Vykintas Baltakas
Born in Vilnius in 1972, Vykintas Baltakas already caught attention as a musician and leader of two vocal ensembles, as well as a competition award winner, before studying composition with Wolfgang Rihm and conducting with Andreas Weiss in Karlsruhe from 1993 to 1997. Institutions that have commissioned works by Baltakas include the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Biennale, the Wiener Festwochen/Klangforum Wien, the Ensemble Modern and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/musica viva.
Vykintas Baltakas has in recent years conducted renowned orchestras such as the RSO and DSO Berlin, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra as well as ensembles including Ensemble Resonanz, the Ensemble Modern and Scharoun Ensemble. In 2009 he founded the Lithuanian Ensemble Network (LEN) of which he is the driving force. Vykintas Baltakas’ works have been awarded with prizes such as the International Claudio Abbado Composition Prize (2003) and the Siemens Advancement Award (2007). CD recordings of his compositions were recently made by the Ensemble musikFabrik Cologne and the Ensemble Modern. Currently, Baltakas is professor for composition at the conservatories in Maastricht and Brussels. From September 2016 he will lead the master program for performance of contemporary music at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Justė Janulytė
Justė Janulytė (b. 1982) has studied piano, choral conducting and music theory at the M. K. Ciurlionis School of Art, and composition with Prof. Bronius Kutavicius. In 2004 she earned a Bachelor Degree from the Lithuanian Academy of Music, where she studied composition with Osvaldas Balakauskas and music theory with associate Grazina Daunoraviciene. In 2004 she was awarded the prize for the best chamber work (white music for 15 strings) at the composers’ competition organized by the Lithuanian Composers’ Union.
The works of Justė Janulytė claim to build a “monochrome music” collection: they explore time-space perception through large-scale multilayered textures and extremely gradual metamorphoses. Justė Janulytė’s catalogue, balancing between the aesthetics of minimalism, spectralism and acoustic electronica, has become one of the most fascinating focal points in the contemporary musical world.
Universal Music Publishing Classical
Kristupas Bubnelis
Kristupas Bubnelis (b. 1995) is a young Lithuanian composer. Having tried his hand at various styles and genres, the artist recently combines the devices of post-spectralism and post-structuralism, the improvisational and experimental sound generation processes. He has composed for symphony and chamber orchestras, ensembles, and solo instruments. His works have been performed in Austria, Denmark, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Germany.
In 2020, the composer graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in London and was awarded the prestigious DipRAM Diploma for his outstanding portfolio of composition. In 2019, he received a Bachelor’s degree from the same institution, and was awarded the G. V. Turner-Cooke Composition Award, in 2017, as well as the Arthur Hinton Memorial Prize. In 2016, his piece Hammers Without Piano won the first prize in the competition of new works for solo piano, organized by the Lithuanian Composers’ Union.
Veronika Krausas
Composer Veronika Krausas was born in Australia of Lithuanian heritage, raised in Canada, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Commissions and performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, The Industry, New York City Opera, Calgary Opera, Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Detroit Symphony, Ensemble musikFabrik at the Darmstadt Music Festival, Chicago Architecture Biennial (2016), Piano Spheres, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Esprit Orchestra, Fort Worth Opera, Jacaranda Music, Motion Music, San Francisco Choral Artists, and the Penderecki String Quartet. She is currently on faculty at the Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles.
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė
The works of composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, winner of the Lithuanian National Prize for Arts and Culture, have been lauded as “breathtaking…profoundly moving” by San Francisco Classical Voice, while The Wire praises her for “complex structures of perception and rich textures of experience” and “stimulating music that bristles with energy and tension.” Her music revolves around the subject of beauty, which she calls both a guiding principle and an aesthetic measure for sonic quality. Described by WQXR as a “textural magician”, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė is a New York-based Lithuanian composer whose works explore the tensions and longings of identity and place. She creates sonic environments where musical gestures emerge and disappear within transparencies and densities of sound layers. It’s music that slides on the very blades of emotions.
Martinaitytė’s music has been performed throughout Europe, The USA and Asia by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Bruckner Orchester Linz (Austria), Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Canada), The Smith Quartet (UK), ERGO Ensemble (Canada), TILT Brass (USA), Yarn/Wire (USA), VOLTI, San Francisco, The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, The Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Synaesthesis Ensemble and others.
Cladi II
Vykintas Baltakas
Cladi (plural, singular cladus, from ancient Greek: κλάδος, klados, “branch”): in botany, Branches that together form the cladom. Cladus also denotes a group in nature which consists of a common ancestor and all of his direct descendants.
Cladi II is part of a larger cycle, which also includes Cladi I (2020) for accordion solo, Cladi III (2021) for ensemble and electronics, and Cladi IV for accordion solo. These compositions are interconnected musically and can be performed either together or independently.
The title of this work describes the structure and work process. The foundation of the first piece, Cladi I for accordion solo, is a simple melodic line in the high register based on experiments with different algorithms. I aimed to make only basic decisions regarding register, character, pitch, amplitude, etc., leaving other details to chance. The goal was to create a “found object” that would inspire creativity in the next step. I then reacted freely and intuitively, seeking connections, networks, clarifications, and adding new layers or removing them.
The development process of the cycle formed a chain: the material from Cladi I was expanded in Cladi II, which inspired Cladi III, and Cladi IV extended the dominating ideas of Cladi III.
It reminded me of the growth of branches–hence the title.
Vykintas Baltakas
Sleeping Patterns
Justė Janulytė
Cyclically floating between different phases of density and intensity, minor and major, slowing or accelerating waves, the piece is woven from hypnotically repetitive patterns of 7 slightly different tempos which intertwine through 16 lines of the ensemble conceived as a complex human body with regular breathing, heart beating, eye movements, blood flow etc., all happening at the same time but not synchronised. The title Sleeping Patterns refers to the brain wave oscillations through different sleep stages as well as to Morton Feldman’s question “Why Patterns?”
Justė Janulytė
…ad infinitum…
Kristupas Bubnelis
This work further explores the possibilities of the natural overtone series alongside the phenomenon of macro and micro time. …ad infinitum… stems from my earlier orchestral composition Thickening Light, although, in the former, the four individual players of the quartet allowed me to explore even more intricate sonic relationships between the instruments. Various forces and energies come into play here: attraction, repulsion, saturation, and others. Finished just before the pandemic hit, this composition somewhat dwells on the idea of a cyclical movement (therefore, the title), which manifests through formally recurring musical materials.
Kristupas Bubnelis
analemma
Veronika Krausas
An analemma is a visual representation of the equation of time. It is a term from astronomy that describes the figure created by the position of the sun at the same time every day during the earth’s yearly rotation. This work is about the same musical ideas seen from different angles or in differing situations. Just as the sun’s analemma results from slightly different positions in the sky, this work presents 3 musical ideas in differing lengths, situations or combinations.
This commission was to take place on a concert of works by Canadian and Lithuanian composers that dealt with the changing seasons from summer to fall. When ERGO approached me they didn’t realized that I was not only Canadian but my family was also of Lithuanian descent. I have always found sutartinė (the Lithuanian folk bi-modal singing style) fascinating and intense. I have incorporated an invented bi-modal motive (based on the opening motive at the beginning of the work) that eventually transforms into the Lithuanian lullaby that I heard nightly as a child.
The analemma created by our sun is a lopsided figure 8 or infinity symbol. Its nature is that of slight change over time, ultimately returning to trace the same pattern again. Such is the nature of life, we are born, we live, we die, but what an exciting path that is! I was very lucky to have studied with the Canadian composer Harry Freedman for my final undergraduate year at the University of Toronto. He was truly one of the most wonderful and inspiring men! I would like to dedicate this work to him. May his inspirational light in the sky continue to create its own perpetual analemma for us all.
Commissioned by ERGO Ensemble with a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Premiered at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto in 2006, winner of the Indiana State University’s New Music Festival in 2013, and an official US Selected work for the 2012 World Music Days in Belgium.
Veronika Krausas
Solastalgia
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė
Solastalgia has its origins in the concepts of “solace” and “desolation”. The meaning of solace is connected to the alleviation of distress or to the provision of comfort or consolation in the face of distressing events. Desolation is related to abandonment and loneliness. The suffix -algia has connotations of pain or suffering. Hence, solastalgia is a form of “homesickness” like that experienced with traditionally defined nostalgia, except that the victim has not left their home or home environment. Solastalgia, simply put, is “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”. This term is related to the anguish caused by environmental changes and global warming. It acquired some new meanings throughout the time of the global pandemic where we all have been experiencing a lack of solace and longing for life itself as we’ve known it. The concept of nostalgia is one of the essential components that has been threaded through my work and solastalgia conveys yet another gradation, another layer of it.”
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė
USC Thornton Edge, founded in 1976 by Robert Wojciak, has been under the direction of Donald Crockett since 1984. Comprised of some of the finest student musicians in the Thornton School, the ensemble presents a series of four concerts annually on the USC campus. Edge has also been part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series and Noon to Midnight, the New Music LA festival, and is a recipient of the Outstanding Ensemble Award given by LA Weekly in 2006. On tour, Edge has presented concerts at the Paris and Lyon Conservatories, the Berlin 750 Jahre Festival, as well as the 2014 Carlsbad Music Festival, and has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in Stephen Scott’s Concerto for Bowed Piano and Orchestra. Thornton Edge has two commercial recordings: a set of new guitar concertos by Dusan Bogdanovich, Brian Head, Simone Iannarelli, Steven Gates, and Donald Crockett, performed by Thornton faculty artists and released on the Doberman/Yppan label in 2015; and a collection of ensemble works by Frederick Lesemann, Songs and Concertinos, released on the Centaur label in 2021.
