About

Dear Friends & Fellow Music Lovers

My name is Jeff Kryka, I’m a composer and UCLA alum (MA 2008, PhD 2011) and currently serving on the UCLA School of Music Alumni Board. I had the great pleasure of working alongside Mark Carlson at UCLA and attending MANY Pacific Serenades concerts, as well as writing a commission for the organization in 2009. I’ve always admired Mark’s unwavering dedication to the promotion of new music through his many years with Pacific Serenades. His mission, along with that of the organization, to present new music as an integral part of our living musical tradition resonates deeply with me.

I am excited to announce, with Mark’s blessing, that we have relaunched Pacific Serenades, beginning with our inaugural concert in the fall of 2024. Our guiding vision is to continue the organization’s legacy of performing newly commissioned works alongside established chamber music repertoire. I look forward to this new chapter with our audiences and bringing beautiful music to life together.

— Jeff Kryka,
President of Pacific Serenades

A Message from Mark Carlson About Pacific Serenades

When I was finishing up as a grad student in composition at UCLA in the early 80s—and already a professional flutist—I recognized that many composers in Los Angeles were writing a very different kind of music than those on the upper East Coast, which everyone assumed then was the center of the country’s classical music world. I also realized that the repertoire of classical music is virtually made up entirely of pieces that were written for specific occasions. Out of this came the idea for Pacific Serenades.

Why not create a platform for which local composers would be given the opportunity to write the kind of music they wanted to write—music in which melody and tonality still played a major role, music freely created out of any number of styles and influences? All the better if it were presented in the context of standard chamber music repertoire played by wonderful local musicians!

And that’s what Pacific Serenades did from its first concert in 1982 through its last in 2016, during which time 113 new works were commissioned and premiered.

I am thrilled and honored to pass the torch of Pacific Serenades to my friend and colleague Jeff Kryka so its mission can continue to live on!

— Mark Carlson
Founder of Pacific Serenades

Our Team

Mark Carlson

Honorary Emeritus Chair

Composer Mark Carlson’s lyrical and distinctive music has captivated audiences across North America and Europe. With around 100 works spanning chamber, choral, and orchestral music, he also founded and directed the chamber music series Pacific Serenades. A former UCLA professor, he taught for 28 years and remains active as a private teacher. Now retired from performing, he was also a dedicated flutist.

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Jeff Kryka

President

Los Angeles-based composer, orchestrator, and conductor Jeff Kryka has worked on major films, TV series, and video games. Awarded by ASCAP, TCM, and the Henry Mancini Foundation, his credits include The Imagineering Story, Superpowered: The DC Story, and orchestrations for Inside Out 2, The Batman, Marvel’s Spider-Man trilogy, the Jurassic World trilogy, Rogue One, among many more. He holds degrees from UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught at UCLA and the Colburn Conservatory.

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Victoria Sun

Chief Operating Officer

Chinese American pianist Victoria Sun made her concerto debut at age nine with the Qingdao Opera Symphony Orchestra. She has since performed with orchestras including the Orchestra Collective of Orange County and the San Francisco International Music Symphony, and recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Colburn’s Zipper Hall, and Acqui Terme in Italy. She is a top prizewinner in competitions such as CAPMT OC, GOCAA San Francisco, and the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition. Victoria currently studies with Dr. Myong-Joo Lee.

Carlos Durán

Rotating Secretary

Carlos Durán (b.1992) is a composer and guitarist from Colombia who writes for both concert and media. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, The Royal Danish Academy, and by the most important Colombian ensembles such as Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia. A recent finalist of Krakow FMF Young Talent Award and a Sundance Film Music Lab alumnus, His work includes the Amazon Prime Original Series Filthy Envy, additional music for National Geographic Channel shows The 90’s and the Emmy nominated series Arrepentidos and the India Catalina Award winner Natalia: Crimen y Castigo. Durán is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition for Visual Media at The Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA.

Previous Rotating Secretaries

Sergey Nesterov

Rotating Secretary

Composer, orchestrator, and songwriter Sergey Nesterov (Sergey Neiss) is recognized in concert and media music. He is a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and is a Boris Tchaikovsky Fund prize winner. Now studying composition at UCLA, he has collaborated with top ensembles and artists with performances at Carnegie Hall, Zaryadye Hall, and the Damascus Opera House.