Olga Amelkina-Vera grew up in Belarus and moved to the United States in 1997. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree Summa Cum Laude from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, and her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Guitar Performance from the University of North Texas with a related field in Music History.
Olga was a prizewinner in the Eastfield Collegiate Guitar competition and a finalist in the University of Texas at Dallas International Guitar Competition.  An active performer and award-winning composer of works with guitar, she has received commissions for solo guitar and guitar ensemble music, as well as for compositions for guitar with other instruments and voice. In 2013, Olga won first prize in the Japan Guitar Ensemble Composition Competition for her guitar quartet Cattywampus Rompus, and played a solo recital and gave an interview to Gendai Guitar during her trip to Tokyo. She was the first prize winner of the Austin Classical Guitar Society Composition Competition in 2009 and 2012 for her guitar quartets Ninochka and Nebulae.  Her compositions are published by Productions d’Oz, including two works selected for the Frank Koonce Series.  In 2010, Olga became a founding member of Presti, the first professional all-women guitar ensemble in the United States, active until 2014. As a member of Presti, Olga recorded a CD which featured several of her original compositions and arrangements. She maintains a busy concert and masterclass schedule with Kithara Duo.
Olga strives to expand the guitar repertoire through arrangements and new compositions. Her interest in early music has led her to study and arrange, for guitar, the lyra viol music of seventeenth-century England. Olga’s scholarly articles have been published in Soundboard. Her other interests include fine arts, literature, and foreign languages.
She is currently working on her Master’s degree in Composition at Southern Methodist University, where she is also an adjunct faculty member in the music theory department. She is faculty at Collin College in Plano, TX, where she teaches guitar, composition, music theory, and music history.
Web: http://kitharaduo.com/bios/olga-amelkina/ (2015)