At 16, Svjetlana Bukvich first came to the attention of the European music world following her appearances as featured pianist with the Sarajevo Philharmonic. Driven by a need to express beyond interpretation, Ms. Bukvich studied at the Music Academy - University of Sarajevo, where she earned degrees in Composition and Musicology. By twenty-one, she had composed her first symphony, which was to be conducted in 1992, when the war intervened. Ms. Bukvich escaped to America to study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. There, she was awarded with one of the first M.F.A. degrees in multimedia offered in the U.S. She has composed for concert stage, dance, theater and film, and has worked with diverse ensembles and instrumentalists such as ETHEL string quartet, Shattered Glass Orchestra, The Sarajevo Philharmonic, Martha Mooke, Tony Levin, Mari Kimura, Rob Schwimmer, Ha-Yang Kim, Susan Aquila, Eddie Venegas, and Jessica Meyer, among many others. She has been the recipient of numerous sponsorships and commissions, including New Music USA, USArtists International, the American Composers Forum, ASCAP's Film Scoring Scholarship, New England Foundation for the Arts, IACD at Harvard University, O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, and The Frances Richard Fund for Innovative Artists of Promise. Among her mentors in the U.S. are Philip Glass, Carl Stone, Martin Bresnick, Neil Rolnick, and Robert Ashley. Ms. Bukvich is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Music/Sound.