[BELLINGHAM, WA, February 4, 2025] — The Bellingham Symphony Orchestra is proud to announce two local pianists are set to solo with the orchestra in two separate concerts this winter and spring—and they just happen to be mother and daughter.
Milica Jelača Jovanović will be the featured soloist at BSO’s upcoming Making Waves concert, on March 23 at Mount Baker Theatre; she last performed with the BSO in 2018 for Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals.
Maria Horja’s performs on February 6, 2025, as part of BSO’s 2025 Educational Concert Peter and the Wolf, playing the third movement of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2. This will be her first time performing with the BSO, though her mother jokes that it’s Maria’s second.
“She was ‘unofficially’ on stage in 2008, about a month before her birth,” says Milica, “which was my first performance with the Symphony in the Prokofiev Concerto No. 3”
Born into a family of professional musicians in Belgrade, Serbia, Milica began giving recitals at the age of 8 and went on to a career that’s had her perform around the world. Critics describe her playing as “extraordinary” and “poetic” and call her a “pianist of great energy and charisma.” She recently played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor with the Seattle Philharmonic at Benaroya Hall.
Maria, also the daughter of Paul Horja, won 1st place in the 2024 BSO Young Artist Competition and is currently a junior at Bellingham’s Sehome High School. She began playing piano at the age of 5.
