Veronika Krausas, Composer

Of Lithuanian heritage, composer Veronika Krausas was born in Australia, raised in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. She has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics and video. 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 in Los Angeles, where she is a faculty member in the Composition Department. She is a pre-concert lecturer and interviewer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and serves on the advisory boards of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics. ▪

Language of the Birds, a commission for the 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Choral Artists with the Alexander String Quartet, using text by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, premiered in May 2011 in San Francisco. It was released on CD by Foghorn Classics with Ferlinghetti reciting his poetry. Her chamber orchestra work analemma was an official selection of the US for the 2012 World Music Days in Belgium and will have a Lithuanian premiere in Vilnius in 2015 with Vykintas Baltakis conducting. She was the featured composer at the 2013 Céret Music Festival. In 2008 Krausas organized a concert and CD release for The Player Piano Project, a collection of works for player piano by 22 composers from 6 countries.

Sillages for four double basses premiered on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Chamber Series in 2014 and on the Jacaranda concert series in March 2015. In 2016 the LA Phil commissioned Porcupine for 5 double basses inside a tent created by artist Ana Prvacki that premiered during the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight New Music Festival in 2016. Stephen Vanhauwert commissioned and premiered her new piano études at RedCat in June as part of the Piano Spheres series and Gloria Cheng commissioned a piece for harpsichord for her Piano Spheres concert. L’ombre du luth is now published by Bellmann Musik (Germany). Her solo piano pieces UN-intermezzi have been released by Grammy-nominated pianist Aron Kallay and were performed Steven Vanhauwaert in Portugal, in Paris by Suzana Bartal, and at the Palaces of the President of Malta by Tricia Dawn Williams.