An interdisciplinary project on reconciliation that brought music, text, movement,
and collective participation into a shared space of listening across time.
HELD ON 9 MAY 2026 · EĐŠEG CULTURAL STATION · NOVI SAD
The Bridge Cantata was developed as a socially engaged interdisciplinary project within the
“Art for Reconciliation” programme. Rather than remaining a one-time concert announcement, it unfolded
as a full process linking music, text, movement, workshop practice, and public performance.
Through the meeting of Bach’s chorales, David Mastikosa’s newly composed work Our Time,
and the dramaturgical framework by Mina Petrić, the project created a space where historical and
contemporary voices could speak to one another.
The project brought together artists, young musicians, and audiences around questions of memory,
dialogue, and reconciliation, not as an abstract concept, but as a lived process built through attention,
presence, and shared listening.
Dramaturgical frame
Words that opened a space for listening
Mina Petrić’s text placed one of the project’s central questions at the front: what belongs to our time,
and how does the present speak with what we call the past?
In that frame, the Baroque was not presented as something distant, but as a reflection and an echo:
a cultural memory we recognise again through contemporary voice, body, and community.
“What is our time, and can we possess it, or does it possess us?
We look toward the Baroque and recognise ourselves as a reflection. Or an echo.”
The open workshop held on 18 April 2026 at American Corner in Novi Sad became an important step in the project’s development.
Through work on Bach’s chorales, participants explored the relationship between voice, rhetoric, and structure,
and part of that process later continued into the final performance.
The artistic team worked through a sequence of meetings, online exchanges, shared materials, and stage rehearsals.
That is why this page now functions as project documentation rather than as a live event announcement.
Workshop lead
Radoslava Vorgic Zurzovan
soprano and vocal coach for the project
Collaboration
Bojana Dimković
keyboard player and workshop associate
New composition
David Mastikosa
Our Time as a contemporary bridge toward Bach
Rehearsal gallery
Ensemble work, concentration, and the shaping of sound together
These photographs document the atmosphere of rehearsal: instrumental work, shared listening, ensemble preparation,
and details of the space in which the project developed before the final performance.
A wider view of the ensemble at work during rehearsal.Focus at the keyboard and the precision of ensemble work.Preparing a string part during rehearsal.Instrument, body, and attention in rehearsal.Dialogue between performers in shared rehearsal work.The ensemble finding spatial and musical balance.Presence and concentration among collaborators in the process.
Performance
Photographs from the final performance
This selection documents the audience, performers, stage movement, and the shared atmosphere of the
project’s final encounter with the public.
A wider view of the final performance and the relationship between stage and audience.Stage movement as part of the project’s musical and dramaturgical flow.The audience gathered for the final performance.The ensemble in performance under the hall lights.Body and movement extending the musical narrative.The shared bow at the close of the evening.A group portrait after the final evening.Audience members of different generations taking part in the evening.Performers and collaborators after the concert.The hall architecture and the concentration of the audience in one frame.The focus and quiet attention of the audience during the performance.A portrait from the performance evening alongside the project identity.A spoken moment within the final programme.
Media materials
Video excerpts, music, and further documentation
Performance video
Watch David's composition
A recording of David Mastikosa's composition is now available on YouTube as part of the final
Bridge Cantata performance.
David Mastikosa’s new composition, written to a text by Mina Petrić, forms the project’s contemporary layer
and its clearest dialogue with memory, reconciliation, and the present.
Rehearsal and performance galleries are now in place. This selection still leaves room for the next
additions: online meetings, volunteer work, and further process documentation.
Project team
The people who shaped the project
soprano, vocal coach, workshop lead“In Johann Sebastian Bach, we do not find the past, we find ourselves.”
composerOur Time is a new work about reconciliation, memory, and the relationship between past and present.
dramaturg and writerThe Baroque appears here as a mirror through which the present recognises itself.
dancer and choreographerMovement functions in the project as a bridge between body, memory, and community.
workshop associateWork on Bach’s chorales connected historical performance practice with contemporary artistic experience.
Project team
Radoslava Vorgic Zurzovan
soprano, vocal coach, workshop lead
Radoslava Vorgic Zurzovan is one of the key artistic forces behind the project, bringing extensive experience
in Baroque interpretation, artistic leadership, and work with young performers.
Within the project, she led the workshop devoted to Bach’s chorales and opened a space where vocal technique,
text, and reflection on reconciliation could meet.
Project team
David Mastikosa
composer
David Mastikosa composed the new work Our Time for the project, introducing a contemporary musical layer
into dialogue with Bach and with the project’s wider themes of memory, time, and reconciliation.
His contribution does not function as an appendix to the programme, but as a central artistic bridge
between historical material and new shared experience.
Project team
Mina Petrić
dramaturg and writer
Mina Petrić’s dramaturgical framework raised questions about who time belongs to, how we speak about the past,
and how art can return us to a condition of shared listening.
Her words in the project function as a conceptual bridge: they do not explain reconciliation from outside,
but bring it into the experience of performance itself.
Project team
Tatjana Štricki
dancer and choreographer
Tatjana Štricki shaped stage movement as a space of encounter between music, body, and collective experience,
giving the project a physical dimension of dialogue and transformation.
In her work, movement is not an illustration of music, but an autonomous carrier of relationships between
past, present, and community.
Project team
Bojana Dimković
workshop associate
Bojana Dimković brought strong experience from both early and contemporary music, connecting performance precision
with pedagogical work during the workshop and participant preparation.
Her contribution helped ensure that the process remained not only conceptual, but musically grounded and practically shaped.
