A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Aleksandra Vrebalov

Aleksandra Vrebalov (born September 22, 1970 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian composer based in New York City. She studied composition with Miroslav Statkic at Novi Sad University, then with Zoran Erić at Belgrade University, Elinor Armer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Ivana Loudova at the Prague Academy of Music. She obtained her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan where she studied with Evan Chambers and Michael Daugherty.

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A highly regarded musician, she has had residences at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Tanglewood, New York's New Dramatists, MacDowell Colony, and American Opera Projects among others. She has received Awards or Fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship, Meet the Composer, Highsmith Composition Competition, Vienna Modern Masters, Serbian Fond for an Open Society, ASCAP Awards, and Douglas Moore Fellowship.

Her early string quartet Pannonia Boundless, evoking eastern European sonorities, has been recorded by the Kronos Quartet on their album Kronos Caravan (1999) and published by Boosey and Hawkes (2007). The Kronos Quartet, with clarinetist David Krakauer, premiered her 40-minute "Babylon, Our Own," commissioned for the 10th anniversary season of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, in September 2011.

In her more developed orchestral work Orbits (2002), Vrebalov uses overlapping densities of sonorities and rhythmic proportions such as the Fibonacci series to portray her idiosyncratic post-modern conception of musica universalis.

Her music for the ballet The Widow's Broom (2004) based on Chris Van Allsburg's book has been performed on Halloween by the Festival Ballet Providence.

She has received commissions from Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall (co-commission), Barlow Endowment, Festival Ballet Providence, Merkin Concert Hall Zoom Series. Vrebalov is also a co-founder of South Oxford Six, a composers' collective in New York.

In October 2011 her 2-act opera "Mileva," on a libretto by Vida Ognjenović based on her play, was premiered at the Serbian National Theater in Novi Sad, with a repeat performance at the Sava Center in Belgrade as part of the Belgrade Music Festival (BEMUS). The opera was commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of the Serbian National Theater. The scenario centers on the character of Mileva Marić, the Serbian physicist and mathematician who was Albert Einstein's first wife.

Wikipedia

ПОЛИТИКА ONLINE: Опера о Милеви Ајнштајн


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People Directory

Boris Malagurski

Boris Malagurski (Serbian Cyrillic: Борис Малагурски; born 11 August 1988) is a Serbian-Canadian film director, producer, writer, television host and activist.

Born to Branislav Malagurski and Slavica Malagurski, Boris grew up in the northern Serbian town of Subotica. In an interview for Literární noviny, Prague's cultural and political journal, Malagurski said that his last name originates from the Polish town of Mała Góra, noting that in the 17th century, a soldier from that town fought under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy against the Turks in the Battle of Senta and afterwards decided to stay in Subotica, which is now in the Serbian province of Vojvodina.

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Publishing

All Roads Lead to Jackson

Serbian American Contributions in Amador County, California, since the Gold Rush
Milina Jovanović offers a unique compilation of individual and family immigration stories that include enormous contributions to the development of California and significant community involvement. In this version of people’s history she chronicles how Serbian Americans have strengthened community, region, state, and country through the endeavors and struggles of 150 years. This book also focuses on women’s contributions that are too often overlooked. Ms. Jovanović’s study reveals that Jackson not only remains an original and symbolic home to Serbian Americans and Serbian Orthodox religion, but also an oasis where the Serbian community has preserved its positive reputation and social influence.

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