Faculty

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. 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.”

She was one of six composers involved in the acclaimed mobile opera Hopscotch. Alex Ross of the New Yorker called Hopscotch, “a remarkable experimental opera.” Her first opera, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was premiered at the New York City Opera’s VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold-out audiences. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of her chamber opera, “Something novel this way comes.”

Commissions and performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry, New York City Opera, Ensemble musikFabrik, Esprit Orchestra, Piano Spheres, Gloria Cheng, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Toca Loca, Fort Worth Opera, Jacaranda Music, Motion Music, and the Penderecki String Quartet.

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, 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 had a Lithuanian premiere in Vilnius in 2015 with Vykintas Baltakis conducting. She was the featured composer at the 2013 Céret Music Festival (France).

Sillages for four double basses premiered on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Chamber Series in 2014 and on the Jacaranda concert series in 2015. In 2016 the LA Phil commissioned Porcupine for five double basses inside a tent created by artist Ana Prvacki during the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight New Music Festival in 2016. Her solo piano pieces UN-intermezzi have been released by Grammy-nominated pianist Aron Kallay and were performed in Paris by Suzana Bartal, in Portugal by Steven VanHauwaert, and at the Palaces of the President of Malta by Tricia Dawn Williams.

Veronika 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 on the advisory boards of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics and a lecturer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.