Svjetlana Bukvich grew up during the wildly active music scene in Sarajevo’s eighties, with Arabian horses and four major religions at her doorstep. An innovator in hybrid electronic sound, and a “force in new music”, she has emerged as a unique figure on the New York music scene. Her genre-bending performances, described as “ecstatic musical experiences” (New Music Connoisseur), often feature video, voice, tuning of her own design, and regularly involve top avant-garde, jazz, and prog rock instrumentalists such as Martha Mooke, Tony Levin, Mari Kimura, Rob Schwimmer, Cornelius Dufallo, Patrick Derivaz, Johnny Reinhard, Leonardo Suarez Paz, Kamala Sankaram, Ha-Yang Kim, Gareth Flowers, Susan Aquila, and Mordy Ferber. A compelling composer-producer-performer mix, Svjetlana draws from the energies of the places she has lived in – Addis Ababa, Edinburgh, Boston, New York City, and Sarajevo – creating fantastical stories with sound. Svjetlana played with rock bands, composed for independent television and theater, and performed as a piano soloist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic. Her flourishing career was cut short by the war. In the US, Svjetlana was awarded a full scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. She earned an MFA in integrated electronic arts, the first multimedia program of its kind. She has since appeared in venues as varied as the The Kennedy Center, the Tribeca Film Festival, American Festival of Microtonal Music, The Knitting Factory, Brooklyn’s Bargemusic, Music With A View Festival, Serial Underground at the Cornelia Street Café, The Kitchen, The Anthology Film Archives, Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, the Bohemian Hall, (le) Poisson Rouge, ASCAP’s Thru The Walls Series, the [New York] Times Center, and internationally including Beijing, London, South Africa and Copenhagen.
