Biography
The post-style music of composer, creator, teacher, and sound artist Alexandra du Bois (Ph.D. Stony Brook University; M.M. The Juilliard School; B.M. Indiana University Jacobs School of Music) is often propelled by issues of indifference and inequality throughout the United States and the world. Her music has been performed in venues, spaces, clubs, and concert halls across five continents—connecting her tangibly to the countries that inform her work. She has been described as “an intense, luminous American composer,” (The Los Angeles Times) who writes “music [that] attempts to be a conscience in a time of oblivion” (Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington in Strings Magazine) and as “a painter who knows exactly where her picture will be hung” (The New York Times). For her, there are two different sparks that propel her creative choices and bring meaning and inspiration to her sound and palette and work—it is our connection to, fascination with, respect for, and experiences in the natural world—to nature, and separately, systemic injustice.
Alexandra du Bois also writes multi-discipline and collaborative works sometimes commissioned to connect to, celebrate, and interact with science, social justice, the natural world, or to honor or mourn world events—both historical and contemporary, often crafted with or informed by extra-musical imagery. She respects and shares the belief with Nina Simone that an artist’s duty is to reflect the times. Her collaborations include those with photojournalist Michelle Andonian (for Hope Dies Last, a largescale creative work commemorating the 100-year commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 with the ensemble Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings), with biophysicist Judith Miné Hattab (for quintet Quiescence commissioned by Institute Curie), National Public Radio’s Kitchen Sisters (for Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra, a symphonic multi-media collaboration along with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop with du Bois writing music inspired by the photography of Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian), and Toronto/Brooklyn-based video artist Pierre St. Jacques, among others.
Alexandra du Bois’ recent commissions include those from The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, Institut Curie in Paris, Kronos Quartet in San Francisco, and Riot Ensemble in London. Premiere performance highlights include Within Earth, Wood Grows for dan bau and chamber orchestra at the Hanoi Opera House, Ha Noi, Vietnam; Oh Monarch, How Beautiful You Are, co-commissioned by Maine and New Hampshire Music Teachers Association and Music Teachers National Association for pianist Anastasia Antonacos, and her seventh string quartet, Who is Calling? for string quartet and audio track (featuring spring peeper, also known as pseudacris crucifer – tree frogs, recorded in rural Vermont) premiered by Kronos Quartet at Bread Loaf Center, Ripton, Vermont in 2022. Her third string quartet was dedicated to and celebrates the life and writing of young Dutch Jewish holocaust victim Etty Hillesum. Du Bois’ String Quartet No. 3: Night Songs: Nachtlideren was commissioned by Kronos Quartet. In 2003, in preparation for writing the new piece, du Bois retraced Hillesum’s footsteps in Amsterdam, the Nazi transit camp Kamp Westerbork, and at Auschwitz in Poland, with a grant from the Netherland-America Foundation in order to receive creative insight into the work to shine a light on holocaust victims, such as Etty, who was murdered in 1945 at Auschwitz—Nazi’s largest concentration and extermination camp.
In her expanding, twenty-five-plus year career, journalists have described Alexandra du Bois’ music as “evokeing nature with Messiaen-like birdsong, and spirit with marvelous overlapping sonorities—a kind of music of the spheres for our own time” (Milwaukee Magazine); that her music is “an impressively sustained essay in musical melancholy” (The Guardian); “a stunning piece that explored the landscape of war and conflict with a sorrowful tone of foreboding, chaos and devastation (BBC Manchester), and as “fragile whalesong moans usurped by powerful harmonies, offering an extraordinary interface between traditional and avant-garde” (The New Zealand Herald).
Listen: Alexandra du Bois’ Oculus for string quartet; Within Earth, Wood Grows for dan bau and chamber orchestra; Lakagígar for solo electric guitar; In Beauty, for choir and ensemble; Fanfare for symphony orchestra.
Her albums are currently released on Arabesque Records, Kronos Performing Arts Records, Navona Records, and Harmonia Mundi, among others. Dr. du Bois (she/her) has previously been composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall (through the Weill Institute’s Professional Training Workshop Kronos: Signature Works), Dartmouth College, Merkin Concert Hall, Mammoth Lakes Music Festival, and with Southwest Chamber Music throughout Los Angeles and Vietnam and as an invited for artist residences at Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology (Joshua Tree, California), The Hermitage (Manasota Key, Florida), Byrdcliffe (Woodstock, New York), and Marble House Project (Dorset, Vermont).
Teaching Philosophy
As an artist and educator, and resident human, my teaching—one-on-one studio lessons or in classrooms or in mentoring—has always been crafted expressly and directly for the individual or groups I have the opportunity to work with. I work hard to create a supportive yet challenging environment for each person I work with in the goal of unearthing the farthest reaches of themselves creatively while also helping them build or enhance a solid foundation of technique and breadth of musical understanding. We work through exercises and assignments and deep listening, critique, and analysis to arrive at our strongest musical vision. I believe we are the culmination of our lived musical experiences and I value where we come from as much as where we are going or learning from the past. These places live together in any musical artist, in all human beings, and I believe one’s voice and potential to speak and sing out their personal voice needs be nurtured, protected, and heard. I believe in the wealth of musical experiences from all musical places and spaces throughout time and the musical strength, wealth and depth that comes from respecting this. I have long-endeavored, in the field of music, to the rebuilding of music theory for all musicians, to create musical understanding across the world for the everyday musician, for any listener, scholar, or audience member or participant. Music—and Music Theory belongs to everyone.
Photography by Nick Ruechel Photography.