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

Bishop Mitrofan (Kodić)

(1987–2016; 2016–)

Bishop Mitrofan Kodić, nee Radovan, was born on 4 August, 1951, in the village Ljuša, Šipovo, Bosnia, Yugoslavia. Radovan completed his elementary studies in 1966. He went to study further at the seminary in the Krka monastery in Croatia, Yugoslavia. At the same time, he entered the brotherhood of the monastery. In 1970, Radovan was tonsured to be a monk, and he was given the name Mitrofan on the eve of the Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple (3 December/20 November). He was ordained to the Holy Diaconate by Bishop Stefan (Boca) of Žiča. In 1971, the Hierodeacon Mitrofan (Kodić) graduated from the seminary of the Krka Monastery, while on 6 January, 1974, he was ordained to the holy priesthood in the monastery by Bishop Stefan (Boca).

In 1975, the Hieromonk Mitrofan entered the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, Romania. He completed his studies, and he graduated in 1977. He then returned to the Krka monastery. There, he was assigned to be a “trainee” (supplent) in the Seminary of the Three Holy Hierarchs in the Krka Monastery. In 1987, the Hieromonk Mitrofan was assigned to serve as the rector of the seminary.

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Publishing

On The Holy Liturgy

by Bishop Athanasius Yevtich

The Divine Liturgy is at the center of Orthodox Christian life. It is through the Eucharist that the faithful are united with Christ and therefore with one another. Every Eucharistic gathering is an image and a reality of the Heavenly Liturgy, i.e. unceasing Synaxis of angels and saints around God’s throne. Thus the Liturgy is the proclamation of and a real image of God’s Kingdom in this world.

In this television interview conducted by the Logos, a renowned Orthodox theologian and retired Bishop of Zahumlje and Hercegovina, his Grace Atanasije, brings forth these essential points citing historical development of the Liturgies bringing to light the present misunderstanding of certain Liturgical actions and movements.

Bishop Atanasije aptly points out the necessity for Liturgical renewal, i.e. moving away from passive liturgical attendance to active participation and immersion of the soul and body into a full communion with Christ.

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