All works published by
Arbor Mundi Music Publishers:
www.ArborMundiMusic.com
To purchase CD, and/or rent scores and parts,
send an email to:
music@arbormundimusic.com
Sounds Like
"A stunning piece that explored the landscape of war and conflict with a sorrowful tone of foreboding, chaos and devastation."
BBC Manchester
"'An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind,' written by one of our youngest composers, is unflinching in its purpose and eloquent in its parameters. Alexandra du Bois found a voice when many people were speechless."
Kronos Quartet's founder and first violinist, David Harington
"Du Bois' piece is exquisitely constructed of fascinating textures and colors."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"The 10-minute folie a deux begins with the violin lines tightly intertwined. The instruments seamlessly switch roles as accompanist and melody-messenger. They frequently converge, wrestle, caress, capitulate. Entanglement is the name of the game, with moments of singing lyricism. It’s a virtue that du Bois' music is simple without being simplistic, maintaining a buoyant intensity that doesn’t wear you out."
Gramophone Magazine
"... evoked gloomy skies with a melancholy cello melody and wistful intertwining of the dark colors of the clarinet and the cello...contemplative, lyrical two-movement trio...[du Bois] composed 'Soleil sur Mer' with the understanding of a painter who knows exactly where her picture will be hung.
The New York Times
"A quartet by American composer Alexandra du Bois, still in her early 20s, was an impressively sustained essay in musical melancholy."
The Guardian, London
"How refreshing to hear a new voice whose lush music explores new tonal territory."
Beverly Hills Outlook
"...deeply moved by [du Bois' Night Songs'] wild, feverish, klezmer-tinged lyricism and almost suffocating closeness."
New York music critic Marion Lignana Rosenberg
"A dramatic highpoint."
The Potsdamer, Germany
"...it evokes nature...and spirit with marvelous overlapping sonorities—a kind of music of the spheres for our own time."
Milwaukee Magazine
"...gentle wails and tremolos a la George Crumb then surging into a succession of agitated micro-bursts alternating with contemplative episodes, followed by quasi-minimalistic repetitions."
The Chicago Tribune
"'Night Songs,' a piece inspired by the concentration-camp testimony of the Dutch writer Etty Hillesum, is driven by strong feeling and by darkly pulsing, Janácek-like melodies."
The New Yorker
"...moments of Gorecki-like calm, oddly stifled phrases and even some haunting reminiscences of Bartók's music made for a compelling effect, as did some 'weeping' sounds and a poignant minor chord to end the quartet...an altogether an impressive work.
The Classical Source
" ...fragile whale song moans usurped by powerful harmonies, offering an extraordinary interface between traditional and avant-garde, all the more so coming from a twenty-one-year-old."
The New Zealand Herald
"...well made and deeply sincere."
The New York Times
"Harmonies gradually became more complex and culminated in ringing clusters, which then gradually dispersed. In a grand, satisfying pattern of calm, rising tension and release, 'In Beauty, May I Walk,' glides to a close on placid open fourths, the equally pure inversion of the perfect fifths.
"In 'Beauty,' dissonance does not equal ugliness. Du Bois voiced and colored her clusters, and the women of the [Milwaukee Choral Artists] tuned them, not to clash but to shimmer golden and glorious."
Alexandra du Bois discovered music through the violin, playing the instrument from the age of two years old and later began composing at age fifteen. While still in her early twenties, Alexandra du Bois' compositions had already been performed throughout the United States, France, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, Austrailia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Canada, Armenia, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom at venues such as the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Barbican Hall in London, The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Smetana Hall in Prague, Teatro Gran Rex in Buenos Aires, and the Kursaal Centre in San Sebastian, Spain, New York's Carnegie and Merkin Halls; Bargemusic, The Stone, and the Tribeca New Music Festival, among many others. Alexandra du Bois' music has been featured on radio programs including BBC Radio 3, Danish Radio, ABC Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, Chicago Public Radio, and NPR's Morning Edition.
Alexandra du Bois has been Composer-in-Residence at Dartmouth College, the Mammoth Lakes Music Festival, Merkin Concert Hall’s Zoom: Composers Close Up series, and at Carnegie Hall through The Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Workshop Kronos: Signature Works; in 2010 she will be Composer-in-Residence with Southwest Chamber Music. Her commissions include those from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, The Beaux Arts Trio, Bargemusic, Merkin Concert Hall, Present Music with the Milwaukee Choral Artists and the Milwaukee Children's Choir, The Piano Project at the Kaufman Center in New York, The Savannah Music Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, Duo Diez, The Azure Ensemble, the Chorus and Chamber Singers at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, trio MAYA, as well as musicians including Daniel Hope, Wendy Sutter, Menahem Pressler, among many others. Alexandra du Bois has received numerous grants, scholarships and awards including those from the The Netherland-America Foundation, BMI Foundation, Indiana University, The Juilliard School and The University of Massachusetts at Boston.
During the fiftieth anniversary season of the Beaux Arts Trio, pianist Menahem Pressler and the Beaux Arts Trio commissioned Alexandra du Bois’ first piano trio. The Beaux Arts Trio then premiered her Piano Trio, L'apothéose d'un rêve, at The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam followed by consecutive performances in Groningen, and Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The Felici Trio then presented the US premiere in California. During Kronos Quartet's 30th anniversary, Alexandra du Bois was chosen out of over 300 composers from 32 countries as the first recipient of the Kronos: Under 30 Project Commission. As a result, du Bois wrote String Quartet: Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat (An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind) for the Kronos Quartet which Kronos has since performed dozens of times throughout the US and World. Du Bois' other commissions marking anniversaries include: the 30th anniversary of Bargemusic in 2000, the 35th anniversary of the University Chorus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 2000, and the 50th anniversary of the Kaufman Center in New York in 2004.
Du Bois' third String Quartet, Night Songs (Nachtliederen), also written for Kronos Quartet, was inspired by the life and writing of Etty Hillesum (d. 1943 Auschwitz). Alexandra du Bois retraced Hillesum's footsteps throughout the Netherlands and Poland with a grant from The Netherland-America Foundation to receive creative insight into the 30-minute quartet. Night Songs (Nachtliederen) received its world premiere alongside the premiere of Henryk Gorceki's third string quartet, "...songs are sung," in 2006. Alexandra du Bois' Fourth String Quartet is in progress for 2010.
A native of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Alexandra du Bois (b.1981) spent her formative years in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she studied full-time at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and the Longy School of Music during her high school years. Ms. du Bois holds a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Her teachers in composition have been Sven-David Sandström, Christopher Rouse, Claude Baker, Don Freund, Osvaldo Golijov, Howard Frazin, David Patterson, Philip Lasser and Edward Bilous. Her primary teachers in violin included Suzanne Schreck, Peter Haase, Stephen Shipps, David Salness, Lynn Chang, Sophie Vilker, Henryk Kowalski, and Federico Agostini. Alexandra du Bois has lived in New York City since 2005 and is a member of BMI.
Highlights for 2009 include: her Fourth String Quartet, a violin duo for violinists Daniel Hope and Lorenza Borrani commissioned by The Savannah Music Festival 2009 and Daniel Hope, a symphonic work for the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, a solo work for NYC cellist Wendy Sutter (of Songs and Poems by Philip Glass) and a choral work commissioned by Present Music for women’s choir, children’s choir, strings and winds. In 2010, Alexandra du Bois will be Composer-in-Residence with Grammy Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music.
All works published exclusively by Arbor Mundi Music Publishers. For inquiries into purchasing scores, parts, and/or recordings, send an email to: music@arbormundimusic.com. Alexandra du Bois' website is: www.alexandradubois.com.
Profile photo by photographer Nick Ruechel. www.NickRuechel.com
many thanks for the add and for having your wonderful and inspiring music here.
listen to it every day and each time i find some more precious moments. it's like reading a book full of secrets and knowledge. hope we'll come together anytime.
Merci pour l'ajout! Les compositions et l'interprétation font preuve d'une grande sensibilité et d'une intense spiritualité. Une musique multidimensionnelle dans le sens où un univers paisible s'installe tout autour et nous invite à nous y reposer. Bravo. Je suis fan. Passe un bon week end.
Your music is very direct. It is refreshing amidst all the pretension currently found in contemporary music. This pervasive pretentious musical atmosphere includes me as well!!! hahahaha, I admit it. You've inspired me to get to back to the reasons why I began to compose in the first place. The sense of exploration, discovery and most importantly freedom is what matters the most. All the best to you. -Peter
I was tremendously moved by your piece, The Speaking Tide. I wrote a piece for Highland Bagpipe in the form of a Pibroch about the destruction of an English village in Pemaquid Maine in the 1690s by the French and Abanaki. I recorded in the actual location of the battle, in Fort William Henry. Pibroch is an art music form for Highland Bagpipe, and also for Clarsach Harp that has been around since at least the 1550s. Maybe I will share it with you some time. Glenn
I left Paris and I'm in New York for a month and I'll try to go to your Soleil sur Mer performance in november... Would you mind looking to the last pieces I posted on my page and tell me what you think about ? Thank you for your friendship... Benoit
Thank You for adding me Alexandra. Your music is amazing, I'm a huge fan! Is it possible to listen to Your piano trio, that Beaux Arts commisioned? Best regards from Warsaw.
You are soneone special, Alexandra! Impossible to stay untouched.Thank U for your music and MySpace friendship. Good to be on your list. Bests from Berlin!
And here's my ad:
Saul Williams
feat. Arditti String Quartet and Thomas Kessler remixed by hoeldke
New Single out on September 13th!
...based on THE DEAD EMCEE SCROLLS / NGH WHT by Saul Williams and Arditti Quartett on a Thomas Kessler Composition
Album coming on Xmas
Poetry Slam and HipHop. A joint venture of Switzerland, Canada, Germany and the US. (explicit lyrics)
Hi There! Listened to the whole thing now. Wanted to tell you my general impressions... At the EXCERPT i felt in the first seconds that i was playing a game with music and you were deep down ahead that game. At the Tempete de Sable i felt bored but then beautiful and then sad. With The Speaking Tide i thought it was very beautiful and fun, yet somehow frightened and free. Preludes to solitude is very beautiful, it sounded spanish and then just classical; i was seeking for the thousand influences i was listening to and i could not tell where they came from. At the claps i realized it was maybe the influence of the people. Liked it a lot, and hopefully you will like my comments, i dont do that really often, feels like loosing some of the truth in me, thank you for that!!!
Ciao,Alexandra Thank you for the add and the friendship. you are very good, I like your stupendous music a lot, compliments ..really. you are one of my prefeitis, I feel great admiration for you, talk to you soon, and all of my best wishes to always listen to your good music. all the best.. from italy..and good week end neal
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