Carnegie Hall Commissions - About the Composer: Aleksandra Vrebalov

Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the US. She holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Evan Chambers and Michael Daugherty, and a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, where her teacher was Elinor Armer. Vrebalov has participated in numerous master classes and workshops, such as the New York University Summer Composition Workshop; music courses in Darmstadt (Germany), Szombathely (Hungary), and Kazimierz Dolny (Poland) in collaboration with IRCAM; and the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz, California. She now teaches at the City College of New York. Vrebalov’s works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Jorge Caballero, the Sausalito Quartet, Dusan Tynek Dance Company, IJsbreker, and the Moravian Philharmonic, among others. Her music has been recorded for Nonesuch and Vienna Modern Masters.

In 2005, Vrebalov’s Lila premiered in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall with violinist Ana Milosavljevic. The premiere of her orchestral work Orbits opened the 30th Novi Sad Music Festivities and was broadcast live on national television, on the NS Channel. The same channel produced a 30-minute television biography of Vrebalov. That year, she also worked on the score for Sleeping Beauty, an experimental film introduced at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives.