Composer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Svjetlana Bukvić, recently presented her new album "Extension", which she has been preparing for a little over three years. According to American critics, her new material gives people hope in a difficult period. Bukvić explains how the genesis of this album is different from her previous work. The album is the product of a collaboration with three top American companies for contemporary dance, and it is about multimedia productions for which she made original music. "The mitigating circumstance for 'freelancers' like me is that the music was paid for, as were the musicians and the studio where I recorded it. Then, in the two hours of music, I began to see the contours of the album—my individual stories—and I chose the 45 minutes that make up this album. The music is vocal-oriented, and the instrumentation is interwoven between electronic sound, electric violin, electric harp, electric guitar, bass guitar, and piano," explains Bukvić. All instrumentalists on the project are exceptional in their field and selflessly gave their talent and support to the material, he adds. 
"It means a lot to me. I am signed as a composer, mixer, arranger, and producer, which makes me especially happy. The mastering was done by the highly respected Bob Ludwig (Gateway Mastering), with whom I had one of the most inspiring collaborations in my career," he says. The themes of the album are sound movement arising from body movement and a circular flow between analog (energy) and digital (numbers) sound. "Empathy. The place where we offer ourselves to others, to listen, to try to imagine ourselves in other people's shoes, to understand. That is where the name and the concept of the album's graphic design came from. As with my other works, I don't think there is any way for this one either. to be placed in the category. It is a hybrid of progressive and art rock, classical music, avant-garde, and experimental electronics. My wish is that this music unites, not separates, and lives simultaneously in various media and also lives on stage in the form of a futuristic immersive theater. I would like to bring this production to Sarajevo," she explains. Although she has been living in New York for more than two decades, our interlocutor points out that since the summer of 1997, she has been regularly coming to Sarajevo, which she left at the beginning of the war to study in the USA. "I come because of my parents and friends, and I'm also glad that my son speaks our language fluently. In my hometown, I performed professionally for the first time in 2008, when my composition, as the only electro-acoustic one in the program, won an anonymous competition at the Chamber Music Festival of Music. Now she wouldn't be the only one at similar competitions in the region, and I'm very happy about that," says Bukvić, adding that BiH has many young and progressive musical thinkers. 
However, Bukvić points out that it is important to nurture such talents and give them enough attention. "We who come from BiH but live somewhere else know that we do not belong to the East or the West and that we should have a vision of what to do with our uniqueness in the musical sense and what to leave for the generations that come after us. We operate in a mental space that has the power to stabilize or destabilize the rest of the world. I see that space as a source of opportunity, not a dead end," he says. Our interlocutor points out that the release of the new album is not the only project she will deal with in 2020. "With the release of the album, there will be accompanying concerts. I plan to complete a short film and start work on a larger science fiction narrative. Also, I have a symphony for which it is time to put it in front of the audience," he announces.
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