Veronika Krausas

Composer Veronika Krausas has had her works performed internationally. The Globe & Mali (Toronto) writes that “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.”

She has had commissions and performances by the Penderecki String Quartet, San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet, Ensemble musikFabrik, Esprit Orchestra, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Continuum Music, Toca Loca, and Motion Music. She has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Krausas has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events 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. It was staged and won both the Best Opera and Best Performance for The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth with soprano Michelle Jasso at Goat Hall Productions Works for Opera (San Francisco – 2009). A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold out audiences.

In 2008 she organized a concert and CD release for The Player Piano Project, a collection of works for player piano by 22 composers from 6 countries.

In February 2009 the Penderecki String Quartet gave the US Premiere of midaregami, her work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano, at REDCAT Theater in Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. A commission for the 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet, using text by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, premiered in May 2011 in San Francisco. It was released on CD with Foghorn Classics with Ferlinghetti reciting the poetry.

Her chamber orchestra work analemma is an official selection of the US for the 2012 World Music Days in Belgium.

Of Lithuanian heritage, she was born in Australia, raised in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. Krausas is an Assistant Professor in the Composition Department and the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Theory at the Thornton School of Music, on the advisory council of Jacaranda Music, an associate artist with The Industry, a lecturer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and an artist with Catalysis Projects.