Person

Sokolović, Ana

1968 -

Ana Sokolović was born in Serbia (then Yugoslavia) in 1968. As a child, her father instilled her with a strong sense of art by taking her to concerts, the theatre, and the ballet. She began studying classical ballet at a young age, eventually following in the footsteps of her older sister and taking up piano at age eight. Ballet and music ended up giving way to acting lessons a few years later when she enrolled in theatre school. For Sokolović, her various studies have contributed to her work as a composer who thinks about music from a theatrical standpoint. She first studied composition at university under Dusan Radić in Novi Sad and Zoran Erić in Belgrade and then completed a master’s degree under the supervision of José Evangelista at the Université de Montréal in the mid-1990s.

As a composer, her work is suffused with her fascination for different forms of artistic expression and is often inspired by Balkan folk music and its asymmetrical festive rhythms. It includes pieces for voice, opera, orchestra and chamber music, and the stage. As such, the originality of her music has secured her a prominent position on the Quebec, Canadian, and international contemporary music scenes. Accordingly, during the 2011-12 season, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) celebrated the 20th anniversary of Sokolović’s arrival in Quebec with an homage series in honour of her work. In total, there were more than 200 events presented in her honour from coast to coast. Most recently, her commission for the Canadian Opera Company is premiering during the 2019-2020 season.

In addition to her activities as a composer, Ana Sokolović is also a professor of composition at the University of Montréal. She lives there with her husband and fellow composer, Jean Lesage, and her two children, Gustave and Eve.