figure in the contemporary and electronic music of former Yugoslavia.