Ugrćič wants to “create a platform for women to come and fully express themselves.”
Discrimination and sexism often prevent women from thriving in the arts, but not for much longer, if Iva Ugrćič (OO-gurr-cheech) has anything to say about it. The Serbian-born flutist has launched the inaugural LunART Festival, June 28-30, partly in response to the negative experiences she faced while beginning a music career in Europe.
Ugrćič’s early education progressed in fits and starts; war broke out when she was just 10. While an undergraduate in Belgrade, she says male professors and fellow students sexually harassed and body shamed her. When she refused to back down, it got worse. She was discouraged from making ambitious career plans and told it would be difficult for her to find a husband as an educated woman.
“I finished my undergrad, and it was one of the worst periods of my life,” says Ugrćič, now 36. “That’s the reason that I had a very bad experience — because I was the only one who said no to [discrimination and harassment].”
But Ugrćič persevered. In 2005, she won a scholarship to study in Paris, earning a master’s in solo flute performance. She taught in Belgrade and Paris before moving to pursue a doctorate at the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music on a fellowship in 2014. She’s performed internationally and regionally with orchestras and as a soloist, and with jazz, blues and alternative ensembles, including Madison’s Sound Out Loud collective. She’s recorded two CDs — one classical and one by a contemporary female composer from Romania — and won awards for her performances and leadership.
“She’s so ebullient and friendly when she’s talking and then she gets in this performance zone — [she’s a] tigress,” says Laura Medisky, an oboist and assistant director of LunART Festival.
Although Ugrćič has found many more opportunities here as an artist, it didn’t take her long to discover that the United States still has a long way to go before women are treated equally. In the musical arena, works by female composers are still rarely performed. During the 2016-17 symphony concert season, just 1.3 percent of the music performed by 85 orchestras across the United States was composed by women, according to Baltimore Symphony Orchestra data. Only 29 percent of instrumental soloists in the same timeframe were female, and a scant 8.8 percent of conductors.
Now Ugrćič, who graduated in 2017, is devoting her considerable energy to supporting women in the arts. “I didn’t know that [Madison] would be a perfect place for me and my ideas,” she says. “This city is so opening and welcoming.“
The idea for LunART Festival took root last June during a brunch in Appleton. One of Ugrćič’s ensembles, the all-female Black Marigold Quintet, was performing at the International Double Reed Society conference at Lawrence University.
“We were all kind of telling our stories about being women in a man’s world,” says Medisky, who also plays in Black Marigold. One musician felt reluctant to acknowledge to her academic colleagues that she had a family. Another believed the stigma of being a mother of a young child would hold her back professionally. Then Ugrćič opened up about her dream of an arts festival centered on women.
“That was the first time she’d really shared her idea of starting a festival like this and we said, “Yeah! Great! Do it!” Medisky says.
Support for LunART Festival has been overwhelming, say Ugrćič and Medisky. The call for scores yielded 95 entries from 25 countries. A number of local and regional musicians will perform at the festival, including many members of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and UW students and alums. About 75 percent of the performing artists are women.
During a free program at 2 p.m. on June 30 at Capitol Lakes, a special concert will feature scores from the LunART Emerging Composers program. Six female composers will take part in a master class and receive private composition lessons with the festival’s composer-in-residence, California-based Jenni Brandon.They’ll workshop their scores with festival musicians and have the final performance recorded.
But the wide-ranging festival, with the tagline “from rap to rhapsody,” will expand beyond classical and contemporary scored music. Musicologist Andrea Fowler will give a free lecture at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on women’s musical history. Bos Meadery will host That’s What She Said from the Bricks Theatre, a showcase of monologues created by women. For the festival’s June 30 finish, local singer-songwriter Helen Avakian and violin-led indie band Tiny Dinosaur will perform at Robinia Courtyard.
Ugrćič, who wants to work “with badass women,” says she hopes in the future to expand the scope of LunART to include more visual art, theater and dance. “I met so many women that cannot express their feelings because they’re stuck somewhere,” says Ugrćič. “I want to be an advocate for those women. I want to create a platform for women to come and fully express themselves.”
