Traveling Songs is a transmedia work about migration and travel that reflects the modern minstrel nature of VisionIntoArt. Traveling Songs is a rich patchwork of emotions and experiences from our community and far away lands expressed through new virtual environments and sounds.

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Paola Prestini, composer
Italian born composer PAOLA PRESTINI is the director and co-founder of the award winning interdisciplinary performing collective VisionIntoArt (VIA). VIA has performed in theaters, museums, and clubs all over the world and specializes in creating collaborations that stem from new music. Paola Prestini’s music takes the listener on a journey through different life experiences, creating an aural and visual map of the different countries and cultures that have inspired her. These travels sonically reflect the impact that collective identities, cultures and values have when they meet and dissolve in a person whose artistic roots are the collective sum of many parts. This culminates in a romantic vision told in the form of calls to prayers, spirituals, narrations, and electronic resonances that come together with visuals to create Prestini’s unique voice. Her works and arrangements have been commissioned by WNYC, Carnegie Hall, Concert Artist Guild, the Kronos Quartet, and VisionIntoArt, and have been performed by groups such as the Kronos Quartet, the Tucson Symphony, the Haydn Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Aleph Ensemble, and the Prism Quartet in venues such as Zankel Hall, Weill Hall, the Whitney Live series, BAM Café, Symphony Space, Joe’s Pub, Performance Space 122, the Krannert Center, and Royce Hall/UCLA. She has participated in international performances and festivals such as EtnaFest in Sicily, Concerti Apertivi in Milan, and the new music festival BEMUS in Serbia, and has been involved in composition residencies at UCLA, Dicksinson College and North Carolina School for the Arts. Other activities include curating at the Stone (Zorn’s avant-garde new music space) and articles for publications such as Arcana III: Musicians on Music and New Music Box. Her music is released on Tzadik records. She has been the recipient of numerous awards from organizations such as the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, the American Society for Composers and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Music Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Ms. Prestini is a passionate advocate for arts education and has written curricula for institutions such as the New York Philharmonic and New York City Opera, among others. She is a teacher with the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic, and is the Associate Director of Making Score, and the New York Youth Symphony. She also directs an initiative at Brandeis High School in NYC, bringing music to disadvantaged youth.

Ms. Prestini’s music has been included in ASCAP’s Thru the Walls series at the Cutting Room in NYC, and at St. Marks Danspace. She has written for film and dance extensively, and her film collaborations have made the New York Times Critic’s pick and have won first prize and made official selection at the Sundance Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival, among others. She most recently scored the short film “Without” for the Kronos Quartet. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School and has studied with Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Ms. Prestini lives with her husband, Jeffrey Zeigler, and her son Tommaso, in New York City and San Francisco.

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Milica Paranosic, Composer
A native of Belgrade, Serbia, one of music critic’s Kyle Gann’s “Favorite Women Composers of All Time”, award-winning Milica Paranosic lives in New York and is active as a composer, sound designer, conceptual artist, multimedia artist, music educator and producer. Her compositions include concept pieces, mixed media as well as music for dance, stage, and film. She uses human voices (vocal and spoken, live and recorded) found objects, technological tools, and musical instruments as her musical carriers giving them “equal rights”. She writes music, concepts, sounds, theatrical scripts, and short stories.

Classically trained – she prefers to refer to herself as classically challenged – her influences are just as much the ones from the street and pop culture as the ones of her formal education. Milica’s music and performances have provoked audiences of widely different profiles - form opera goers to soccer fans rarely leaving them indifferent – she has been called: …free-wheeling performance-art-type cat (Kyle Gann) ...a painter a music Jackson Pollack (SEAMUS Eric Somers) ... edgily comical (Klaus Klingbeil Der Lausitzer Rundschau Germany) and her music …amazing….astonishing… (Jack Anderson New York Times) ...like liquor filled pralinés. … (Von Martina Helmig Morgenpost Germany). As an artist as well as an educator and producer Milica strives to create new worlds in which contrasting concepts vividly coexist in unique textures.

She is a multimedia director and resident composer of VisionIntoArt and her music has been performed by such ensembles as Buglisi Dance Theater, The New Juilliard Ensemble, The Juilliard Dance Department, The New York Choreographic Institute, VisionIntoArt, D’Divaz and The Reflex Ensemble among others. She has performed at venues such as: BAM Café, Whitney Live, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Joyce Theater, Alice Tully Hall, Joe’s Pub, PS 122, The Stone, Galapagos, Jugoslovensko Dramsko Pozoriste in Belgrade - Serbia Goethe Institute in Salvador – Bahia, Smith Recital Hall San Diego – CA and she has given lectures and master classes at universities world-wide. Her film scores have been a part of the official Tribeca film festival selection.

Milica’s work has been supported by Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, 60x60, Vox Novus, the Soros foundation, Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg, and FK Partizan – Belgrade. Her music has been released on Bridge Electroshock Records and The New Sound record labels. Awards and honors include: ASCAP plus award, John Erskine Prize, Composer Assistance Program, Meet the Composer Grant (multiple times), Whitaker New Music Reading Sessions, October Award of the City of Belgrade, Stevan Hristic Award, and the UKS annual award. Milica holds a Bachelor’s degree in composition from Belgrade Music University and a Master’s degree in composition from The Juilliard School where she has been on the faculty since 1995 teaching music technology. Milica is the manager of the Music Technology Center, Associate Director of the Mentoring Program at The Juilliard School, and co-founder and producer of Beyond The Machine, a Festival of Electronic and Interactive Music.

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Pablo Rieppi, composer
Pablo Rieppi has written music for many different genres including the soundtrack of Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, which won numerous prizes at several film festivals. His percussion and electronics piece “Rage and Peace” was performed by the New York University Percussion Ensemble and at The Aspen Music Festival. Pablo has arranged several famous works such as Oye Como Va, Segne, Malaguena and Alice, and composed the original composition KulaN for VisionIntoArt. VIA performed all of these compositions on tour in Italy and Serbia, as well as in New York City at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Joe’s Pub and on WNYC radio.

A native of Uruguay, Pablo is a highly sought-after musician in New York City, where he performs a wide range of music with some of the world’s leading artists.The Houston Chronicle wrote, “PABLO RIEPPI sparked a lot of buzz at intermission with his ability…he was rock solid no matter what position he had to contort into to play.”  Pablo can be seen performing regularly with The New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and The American Symphony Orchestra. Pablo performs with many other classical, new music, pop and world music groups including Gotham Symphony Orchestra (principal), Speculum Musicae, The Gotham Chamber Opera, The New York New Music Ensemble, DaCapo Chamber Players, Ensemble 21, and the Perspectives Ensemble (principal). He is a member of the Grammy-nominated Absolute Ensemble, the internationally acclaimed multimedia collective VisionIntoArt (percussionist, music director & composer), The New York Percussion Quartet, Columbia Sinfonietta, Jon Colman, Naked Ramp Love, Dagmar and Weimarband, and performs around the world in renowned concert halls with numerous ensembles. 

Pablo has performed or collaborated with some of the world’s greatest maestros such as Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, David Robertson, Loren Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Riccardo Muti and Kurt Mazur, as well as with such world, jazz, rock and R&B luminaries as Joe Zawinul, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Paquito D’Rivera, Roger Daltrey, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Mike Keneally and Dhafer Youssef. Pablo is a percussion instructor at Columbia University and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, where he teaches privately and an orchestral performance class. He has a Masters Degree and Professional Studies Certificate from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelors degree from George Mason University. His new book Snare Drum Technique: Essential Basics for Daily Practice is now available through Bachovic Publications.