Anna Dembska came to composing through her work in puppet-theater and as a soprano and improvisor. Her music integrates disparate musical passions—poyphonic vocal music, singing traditions from Macedonia to Mongolia, improvisation and extended use of the voice, experimental opera and human sound as a dramatic force. She has produced and performed her original theater works, operas, and music since 1976—from "Enough is Enough," a puppet opera, at the Bread and Puppet Circus, to "Coyote" at The Bang-on-a-Can Festival at Lincoln Center. Her "Kore Chant" has been performed by choruses all over the world. She recently received a Commissioning Music/USA Meet The Composer/National Endowment for the Arts grant to compose a new opera, tentatively titled "The Singing Bridge," with libretto by poet Beatrix Gates, to be premiered at the Stonington Opera House in Stonington, Maine in 2005. She has also received grants from the Puffin Foundation, The Open Meadows Patsylu Fund, and donations from over 50 individuals to complete her chamber opera, "To Music." She created the role of Mary Burton in Leroy Jenkins’ "The Negros Burial Ground" at The Kitchen, composed the choral music for Lee Nagrin’s "The Valley of Iao" at La Mama Theater, and toured with Ralph Lee’s Mettawee River Company. As a music educator, she has opened the ears of people seldom exposed to contemporary concert music. Her books, "You’ve Got Rhythm: Read Music Better by Feeling the Beat" (Flying Leap Music, 2002), and "Piano, Body and Soul" (pre-publication version available in 2003), both co-authored with pianist Joan Harkness, are bringing new repertoire, improvisation techniques, and sophisticated music skills to amateur and beginning musicians. In Downeast Maine, where she spends several months every year, she’s involved in grassroots new-music-making, with her innovative teaching of composition through singing, and her vocal ensemble, Singin’ Local, in which she’s gathered some of the best local musician/educators to perform her music, as well as other contemporary and little-heard repertoire. In July, 2002 she conducted the community-based Schoodic Arts Summer Chorus in the premiere of her cantata, "The Bear," at the Schoodic Arts Festival in Winter Harbor, Maine.