Aleksandra Vrebalov
Aleksandra Vrebalov has written more than a hundred works ranging from concert music, to opera, dance and experimental and documentary film. Her work is characterized by the fusion of influences from different musical traditions of the countries in which she lived or travelled, from Serbia, to the United States, as well as the Middle East. She has written music for Western instruments, as well as ethnic and historical instruments from the Balkans, Asia, and Poland.
Her works have been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, English National Ballet, Cincinnati and Glimmerglass Opera, Serbian National Theater, Belgrade Philharmonic, The Forbidden City Orchestra in Beijing, Jose Limon and Rambert Dance Companies. Vrebalov has extensively collaborated with Kronos Quartet and has written 18 works for the group. A fellow of MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Djerassi, American Opera Projects, The Hermitage, and Tanglewood, Vrebalov is the recipient of The 2024 Grawemeyer Music Prize, 2019 Hoefer Prize, The Harvard/Fromm Commission, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship, Barlow Endowment Commission, The Highsmith Composition Competition, and MAP Fund grant, among others.
In Serbia, her country of origin, she is the recipient of the Golden Badge of the Cultural and Educational Association of Serbia / Ministry of Foreign Affairs for long-term contribution to Serbian culture (2015). She is a two-time winner of the Mokranjec Award: 2009 (Stations) and 2011 (opera Mileva). She is a two-time winner of the “Muzika Klasika” award as the Composer Of The Year, for her opera Mileva (2011) and Antennae (2021), commissioned by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Vrebalov has made music with young refugees from Syria and Iraq at the Flying Carpet Festival on Turkish/Syrian border in 2018 and 2019.
There are more than twenty CD releases containing Vrebalov’s work, recorded for Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, Innova, Orange Music Mountain, New Amsterdam, Centaur Records, and Vienna Modern Masters. The composer’s self-published work is distributed by Composers Edition in London, UK.
Visiting artist at Arts Letters & Numbers, Creative Music Intensive Summer 2022, Creative Music Intensive 2023
Photo credit Farhood Yazdani, Mardin 2019
