Photo of Alexandra du Bois

Alexandra du Bois

Alexandra du Bois Radio

General Info

  • Genre: Acoustic / Classical / Experimental

    Location NEW YORK, New York, Un

    Profile Views: 129643

    Last Login: 11/26/2012

    Member Since 6/30/2006

    Website www.alexandradubois.com

    Type of Label Indie

  • Bio

    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 twenties, Alexandra du Bois' compositions have already been performed throughout five continents including the United States, France, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, Austrailia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Canada, Vietnam, 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; Symphony Space; 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, Carnegie Hall through The Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Workshop: Kronos: Signature Works, Mammoth Lakes Music Festival, Merkin Concert Hall’s Zoom: Composers Close Up series, the Harrison House, and Southwest Chamber Music throughout Vietnam and California. Her commissions include those from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, The Beaux Arts Trio, Bargemusic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Merkin Concert Hall, Present Music with the Milwaukee Choral Artists and the Milwaukee Children's Choir, Boston's PALS Children's Chorus, 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 NY premiere of Henryk Gorceki's third string quartet, "...songs are sung" in 2006. 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. 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. visit www.ALEXANDRADUBOIS.COM

  • Members

    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

  • Influences

  • Sounds Like

    "One of America’s most promising young composers...'An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind' was written for the Kronos Quartet in 2003, when du Bois was 22. It is the most impressive work by a composer of that age I have heard since the early pieces of..." Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times "A stunning piece that explored the landscape of war and conflict with a sorrowful tone of foreboding, chaos and devastation." BBC Manchester "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.".. Robert Hilferty, Gramophone Magazine "[du Bois' 'Soleil sur Mer'] 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." Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times "She has an unerring sense of beauty, and her new score began with the accrual of melody in slow, soft, overlapping layers, the way Mahler did in his most affecting adagios. But also like Mahler, she revealed innocence as always an illusion... "Sweetness never left her score, but beauty and pain intermingled. A bass line provided a heartbeat, and beguiling melodic lines led through a maze of dead ends. The ending was a stunner – a scream became a spiritual cadence, as if giving thanks for sour, sensuous fruit." Los Angeles Times "'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 "A quartet by American composer Alexandra du Bois, still in her early 20s, was an impressively sustained essay in musical melancholy." Tom Service, The Guardian, London "I was particularly impressed with... Alexandra du Bois' “An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind” Strings Magazine.. "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 "[du Bois' 'In Beauty, May I Walk]" 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 "Alexandra du Bois writes music with beauty and heart." Laurence Vittes, The Huffington Post.. "'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." Alex Ross, 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." Tom Strini, ThirdCoast Digest

Comments

Post a comment...
  • SHIVA SOUND

    did you see this yet? http://l2i0.u.cc/

    1 year ago
  • SHIVA SOUND

    check this song out http://www.myspace.com/maintainrecords/music/songs/one-4-me-72817965

    2 years ago
  • lectromeda

    All the melancholy, my respect, a greeting from spain

    2 years ago
  • Muma

    Hello there!!

    Coming to Brazil anytime soon? =)

    Big hug, Nico


    Sell music itunesQuantcast

    2 years ago
  • Željko Bodor

    Hi Alexandra,
    Thanks a lot for adding me and for your enchanting music. It's my great pleasute to know musican like you and I wish you every success !
    Greetings
    Željko

    2 years ago
  • Des Ayres

    Thanks for the add!


    Great Music...

    All the best,

    Des Ayres

    2 years ago
  • Gustavo Jacob

    Great music Alexandra, really! Of course you already know that.

    Thanks for the friendship.

    All the best.,

    2 years ago
  • Federico Núñez

    Merci beaucoup par l´acceptation et mes félicitations par votre musique surtout par String Quartet n° 2 et l´utilisation de la guitare dans les preludes to solitude.

    Bonne chance!

    2 years ago
  • Piero Salvatori

    Grazie e complimenti per la musica e il tuo mondo.


    Ciao.
    Piero Salvatori


    3 years ago
  • Lezhaën

    I like your originality. true artist. Not fake.

    3 years ago
10 of 577More
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 twenties, Alexandra du Bois' compositions have already been performed throughout five continents including the United States, France, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina, Austrailia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Canada, Vietnam, 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; Symphony Space; 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, Carnegie Hall through The Weill Music Institute’s Professional Training Workshop: Kronos: Signature Works, Mammoth Lakes Music Festival, Merkin Concert Hall’s Zoom: Composers Close Up series, the Harrison House, and Southwest Chamber Music throughout Vietnam and California. Her commissions include those from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, The Beaux Arts Trio, Bargemusic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Merkin Concert Hall, Present Music with the Milwaukee Choral Artists and the Milwaukee Children's Choir, Boston's PALS Children's Chorus, 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 NY premiere of Henryk Gorceki's third string quartet, "...songs are sung" in 2006.

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.

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. visit www.ALEXANDRADUBOIS.COM Check out MAYA's new album ..In The Spirit.. which features an original arrangement by Alexandra du Bois
alt="Myspace Code" border="0"> Member Since:.. June 30, 2006..

Members:

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:



"One of America’s most promising young composers...'An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind' was written for the Kronos Quartet in 2003, when du Bois was 22. It is the most impressive work by a composer of that age I have heard since the early pieces of..."

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times


"A stunning piece that explored the landscape of war and conflict with a sorrowful tone of foreboding, chaos and devastation."

BBC Manchester



"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."

Robert Hilferty, Gramophone Magazine



"[du Bois' 'Soleil sur Mer'] 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."

Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times


"She has an unerring sense of beauty, and her new score began with the accrual of melody in slow, soft, overlapping layers, the way Mahler did in his most affecting adagios. But also like Mahler, she revealed innocence as always an illusion.

"Sweetness never left her score, but beauty and pain intermingled. A bass line provided a heartbeat, and beguiling melodic lines led through a maze of dead ends. The ending was a stunner – a scream became a spiritual cadence, as if giving thanks for sour, sensuous fruit."

Los Angeles Times



"'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



"A quartet by American composer Alexandra du Bois, still in her early 20s, was an impressively sustained essay in musical melancholy."

Tom Service, The Guardian, London



"I was particularly impressed with... Alexandra du Bois' “An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind”

Strings Magazine



"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



"[du Bois' 'In Beauty, May I Walk]" 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



"Alexandra du Bois writes music with beauty and heart."

Laurence Vittes, The Huffington Post



"'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."

Alex Ross, 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."

Tom Strini, ThirdCoast Digest

Record Label:

Unknown Indie

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