Aleksandra Vrebalov

Aleksandra Vrebalov, native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the United States. She holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan (DMA, 2002), where she studied with Evan Chambers and Michael Daugherty, and a master’s degree from San Francisco Conservatory (MM, 1996) where her teacher was Elinor Armer. 

In 2008 Vrebalov led Summer in Sombor (Serbia), a composition workshop that she initiated and co-founded in 2007 with the South Oxford Six composers’ collective. Vrebalov’s string quartet …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation was premiered by Kronos Quartet in Zankel Hall in February 2008. The Spell, written for the Sofia Music Weeks was premiered by pianists Pavlina Dokovska and Vladimir Valjarevic in June 2008. In October 2008, Vrebalov’s new work for solo violin is to be played by Ana Milosavljevic at the Times Center in New York City. Transparent Walls, written for the San Francisco Conservatory is to be premiered on November 15 by the New Music Ensemble with Nicole Paiement conducting. 
In 2007, Vrebalov’s Orbits were performed by Belgrade Philharmonic and Peter Leonard. In NYC, Vrebalov participated in the American Lyric Theater’s composer/librettist development program, collaborating with Deborah Brevoort on Altezura, an opera scene premiered at the Symphony Space in January 2008. Her string quartet Pannonia Boundless was published by Boosey&Hawkes as part of the Kronos Edition, and was one of the signature works at the Kronos’ Carnegie Hall workshop for string quartets. Vrebalov was awarded the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her two Bagatelles were premiered at the Mannes’ Beethoven Festival by pianist Evi Yundt in NYC in March 2007. 

Wishing to expose students to different ways of experiencing and thinking about music, Vrebalov initiated the Summer in Sombor (Serbia) Composition Workshop in 2007, and brought the US Hip-Hop Ambassador Toni Blackman to lecture at the City College of NY in 2003. In 1997 Vrebalov created the Composers’ Forum, a weekly gathering of composition students at the Novi Sad University/Serbia, devoted to discussion of compositional process. 

Her cross-disciplinary interests led to engagements with the Serbian Fund for an Open Society, and participation at interdisciplinary round tables, seminars, and residencies that include MacDowell Colony (NH, 2006, 2003, 1998), New Dramatists (NYC 2003), Rockefeller Bellagio Center (Italy, 2000), Moral and Mythology in Contemporary Art (Guest Artist, Novi Sad, 1995), and MultiMedeja (Lecturer, Novi Sad, 1995). 

Vrebalov is a founding member of the South Oxford Six. 

Albums