Since 1998 Krausas has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events in Los Angeles that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics, and video. Her chamber opera The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was premiered at the New York Opera’s VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold-out audiences. Other productions were by Goat Hall Productions in San Francisco, Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers Festival, and New Fangled Opera in New Orleans.

Her chamber orchestra work Spirals was premiered at the Darmstadt Music Festival  (1996) and had a subsequent performance by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The Penderecki String Quartet gave the U.S. premiere of midaregami, her work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano at REDCAT in Los Angeles and was performed by the Opium Quartet at the Céret Music Festival. Language of the Birds, a commission for the 25th anniversary of the San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet, using text by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was premiered in 2011 in San Francisco and released on CD by Foghorn Classics. Analemma for chamber orchestra was an official selection of the U.S. for the 2012 World Music Days in Belgium.

Recent premières have included her solo piano pieces UN-intermezzi, performed and recorded by pianist Aron Kallay with subsequent performances by Steven Vanhauwaert at the Amigos De Música de São Lourenço in Almancil Portugal, a new work for harpsichord solo l’ombre du luth (shadow of the lute) for Gloria Cheng for Piano Spheres, and a song cycle The Alchemist’s Suite for bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood.

Of Lithuanian heritage, she was born in Australia and raised in Canada. Krausas has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at USC. She is currently a Professor in the Composition Department and the Director of Theory at the Thornton School of Music, on the advisory council of Jacaranda Music, an associate artist with The Industry, and a pre-concert lecturer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

She has written the following note about sillages:

In French sillage literally means wake or trail. In perfumery it’s the degree to which a perfume’s fragrance lingers in the air when worn. When I first heard the term I knew I would use it for the title of a piece. Then David Moore asked me to write a work for double bass quartet and I started with that as the title. To combine two seemingly disparate ideas – large double basses and the delicate waft of a scent – I asked Canadian writer André Alexis to write a poem that did just that. His text is the poetic inspiration for this work for the four amazing bassists of the LA Phil: David Moore, Christopher Hanulik, Oscar Meza, and Peter Rofé.

Sillages

A roar carves into the land
rumbling something floral.

Under last year’s straw
the civet comes to life

While plows with fragrant wrists
stutter and dig the crumbling fields.

Lumbering beasts with delicate minds,
They leave quartz and citrus, almonds and rust.

– André Alexis