Alexandra Streliski

Alexandra Streliski is a composer and pianist who works in the neo-classical field, where contemporary instrumental writing sits close to film scoring. She writes for solo piano, and her pieces are typically short, built from repeating figures and small harmonic shifts rather than long-form development.

Her recorded catalogue runs to three albums, Pianoscope, INSCAPE and Néo-Romance, and it was the second of these that carried her from a composer known mainly to other musicians to one with a large audience of her own. Her writing has also been used widely on screen, in the features Dallas Buyers Club and Demolition and in the television series Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects, the last of which she scored.

Recognition has come from both the classical and the popular side of that divide. She has taken a Juno Award for instrumental album of the year and Félix Awards for composition and for breakthrough artist, and has been long-listed more than once for the Polaris Music Prize. That the same music sits comfortably in a concert hall and under a television drama, without being altered much for either, is the clearest available description of what it is.