VERONIKA KRAUSAS

The works of composer VERONIKA KRAUSAS are performed throughout Europe and North America, where she is recognized for her innovative use of dance, acrobatics and video. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) writes "her works, whose organic, lyrical sense of storytelling are supported by a rigid formal elegance, give her audiences a sense that nature's frozen objects are springing to life." Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of her chamber opera "Something novel this way comes."

Since 1998 Krausas has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events in Los Angeles that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics and video. Her chamber opera The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, was premiered at the New York Opera's VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold out audiences. Other productions were by Goat Hall Productions in San Francisco, Fort Worth Opera's Frontiers Festival, and New Fangled Opera in New Orleans.

Her chamber orchestra work Spirals was premiered at the Darmstadt Music Festival (1996) and had a subsequent performance by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The Penderecki String Quartet gave the US Premiere of midaregami, her work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano at REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles and was performed by the Opium Quartet at the Céret Music Festival. Language of the Birds, a commission for the 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet, using text by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was premiered in 2011 in San Francisco and released on CD with Foghorn Classics. Analemma for chamber orchestra was an official selection of the US for the 2012 World Music Days in Belgium.

Recent premières have included: her solo piano pieces UN-intermezzi, performed and recorded by pianist Aron Kallay with subsequent performances by Steven Vanhauwaert at the Amigos De Música de São Lourenço in Almancil Portugal, a new work for harpsichord solo l'ombre du luth (shadow of the lute) for Gloria Cheng for Piano Spheres, and a song cycle The Alchemist's Suite for bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood and Sillages for 4 double basses on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Chamber Music Series at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and a Piano Spheres commission for pianist Steven Vanhauwaert at REDCAT in June 2015.

She is one of six composers involved in The Industry's new mobile opera project Hopscotch, the first mobile opera premiering in Los Angeles October 31, 2015.

Of Lithuanian heritage, she was born in Australia and raised in Canada. Krausas has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at USC. She is currently a Professor in the Composition Department at the Thornton School of Music, on the advisory council of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics, an associate artist with The Industry, and a pre-concert lecturer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

http://www.veronikakrausas.com/