Teodora Stepančić writes "music that doesn't try to draw attention to itself." The Serbian-born, Brooklyn-based composer describes her aesthetic simply: "How much do I need to add to everything that I hear?" These two chamber works for Ordinary Affects—written five years apart, yet fitting together with eerie logic—make a persuasive case for restraint.

OA (2018) and FG (2023) share surface features with Wandelweiser repertoire: low volume, generous silences, slow pacing. But unexpected elements surface—a C7 chord, vintage Casiotones alongside Fender Rhodes, theatrical gestures learned from Kagel. The two 25-minute pieces accidentally mirror each other: one begins where the other ends harmonically, and FG (named for Stepančić's child) features an entire section on just two notes, f and g.

They emerged from wildly different circumstances. OA—commissioned by the Boston-based ensemble and titled with their initials—came three years after Stepančić immigrated from the Netherlands. FG arrived in 2023, supported by NYFA's Women's Fund for Music, written in her first postpartum year after surviving severe mental illness. "They feel very distant from each other for me," she admits. Yet Ordinary Affects' distinctive sound—Jordan Dykstra (viola), Laura Cetilia (cello), Douglas Farrand (trumpet), Luke Martin (electric guitar), J.P.A. Falzone (Fender Rhodes & Casiotone), plus Stepančić on piano and Casiotone—unifies them.

Stepančić's background winds through Belgrade (where she sang in Orthodox choirs), The Hague (where she absorbed experimental music theater), and now Brooklyn, where she curates the Piano+ concert series. "I don't always feel that I fit in established contemporary music scenes," she says, "so competing in those spaces does not bother me that much—and I don't want to compete anyway."

Her compositions, she explains, "hold space for accidental sounds, and try to blur the distinction between a work and its environment." The influence of Byzantine chant mingles with Cage, Feldman, and Oliveros. Peter Margasak, writing for Bandcamp Daily, included OA / FG in his essential contemporary classical releases for January 2025.

In an age of relentless stimulus, Stepančić asks crucial questions: "How much do I need to add? What I call parallel realities—overlapping perspectives on experience and distorted sense of place and time." Her answer: just enough, and not a note more.