Aleksandra Vrebalov wins Harvard University award

BELGRADE - Aleksandra Vrebalov, a US-based Serbian composer whose Beyond Zero project - commissioned by UC Berkeley to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War and recently performed in Serbia by the Kronos Quartet - is the winner of the prestigious annual award of Harvard University's Fromm Music Foundation.

Vrebalov is on the list of composers who are the winners of the annual award handed out by the Foundation, which supports contemporary composition through commissioning new works.

Commissioning compositions is one of the chief ways in which the Fromm Music Foundation supports contemporary music and its concert promotion to the broader public.

Vrebalov has been residing in the US for two decades and her works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet (US), David Krakauer, ETHEL, Jorge Caballero, the Opera of the Serbian National Theatre and the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, also featuring at many festivals.

Vrebalov has won numerous awards, including from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Vienna Modern Masters publishing company, ASCAP, the Meet the Composer organisation and the Douglas Moore Foundation, as well as two Mokranjac awards from the Composers Association of Serbia for the best composition premiered in Serbia in 2012 and 2012, respectively.

Her compositions have been published by famous publishers such as Nonesuch, Centaur Records, Innova and Vienna Modern Masters, and choreographed by Dusan Tynek (New York), the Rambert Dance Company (United Kingdom), Take Dance (US), the Scottish Dance Theatre and Festival Ballet Providence.

Beyond Zero - a project that Vrebalov and US director Bill Morrison had worked on for three years - was premiered in Serbia by...