VICTORIA POLEVA (b. 1962) was born in a family of musicians – her grandfather was a renowned singer and her father was a composer.  She studied composition in the studio of Ivan Karabyts (1984-1989), and Levko Kolodub (1990-1995) at Kyiv Conservatory, where she also taught composition in 1990-2005. In her early works, including the ballet Gagaku, Transforma for symphony orchestra, Anthem for chamber orchestra and others, Polevá adopted avant-garde and polystylistic aesthetics. Since the late 1990s, she became increasingly drawn to spiritual themes and simplicity, and developed a style identified by European critics as “sacred minimalism.” 

Polevá composes orchestral, choral, vocal, and chamber music, and frequently uses sacred texts.

Polevá’s works have bee commissioned by leading international performers of contemporary music, including Gidon Kremer (in 2005 for an international project Sempre Primavera and in 2010 for an international project The Art of Instrumentation) and Kronos Quartet (Walking on Waters, 2013). 

She was composer-in-residence at the Menhir Chamber Music Festival (Switzerland) in 2006, and at the XXX Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival (Austria) in 2011, at the Festival of Contemporary Music Darwin Vargas (Chile) in 2013 and other international festivals. In 2009, her Ode to Joy (for soloists, mixed choir, and symphony orchestra) was performed during an international concert commemorating of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Polevá's works have been performed at the Beethovenfest Bonn, Chamber Music Connects the World (Kronberg, Germany), the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Köln Philharmonie, the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris, the Rudolfinum-Dvorak Hall in Prague, the Yuri Bashmet Festival in Minsk, the Valery Gergiev Easter Festival in Moscow, the Auditorio Nacional de España in Madrid, the George Weston Recital Hall in Toronto, the Italian Academy in New York City, the Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco, the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the Seoul Art Center, the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, and at festivals of new music in Ukraine, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, United Arab Emirates, Peru and Chile.