Ursula Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923, where she began her musical education at an early age. Persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish descent, her family left Berlin and emigrated to Ecuador in 1939. That same year, Urusla was offered a scholarship by the Mannes School of Music and moved to New York. She studied composition with Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe and finally with his pupil Ralph Shapey, who had a particularly large influence on her compositional style. Her works are characterized by complex, often juxtaposed rhythms.