Dainuoju Dainą:An Opera Project in Vilnius

Julius on the Curonian Spit

2011-07-21T10:00:00.017-04:00

Adelina's aria from Julius, "O, Viešpatie," will be performed next week in a concert on Thursday, July 28 at the Thomas Mann Memorial Museum in Nida. For those of you who may not know, Nida is a resort town on the Curonian Spit, one of the most beautiful places in Lithuania and a perfect setting for performances.

The concert, titled "NOA Portraits," will showcase arias, duets, and excerpts from operas featured in previous NOA (New Opera Action) Festivals and is part of Operomanija's summer concert series, "Operomanų Vasaros Koncertai." More details and the full schedule can be found on the series facebook event page, but here are the basic details of this concert:

NOA Portraits
July 28, 2011 at 7:00pm
Thomas Mann Memorial Museum
Skruzdynės g. 17, Nida
Admission is free

The concert will also feature music by Albertas Navickas, Rūta Vitkauskaitė, Sigitas Mickis, Jonas Sakalauskas, Lina Lapelytė, Rita Mačiliūnaitė, and Mykolas Natalevičius. I hope you can attend!

Screening in Houston

2011-04-02T17:56:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking of an appropriate way to mark the one-year (well, a little over one year) anniversary of the premiere of Julius, so for those of you in the Houston area, I'd like to invite you to a free public screening of the opera on April 10th!

The video, which was filmed live with multiple camera angles, is of the premiere performance and includes English subtitles. For those of you interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes processes that went into the creation and production of the opera, I will be giving a 30-minute talk before the screening. Here are the details:

Sunday, April 10 @ 1:00-3:00pm

(screening will begin at 1:30 after my talk)
Room 1133, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University

In the meantime, please visit the Julius website (www.JuliusTheOpera.com) to see some production photos. And remember that if you missed the chance to be involved in the premiere last year, the producers, artists, and I are actively pursuing further Julius performances and projects that could always use extra support.

I hope to see some of you in Houston on April 10th!

Well, How Did It Go?

2010-03-30T23:41:00.035-04:00

I know, I know. It’s been about a week since I left you hanging at the most exciting time.

How did it go? Maybe you’re asking the wrong person. My answer is based on so much more than that of any other member of the audience or cast. I can’t even begin to describe what I felt, but besides the obvious personal significance the premiere held for my family and me, I would say it was more successful than I had ever hoped. So successful, in fact, that it took me until now to get any photos to prove it. All production photos were taken by Jurgis Sakalauskas.

After over a month of daily rehearsals and two full dress rehearsals the day before and of the performance, everyone was more than ready. Minutes before the performance, everyone on the Julius team held hands and paused to reflect on all the hard work leading to this moment. A lot of people were there. All of Julius' children were there. Even the former president of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus (himself once a DP), complete with his wife and two bodyguards, was there (we had to warn his people of the two gunshots in Act II). After one last shout of camaraderie, everyone took their places and the opera began.

The music opened quietly and slowly as all the DPs, walking past the giant crossroads signpost which anchored the staging throughout the entire opera, gradually came out on stage. After the young Julius, or Juliukas (sung by Deividas Kairys), gave a few shepherd calls, the chorus entered with its train-influenced a cappella section (which all of you have probably heard already) and the story was on its way.

Act I highlighted Julius and his family’s experience in a foreign worker’s camp in Brandenburg just before the end of WWII. There was a bombing. All the men were drinking homemade liquor. The children were playing with a grenade they found. German soldiers marched through the camp. A doctor tried to amputate Julius’ leg.

These scenes (and all scenes in the opera) were typical of the time, and, with only a few exceptions, were based on real-life events from my grandfather’s life as a DP. Between scenes, Juliukas sporadically reappeared to comment on the plot and provide insight into the psychology of the DPs. Two of the DPs, played by a couple of extremely talented dancers (Ieva Svetickaitė and Daniil Kolmin), provided commentary of their own through Marija's choreography.

Having learned that once again they were under Soviet control in post-war East Germany, the DPs made their way to the border between Soviet and British occupation zones to wait for their chance to escape. This chance came at the end of Act I, when Julius bribed three Soviet soldiers (only two soldiers in the real-life version of the story) with bottles of his homemade liquor, after which the soldiers got so drunk that the rest of the DPs were able to sneak past.

Act II, set in Camp Wehnen in Oldenburg, was a little different. Adelina opened the act with an aria describing the torment of stagnation and the lack of free will. Even when Julius showed up with a loaf of black rye bread, the smell of which had him singing an aria filled with nostalgia for home and the hope to someday return, Adelina still knew better the reality of the family’s situation.

During a lively evening of dancing and as this tension between running further and returning home boiled over among all DPs, a young man in the camp shot his girlfriend and then himself. Crippled by their desperation and the shock of such a tragedy, the DPs found a scapegoat quickly: the Jušinskas family. Julius and Adelina were subsequently interrogated by a couple of absurdly malicious agents- the last straw for Adelina.

After a bitter fight between the two main characters in which Adelina insisted they leave the camp, Julius was finally convinced to acquiesce to her demands upon the arrival of a letter sponsorship from “Uncle Joe.” As Julius sang his final aria about the feeling of defeat and pain of letting go, the DPs exited through what must have been a 30- or 40-foot door at the back of the stage. Julius and his family soon followed, and the music faded out.

The audience gave a standing ovation, flowers were heaped on Marija, Ričardas, Daiva, Tomas, Onutė, Deividas, Stasė (the choirmaster), me, and the other performers, and everyone celebrated the success till the early morning hours.

Sure, there were minor things that didn't exactly go according to plan, but only I and the performers knew about them (except for the cell phone that went off at one of the quietest moments of the opera.... pretty sure everyone knew about that). Most everything else was too good to be true. The soloists let go completely, the dancers danced beautifully, the chorus was absolutely solid (as usual!), and the orchestra played with a great deal of both energy and expressiveness. For what more could anyone have asked?

So, what’s next? Now that’s an easy question. I didn’t really notice, but someone told me the 537-seat theater was almost full. Still, that amount is hardly a fraction of the number of people and families impacted by this surprisingly little known period of history. People from around the world (at least the parts of the world within relatively easy financial reach of Vilnius) came to see the premiere, but so many just couldn’t.

What’s next is a second performance. And a third. And several more after that. I’ve commented before on the intimacy of the music community in Lithuania, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most, if not all, the performers in Julius were friends even before rehearsals began. But no matter what their relationship was before, surely it was taken to an entirely new level after a solid month of daily rehearsals followed by a such a well-received premiere. Not only have the performers completely internalized the music, but now they are all part of the Julius team- a team eager to play together again and again and confront whatever new challenges might present themselves along the way.

That said, performances of this caliber need support. For the premiere, there was a good deal of support from both private donors as well as public entities, including the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, but more help is always needed. The premiere generated a lot of talk in Lithuania (there were TV segments, a radio interview, and several articles and ads in various newspapers), so there is no question that a large and interested audience exists for Julius. What my job will be in the coming months is to not only help secure new performances in both Lithuania and abroad (hopefully in the U.S. sometime in the future), but also make them actually possible through fund raising.

It’s been a long process since my first post back in the summer of 2008 and I really appreciate you sticking around thus far. Please stop by often for more production photos from the premiere as well as any other news that comes along. Talk to you soon!

Premiere in Less than 8 Hours!

2010-03-23T05:11:00.004-04:00

This will be brief, but I promised I would get back to you before the premiere. I can't believe I have a moment to write even this much.

The first dress rehearsal was yesterday (one more today before the premiere), and for the first time I got to see the production (almost) in its entirety. I can't tell you how exciting it is for almost two years of research, composing, collaboration, revision, and hard work in general to finally arrive at this culmination.

I can't wait to write my next post, when I'll give you all the exciting details. Until then, I'll leave you with a few images from rehearsals a couple of days ago to keep you in wild anticipation (hopefully).

Wish me and all 35-40 (somewhere around that number) performers luck!!!

Rehearsals, Media Coverage, and More!

2010-03-19T11:44:00.009-04:00

With less than a week till premiere night, one can imagine how busy things must be. They certainly are.

Often lasting until the building closes for the night (half of the time, we have to be kicked out by the building manager), rehearsals take place every day. When I first arrived at the beginning of this month, they consisted mostly of choir rehearsals and coachings with the soloists, but they have since expanded to include everyone involved in the production, including the orchestra and dancers. There have even been a few rehearsals with almost everyone together at the same time, which still only gives a small, distorted snapshot of what’s in store for next week.

I can’t say enough good things about the performers. Those who have been rehearsing the longest are members of the chorus, some of whom also sing small solo roles in the opera. In number, they are a little over half the size of Jauna Muzika (the choir which sang the excerpt last year at the Vox Juventutis competition), but with the amount of time they have spent with the music and the confidence with which they now sing, there is hardly any difference. Tomas (Julius) and Onutė (Adelina) are amazing! And I may have forgotten to mention the third soloist, Deividas Kairys, the ten year-old boy and absolutely professional musician who is singing the role of Juliukas, the child version of Julius who serves as a sort of narrator or commentator between scenes. Also amazing! ... Oh, and the dancers! The DANCERS!

Let me catch my breath…

…ok.

The music is sounding great, or, more humbly, at least everyone is singing and playing accurately what I wrote on the page. I’d like to think that the clarity of my instructions in the score has made this possible, but perhaps more important is Ričardas’ dedication to the music. He knows the score probably better than I do and through his conducting is certainly able to better communicate to the performers all the details therein. He may have a reserved personality, but his ease of control of the orchestra and rapport with (and, when needed, authority over) the musicians could be compared to that of the most successful conductors. I mentioned in my first post about him that I felt lucky he agreed to conduct Julius, but now I know how serious an understatement that was. He is working the hardest out of everyone to make the music as refined as possible, and, combined with the enthusiastic performers eager to get into the music, will have the audience’s ear from the very first bar.

But the music is only half of Julius. I mentioned in a my last post a bit about the scenographer, who, by the way, is crafting the perfect combination of costumes and set design, but I really need to draw your attention back to Marija, especially since the last time I really told you about her was when we had first met back in 2008. Just like Ričardas, Marija is no stranger to hard work. And as energetic as I thought she was as a librettist, nothing could have prepared me for the amount of dynamism, physicality, and sheer force she brings to her stage direction and choreography (that’s right, direction and choreography). All in Lithuanian, English, and Russian (depending on the performer), she is yelling and gesturing wildly at one moment, instantly capturing everyone’s strict attention, and less than a minute later she either is intimately explaining something to a performer or has everyone on the floor laughing. Her constant energy and frequent but seamless fluctuation between sternness and intimacy is exhausting for me to even write about. And most importantly, the results she gets are immediate and always precisely what is needed at any particular moment in the sequence of onstage events in Julius. If for some reason the audience's ears don’t like the music, then surely their eyes will savor the acting, dancing, and scenography.

In other news, Julius is in the news! In addition to a segment with video clips of rehearsals aired on national television, on Monday a press conference was held at the Arts Printing House. Everyone participating in the NOA Festival was able to say a few words about their opera(s) and, in some cases, field questions… all in Lithuanian, of course. To my nervous dismay, a barrage of questions was directed at me, but I did answer all of them using my best Lithuanian. I won’t tell you what “my best Lithuanian” really entails, but let’s just say that some of my answers were in response to questions that weren’t actually asked. Links to the Lithuanian (yes, but there are pictures, too!) online publications are here, here, and here.

Five more days!!!! Things are really heating up, but I’ll try to get back to you at least once before the big night. Now back to work!

The Scenographer

2010-03-10T09:05:00.008-05:00

Spell check says it’s not a word, but I say it is. Those who work in photography are called photographers, right?

I don’t see Daiva Samajauskaitė (left) very often. Rumor has it that lately she spends the day combing through the dense forests of used clothing at the many second-hand stores throughout Vilnius in search of the perfect costumes for all the soloists, chorus members, and dancers who will be on stage during the premiere of Julius. And I believe it, because when I do see Daiva, it’s usually when she slips into rehearsals with armloads of bags filled with clothing – derby hats, faded pants, old button-up shirts, suspenders, and plenty more. Other times she’s walking around with measuring tape and fabric samples, checking sizes and comparing colors. The photo to the right shows a post-rehearsal costume sampling for members of the chorus.

This is all costume work, but even before I arrived in Vilnius last week, Daiva had already finished with stage designs for Julius. Her designs are being realized right now and should be ready with plenty of time to spare. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I will tell you there are elements of the costumes and scenery that are historically accurate and others that come from Daiva’s imagination. Together, however, I think these elements will achieve the goals of depicting the time as well as communicating the underlying themes of the story.

Daiva graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Art and has since been working as a scenographer and costume designer in opera, theater, and film in both Lithuania and abroad. Her work was a part of last year’s NOA Festival in the opera Izadora, written by composer and singer Jonas Sakalauskas (to give you an idea of how intimate the music world in Lithuania is, consider these 3 things about Jonas: he is one of the founders of Operomanija [the NOA Festival organizers], he is married to Agnė Sabulytė [the soloist in Izadora], and sings alongside Tomas Pavilionis [the tenor singing the role of Julius] in the pop-vocal group El Fuego). Parentheses and brackets aside, these pictures are a sample of Daiva’s work from Izadora. Photos by Marius Macijauskas.

After working on Julius in relative solitude for the last few months, I can’t tell you what a treat it is to suddenly be in an environment filled with so many people this familiar with the music, story, characters, and so many other details, and who are working so hard (every day since I’ve been here, in fact) to make the premiere a success. It’s really taking a sizable army of artists and performers to bring this opera to life and I couldn’t be happier to be in the midst of it all.

The Venue

2010-03-04T03:43:00.019-05:00

Again, I’ve neglected to keep everyone up to speed on the many exciting pieces of news that keep coming in. Sorry! Now I have to deal with all the backed up stories and present them to you in a logical order. Let’s begin with the premiere venue: the Russian Drama Theater of Lithuania (Lietuvos Rusų Dramos Teatras).

Since its completion almost a hundred years ago, the theater has changed hands and functions several times. It opened as one of the most important cultural institutions in Vilnius and began hosting productions on a regular basis. Famously, and according to the plaque fixed to the building a few years ago, a conference on Lithuanian independence led by Jonas Basanavičius, one of the most important figures in the history of Lithuanian nationalism (and for whom the street outside the theater is named), took place here in 1917. In 1925 the famous Polish director and experimental theater impresario Juliusz Osterwa brought his company, Reduta, to its new home in Vilnius. In 1948 it became the home of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater, and in 1974, the year the LNOBT moved into its then brand new opera house, the Lithuanian National Drama Theater took up residence here (until it moved into its new theater in 1981). Finally, in 1986 it assumed its current title of the Russian Drama Theater.

Today it is used as both a theater and an opera house, and during my stay in Vilnius last year, I saw several brand new operas staged there, including Jonas Sakalauskas’ Donoras (The Donor), Vidmantas Bartulis’ Aušrinė (The Morning Star), and Algirdas Martinaitis’ Pasaulio Dangoraštis (The World Skyscraper).

The building itself was designed by architects Waclaw Michniewicz and Aleksander Parczewski and built from 1912-13. The design is inspired by a collection of styles, most notably both Baroque and Romanesque (one article mentioned the “Krakow-style” two-tiered, red tile roofs), and has undergone several renovations, including one in the last ten years. But before I reveal my utter lack of expertise in architecture, let me refer you to the pictures to the right and at the beginning of this post.

The main hall, in which Julius will be performed, is a large but intimate space that seats 537 people on an orchestra level and two tiers of balconies. The stage is big and there is even a pit for the orchestra!

On the night of the premiere of Julius, in the theater lobby will be a historical photography exhibit documenting the life of Lithuanians living in DP camps after WWII, courtesy of the Lithuanian World Community and the Lithuanian Institute of Emigration. This was a brilliant idea on the part of the organizers (more on them in a later post), as it is sure to place the audience even deeper into this often neglected period of history. And given that Act I ends with the family escaping the Russian zone of Germany into the British zone and Act II picks up about five years after the family settled in Camp Wehnen, the exhibit will provide effective continuity to the opera’s plot.

I’m anxious to see how the scenographer (set and costume designer) will use the space to recreate the era or present her own interpretation. In fact, she’ll be the topic of my next post. Stick around!

The Soloists

2010-01-29T01:58:00.007-05:00

I have some exciting news this week! The two principal soloists for Julius have been confirmed.

First is Adelina. The opera is named after my grandfather, but it could just as well have been named after my grandmother. Adelina may have been a soft-spoken person, but she was often the driving force behind many of the family’s biggest decisions, including the final decision to emigrate to the U.S. Similarly, in the opera she may not sing as often as Julius, but her role is crucial to the plot.

Singing the role of Adelina will be the rising young Lithuanian star soprano, Ona Kolobovaitė, who recently was catapulted to headlines across the country by winning “Triumfo arka,” the Lithuanian counterpart to American Idol or Britain’s Got Talent and focused almost exclusively on opera arias and numbers from musicals. A quick YouTube search will yield several results, including videos from the competition.

Just like the conductor, Kolobovaitė is only 25 years old, yet she will be adding this recent award to an already impressive list of significant and diverse accomplishments, including performances with the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater (Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Annina in Verdi’s La Traviata), roles in plays and musicals such as Terrence McNally’s Master Class (based on the life of Maria Callas) and Vilnius composer Gediminas Gelgotas’ Musicality of Life, and, on five separate occasions, 1st prize in the “Dainų dainelė” contest, one of the longest running vocal competitions in Lithuania. She even stars in the Lithuanian soap opera Nekviesta meilė (Uninvited Love).

As one would correctly assume, however, the most active and important character in the opera is Julius, and boasting an equally impressive list of accolades is Tomas Pavilionis, the tenor who will sing the role. This 26 year-old from Kaunas made his debut at the Chicago Lithuanian Opera in 2005 and has since gone on to perform in several operas, concerts, and other projects in Lithuania.

Pavilionis’ roles have included Gherardo in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin, Lyonel in Flotow’s Martha, as well as such important roles as Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata and Buratinas in Jurgis Gaižauskas’ Buratinas. Currently (and in addition to playing the role of Julius, of course) he is preparing to sing the roles of Almaviva in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi. His performance in Julius will be his second appearance at an NOA Festival.

But Pavilionis’ musical activity is not limited to opera. He has performed with the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra, was a prizewinner in the 2009 Stasys Baras Vocal Competition, and routinely performs with Jonas Sakalauskas and Eugenijus Chrebtovas in the pop vocal group El Fuego (similar to the multinational group Il Divo).

With soloists as accomplished as Pavilionis and Kolobovaitė and the artistry and talent they will bring to the roles of Julius and Adelina, I know Julius has just made a huge leap towards a successful premiere performance in March.

About the Conductor

2010-01-04T09:48:00.015-05:00

Many people have asked if I will be conducting the opera, and this is a good question, as many composers are also active conductors. The answer is no, but I am happy to elaborate that answer by telling you a little about who will be conducting. I never actually met him during my time in Vilnius, but I certainly remember his performances.

Ričardas Šumila is a young Lithuanian conductor originally from Kaunas, the interwar capital and the second largest city in Lithuania, and began studying music when he was five years old. By the time he was in the 8th grade, after gaining a solid foundation at the piano and in music theory and history, he was ready to begin conducting as well as composing. After studying conducting with Audronė Marcinkevičiutė and composition with Algirdas Brilius and Zita Bružaitė, in 2003 he graduated from the Juozas Naujalis High School for Music and entered the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater (LMTA) in Vilnius.

In Vilnius, he studied choral conducting with Povilas Gylys and orchestral conducting with the renowned Gintaras Rinkevičius, and it wasn't long before he won the LMTA's prestigious Senate Scholarship in recognition of his outstanding work and his commitment to concert performances.

In the spring of 2007, Šumila finished his undergraduate studies by winning 1st place in the Jaronimas Kačinskas Young Conductors' Competition and in the summer of that same year entered the master's program at the LMTA, continuing his studies with Rinkevičius.

The last couple of years have been especially busy for Šumila. Beginning at the end of 2008 with his work leading the rehearsals of the Pucinni opera Gianni Schicchi, he went on to conduct several opera and musical theater performances throughout 2009, from such well known works as Carmen and Sweeney Todd, to new works such as Rita Mačiliūnaitė's opera, Nebūti ar Nebūti, which he premiered at last year's NOA Festival.

He has been equally active in chamber and orchestral concerts around Vilnius. In the spring of 2009, he conducted both the LMTA Symphony Orchestra as well as the Lithuanian National Philharmonic, including the world premiere of Rūta Vitkauskaitė's Stabai. Also in 2009, he led a unique chamber ensemble for a project titled "Neįprastos istorijos" (Unusual Stories) that consisted of several performances of chamber music and which resulted in a permanent relationship with the ensemble under the new name "InSpe" (pictured below with Šumila).

At only 25 years old, Šumila already has a promising career as a conductor and I am incredibly excited that he so enthusiastically agreed to conduct the premiere of Julius.

Premiere Date Confirmed!

2009-11-24T19:22:00.019-05:00

Hi! It's been a while, but the good news is that my complete preoccupation with composing and preparing the score is what has prevented me from keeping this blog updated. I got back to the U.S. in August with most of the opera completed, but I quickly learned that there was (and is!) still much work to be done.

But now let's get to the really great news to which the title of this post refers: a premiere performance of Julius has been scheduled for March 23, 2010 in Vilnius! The opera will be the opening work of the third annual NOA (Naujosios Operos Akcija) Festival, which runs March 23-28 and is devoted entirely to new opera. I just sent the conductor and festival director the piano/vocal score, and soon I'll know who the soloists will be.

From now until March, I'll be working on the full score for Julius and doing what I can to promote and build support for the premiere performance. In fact, if anyone reading would like to help make the premiere as memorable as possible through a contribution, please don't hesitate to contact me at JuliusTheOpera@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for future posts about the soloists and performers, the conductor, the festival and its organizers, the performance venue, and the production itself. And if this is your first visit to this blog, don't forget to read my previous posts to learn more details about the creation of the opera and share in all the fun and interesting experiences I've had over the past year or so since the project's beginning.

This is an incredibly exciting time for me and everyone involved, and I hope you'll follow along over the next few months as we bring this work to life!

Competition Results (and Recording)!

2009-06-30T14:53:00.011-04:00

The Vox Juventutis '09 results were announced the day of the concert, but I wanted to wait until I got a copy of the live recording before posting a blog entry. First of all, the entire performance, which included 12 brand new works for unaccompanied choir, was professional, well attended, and very enjoyable. The pieces, written by both Lithuanian and foreign composers, showed a wide variety of styles that kept the concert interesting and the audience eager to hear each new work.

Now for the good news: the excerpt I described in my last post won both 2nd place as well as the "Jauna Muzika" award for the choir's favorite work! Most importantly, I now have something you can finally hear for yourself. Visit my MySpace page and click on Dipukų Rauda (DPs' Lament) in the player window to hear the recording from the concert.

The 1st place award went to Lithuanian composer Albertas Navickas for his work, È. Albertas, who also studied with Osvaldas Balakauskas, recently finished his master's degree at the Academy. As I write, I am listening to his Iconic for orchestra, performed last month by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in a concert of orchestral works by graduating master's students. After hearing many of his works during my time here, one feature of his music (among other great qualities) that continues to win me over is the pacing of each work. I can't help but feel a sense of patience every time I hear something of his.

3rd place was shared by two composers. Justina Šikšnelytė, a Lithuanian composer, just finished her first year in the bachelor's program at the Academy. Her work, Aš Gimiau (I was Born), with text by the composer, grows from a series of staggered/echoed melodies that sets the rather melancholy tone for the entire piece, eventually ending with a soprano solo followed by whispers from the choir. Šikšnelytė, I recently discovered, is also a talented jazz singer, and that influence makes its way into some of her concert works. Also winning 3rd place was Turkish composer Ali Somay (whose last name means "pure moon!"), a bachelor's student studying here through the Erasmus program. I heard three of his works while I have been here, and each dsiplayed his curiosity and creativity by means of unorthodox or extended playing techniques. His choral work, Zaman Yok, also with text by the composer, was no exception. And among the breath tremolos, tongue clicks, and hyper-registral singing (singing so high or low that there is no engagement of the vocal cords at all), this challenging work was still grounded in some very beatiful pitched material.

At the end of the concert, the audience voiced their opinion as they were allowed to vote for their favorite work. After the votes were counted, the "audience favorite" prize went to Wieslaw Sobieski, also a student at the Academy, for his excrutiatingly beautiful work, Rauda (Lament).

The press release (in Lithuanian) can be found here.

Excerpt Performance in Vilnius!

2009-05-05T06:00:00.026-04:00

No matter what I might tell you in writing about the music, there is nothing like actually hearing it. On June 18, if any of you happen to be in Vilnius, the award-winning Lithuanian chamber choir Jauna Muzika will sing a short choral excerpt from the opera as part of their annual "Vox Juventutis" competition for young composers. Details of the performance can be found here.

Regardless of the outcome of the competition, more important is, first, the quality of performance the music will get, and second, that the performance will be recorded. If you didn't explore the link above thoroughly, the choir has a few audio excerpts from some of its album releases here. And for those of you with a subscription to the Naxos site, you can listen to their recording of Osvaldas Balakauskas' (my teacher) Requiem here.

Ultimately, what this means is that all of you out there who might be following this blog will finally get to hear some music!

The excerpt, titled Dipukų Rauda (DPs' Lament) as a standalone concert piece, is taken from the first scene of Act I, just after the short prologue that opens the entire opera. In a real opera staging, the chorus is made up of DPs (Displaced Persons) of different Eastern European origin, crammed together into a train car. Despite the diverse makeup of the group, they all are fleeing the same danger, are uncertain about their future, and share the same feelings of fear and anxiety (please forgive the following rudimentary and completely unpoetic translation from the original Lithuanian text):

Baimė kausto mintis - Fear grips the mind

Ryžtas trypia širdis. - Determination tramples the heart.

Sunkias beržo sula - The birch sap is strained

Ne namų o speigų - No home but hard frost

Tolimųjų kraštų - The distant land

Mūsų siaubo akių - Our eyes of horror

Pamestų tarp miškų - Lost among forests

Sutryptų be jausmų. - Trampled without feeling.

Ką vaikai pamatys - What will the children see

Jei nebėgsi tolyn, - If you don't flee further,

Kur paslėpsi akis - Where will you hide your eyes

Nuo likimo nagų? - From fate's clutches?

Gal kitur bus geriau - Maybe elsewhere will be better

Gal kiti bus geri. - Maybe others will be kind.

Baimė kausto mintis - Fear grips the mind

Ryžtas trypia širdis. - Determination tramples the heart.

Yes, my translation is a direct and clumsy one, but one can imagine some florid yet tasteful English poetry in its place. The text is pretty straightforward, but I should explain a couple of lines that may not be entirely clear in meaning.

Determination tramples the heart: The word "ryžtas" in the Lithuanian-English dictionary is most closely translated as "resolution," "determination," or "strong purpose." But if I were to use a whole phrase to more accurately translate the word, then it would be "the choice one makes of his own free will," which gives a much better picture of the line's reference. In other words, as one makes the agonizing decision to leave his home, perhaps for good, he must overcome the inevitable and instinctual feelings of anxiety and homesickness that will accompany such a move, and his determination to follow through with this decision contradicts everything his heart tells him.

The distant land: I know my translation sounds like a History Channel special about Columbus' voyage to America, but this line actually refers to Siberia, infamous over the past three or four centuries for its Russian (and more recently in history, Soviet) labor camps to which millions of people, including Russians, were exiled. Towards the end of the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania (1940-41), thousands of Lithuanians began to be deported to Siberia, where they joined the many groups and nationalities who had already suffered the same fate.

The text of the excerpt may be brief, but it effectively sets the underlying tone of the opera. It is this tension between listening to one's heart and making painful but perhaps life-saving choices that drives the plot (I say "plot," but I'm also talking about the lives of millions of real people) forward.

An End-of-Winter Update

2009-03-21T16:12:00.001-04:00

I could have called it "A Spring Update," but snow continues to fall as I write this entry. The winter has been long, and last month's burning of Morė, the effigy representing winter, apparently guaranteed the hasty arrival of spring. A long, dark winter does have its bright side, which is that no one feels obligated to go outside without a good reason. I have therefore been able to spend much of the last couple of months really focused on writing music.

But without actually scanning and posting my sketches, in writing there is little I can tell you about the music itself. What I can tell you is that I continue to find a wealth of inspiration not only in the music I hear in Vilnius, but also in the language itself.

Unlike Spanish, for instance, the Lithuanian language is devoid of any regular system of syllable stress, and the fact that the language utilizes some of the most ancient linguistic characteristics and numerous inflections makes possible an incredibly nuanced yet flexible form of expression. This combination opens up many possibilities in terms of creatively setting Lithuanian to music, but it also highlights the care that must be taken, especially in such a text-driven and drama-dependent work as an opera, to preserve the intended meaning and tone of any one line of text.

You might ask, "How are you able to understand the complexities and nuance of the language without being a native speaker?" The answer is that I don't. I made multiple audio recordings of Marija Simona "acting" the parts of the libretto, which helps when it comes to making many compositional choices, but regardless of the inflection and intonation I can objectively glean from the recording, there will always be certain signifiers that can only be truly understood by a native speaker.

But this may not be a bad thing. A fellow composer in Baltimore once lamented the tendency among composers to write vocal music that so closely reflects the natural rhythm and inflection of the language. I, on the other hand, saw nothing wrong with the trend and considered the language itself full of multiple implications for the music. I still do, but as of this week, much less so.

What changed my mind was a repeat viewing of Peter Eötvös' opera, Love and Other Demons. Never mind that the predominantly English libretto was written by a Hungarian author; I thought the English was practically flawless. On top of that, Eötvös understands and speaks very good English himself. But unlike the first time I saw the opera, on Thursday I picked up on some very subtle text-music relationships that revealed the composer as a non-native speaker. There was no misplaced syllable stress or awkward phrasing, but rather a sung English that to my ears was devoid of any aural signifier that might point to a specific English-speaking culture.

I recently read a BBC article that referred to this kind of English as "globish," and while the term applies mainly to English that is free of any vocabulary, metaphor, or humor that might cause misunderstanding between two people from different cultures, I wonder if the term could also include specifically aural nuances such as intonation, rhythm, etc. that might be particular to any one region or culture.

For me, this lack of recognizable, culture-specific nuance is what made the music interesting and fresh. A native English speaker could deliberately alter the music to counter the natural delivery of a line of English text, but I doubt the effect would be the same. In Love and Other Demons, the text is not set in an "unnatural" or "unusual" way, but rather in a manner that is so neutral (at least to American ears) that the listener is likely to detect no cultural code acting as mediation (and perhaps even a hindrance) between the text itself and its musical representation.

Maybe I'm preemptively defending the compositional decisions I've been making in my own opera, but if my musical treatment of Lithuanian text reveals my non-native background, then perhaps I have reason to celebrate.

The Story

2009-01-22T10:26:00.018-05:00

I've been waiting anxiously to write in more detail about the opera's plot, and now, after many reviews, changes, cuts, and additions, the libretto is more or less in its final form. But rather than writing the event-by-event synopsis, I'll just give an overview of the story.

After a brief prologue shedding light on Julius Jušinskas' (my grandfather's) childhood in Lithuania, Act I opens in a foreign labor camp in Eastern Germany just before the end of WWII. The camp's inhabitants, a mixture of several nationalities but mostly citizens of countries annexed by the Soviet Union, live not only under the stress of difficult manual labor and the constant threat of Allied bombings, but also with the feelings of homesickness, rootlessness, and alienation so familiar to displaced persons (DPs). Some of my grandfather's worst stories came from his family's life in Brandenburg, and by all accounts it was a terrible and dangerous place for anyone, especially a family (by the end of the war, three of his four children had been born).

By the end of the first act, the war has ended and, to the horror of everyone in the camp, they learn that once again they are under the control of the Soviet Army, the very danger from which they had originally fled. Tormented by homesickness and constant exodus, yet fearful of the consequences of remaining under Soviet rule, most choose to escape to Allied-controlled Western Germany. With the Russian occupation zone border closed to those attempting to flee, the Jušinskas family manages to slip through with the help of a bribe.

Act II takes place in a DP camp in Western Germany around 1950-51, the last years before most countries will close their doors to DPs, who will then either be forced to repatriate or begin life on their own in the crippled postwar German economy. The DPs are terrified at the thought of returning to a Soviet-controlled homeland, and the vast majority choose to stay in the safety and stability of the camp. Life in the camp is not easy, but everyone is guaranteed food, shelter, schooling, and the stubborn belief that someday they will be able to return to a liberated homeland.

However, while physical conditions in the camp are tolerable, the psychological toll wrought by hopelessness and the lack of free will is mounting. With the already small and bureaucracy-laden window of opportunity to emigrate narrowing, the DPs scramble to win their own ticket to the U.S., Australia, Canada, and other countries with immigration quotas that could not possibly accommodate the massive number of hopeful families. In their desperation, many attempt to improve their chances by secretly swapping chest x-rays or accusing others of wartime collaboration and other crimes, while those most psychologically strained resort to suicide.

Pressure mounts after Adelina (my grandmother) and Julius are maliciously interrogated by agents in the camp. Julius obstinately holds onto his dream of returning home, but Adelina's persuasion, along with a last-minute letter of sponsorship from Julius' distant "Uncle Joe" in Chicago, finally convinces him to let go. With mixed feelings of relief, optimism, nostalgia, and fear, the family boards a ship bound for New York, leaving behind a decade of uncertainty, isolation, and dejection.

While some scenes are fictional (though definitely not implausible), others are based on my grandfather's actual experiences. For instance, Marija Simona included in the libretto an almost absurdist scene based on an incident in Brandenburg when an unlicensed German "doctor" tried to amputate my grandfather's injured leg. And the last scene in Act I and one of my favorite stories is how my grandfather managed to bribe the guards at the border of the Russian occupation zone:

Hundreds of people were at the border, but no one was allowed through. After pulling one of the guards aside, my grandfather withdrew a bottle of his homemade liquor from under his coat. The guard gladly accepted, but motioned to the other guard at the post, as if saying, "what about my friend over there?" My grandfather then pulled another bottle from under his coat, thus securing his family's passage into the British occupation zone. Minutes later, the family was picked up by British soldiers and taken to a warehouse just inside the British zone, where they were to stay until morning. During the night, everyone woke up to an extraordinary commotion. Hundreds of additional refugees had made it into the British zone. Later the family learned why so many of them had escaped: the guards had gotten completely drunk.

The Jušinskas family lived in Wehnen, a DP camp in Oldenburg, in the British zone, for almost six years before they finally received an offer of sponsorship from Uncle Joe. My mother was born there, and my aunts and uncles remember it well. While their time in Brandenburg before the end of the war was dangerous and physically debilitating, their stay in Wehnen was overshadowed by suspicions, accusations, rivalries, jealousies, and bigotry among desperate camp members. People did commit suicide, and Julius and Adelina were, in fact, interrogated for some unknown reason, but whatever that reason or the outcome was, it was the last push my grandmother needed to convince my grandfather to emigrate. The photo to the right is of the Jušinskas family in Wehnen, ca. 1947 (from left to right: Edita, Adelina [with my mother, Zita, in her lap], Julius, Irena, and Julius, Jr.).

Once the libretto has been thoroughly reviewed by several pairs of eyes, I'll give a more detailed synopsis. I have already begun to write the music, and now that the dramatic structure and pacing of the opera is all but set in stone, I'm looking forward to discovering where it takes the music.

Love, Longing, Uncertainty, and Booze

2008-12-18T07:37:00.020-05:00

These are the principal recurring themes in the Lithuanian songs my grandfather, Julius Jušinskas, sang.

With the thin but treacherous layer of ice covering sidewalks throughout the city, this week was the perfect time to put a kettle on (or more precisely, flip the switch on the electric water boiler) and spend some quality time with the musical impetus for this opera. This exploration included transcribing melodies and tracing (or, as in some cases, guessing) their origin, but it also included translating the text of each song. While this translation work is far from complete (here I must credit my mother for her extensive help), it so far has yielded several and sometimes unexpected rewards.

On a purely musical level, it is worth noting that although my grandfather's control of individual pitches was shaky at best (he was, after all, about 90 years old at the time the recordings were made), his sense of key and pitch center was quite consistent. Here are two short excerpts of my grandfather singing the song from which the title of this blog is derived. The first was recorded in 1999, when he was 89 years old, and the second was recorded three years later in 2002, just two years before he passed away. Apart from the variation in melody and with the exception, perhaps, of a few microtones, the key is the same.

Whether it was because of the muscle memory he developed during his long lifetime of singing the same songs (most other songs fall between the keys of F and A-flat), or perhaps because of a more inherent sense of absolute pitch, this phenomenon is remarkable for a man his age (Elliott Carters of the world excepted), especially one without any musical training. If the former is true, then it highlights the frequency with which my grandfather sang these songs and therefore their importance to him.

Musical peculiarities aside, the songs offer a wealth of information about my grandfather's life as well as insight into his personality. Apart from a few phrases, I never spoke or understood Lithuanian before my grandfather passed away in 2004. Despite having lived in the United States for over fifty years, he spoke only broken English, and any conversation I ever had with my grandfather was either through my mother or limited to short phrases. Furthermore, I only saw him for two or three weeks out of the year, and I certainly didn't have as many questions for him then as I do today.

My grandfather left Lithuania when he was 30 years old, just after he married my grandmother, Adelina. It is no wonder then, that the love and lost youth which dominate the largest group of songs are embodied by imagery from Lithuania. In the recordings he sings of smoking with his brothers (all of whom he never saw again), bathing in the local river, and of his many loves. In most cases, the latter of these is compared to or represented by different plants or flowers. For instance, in one song he sings that he "planted many flowers- some blossomed, some did not," and in another he sings of the flax he planted on the river embankment: "it grew... it bloomed... I pulled it out of the ground... I took it home." The tone of these songs is usually nostalgic, and he frequently notes that the loves he had eventually vanished and that his youthful days will never return.

My grandfather grew up during the first period of Lithuanian independence, a relatively peaceful time which ended when the Soviet army occupied Lithuania in June, 1940. This development is clearly echoed in a song about a bittersweet spring. In the song, he sings about how the weather is beautiful in the spring and that flowers are bursting from their buds, to which he adds that "our brothers are saddling the horses" and that "one can hear the sounds of swords."

In March of 1941, my grandfather and grandmother, along with their infant son, Julius, Jr., left Lithuania. During the ten years that followed, they lived as displaced persons (DPs), eventually ending up in Germany. Towards the end of WWII, my grandfather was absorbed into the masses of foreign labor used to fuel the waning German war industry, and the family was often forced to live in separate parts of the country. The stress of difficult labor and agonizing separation magnified his short temper, which, coupled with his stubbornness, often landed him in prison. "Dainuoju Dainą," the song I discussed at the beginning of this post, is a prisoner's song in which he describes the hard beds, the sounds of chains and shackles, and the unattainable luxury of rest. In this same song, he sheds light on the hopeless uncertainty of he and his family's situation- a gypsy predicts for him a long journey. In another song he reflects upon having been born and raised in Lithuania, but only God knows where he will die, perhaps in Warsaw or in Moscow.

These and the other songs my grandfather sang are, in the end, quite revealing about his personality and about the experiences he constantly revisited and which affected his character throughout his long life. I was pleasantly surprised that over the course of listening to the songs, I discovered things about him which would have otherwise remained uncovered.

And some things about him which were already abundantly clear were reinforced, in particular his fondness for alcohol. In fact, the liquor he made with homemade stills during his time in DP camps made him exceptionally popular and, on more than one occasion, greased the palms of those with the power to make his family's life impossible. Later in life, a dose or two of "medicine" was the only necessary prelude to a performance of these songs, and it is not surprising that booze earned such a prominent place among the most important themes. The last recording of the collection reflects his hard-headedness as much as it does his abundant sense of humor: "I got drunk as a rooster. No one will scare me off."

About the Librettist

2008-11-22T10:45:00.011-05:00

I hadn't mentioned it until now, but I met my librettist, Marija Simona Šimulynaitė, back in October. She's a graduate student in the theater department at the Academy and focuses mainly on theater direction, but she's also a writer and an accomplished dancer (check out this video of her routine in the Lithuanian semi-finals of the Eurovision Dance Contest!). Not only did she enthusiastically agree to write a libretto, but she also offered to direct the production when the time comes.

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly I was able to find someone willing to work with me. My only real preferences were that he or she speak English to some degree and not be in the midst of a well-established (and hence, hectic) career. After unsuccessfully chasing some leads through my teacher, the Composers' Union, and some of my new friends, I got an e-mail from Marija. She was recommended to me by the head of the Academy's theater deparment, Dr. Algis Mažeika, who was once himself a Fulbright scholar at the University of Kansas.

After getting to know each other a little better during our first meeting, I gave her a copy of the final product of the reasearch I did over the summer: the story of my grandfather's life and a brief history of Displaced Persons Camps after WWII. Because the document has so much important and detailed information and is written in English, I was delighted to discover that Marija speaks English quite well.

But more importantly, I was excited by the energy and enthusiasm she injected immediately into her work. Only a week after our first meeting, she sent me a draft of the first half of Act I (after which I spent two days straight reading it with a Lithuanian-English dictionary in my lap), and today I am writing with the first draft of the entire libretto sitting next to me. What's more is that despite the speed at which she delivered her work, it shows evidence of great consideration of the details decribed in my original document while making light of them creatively through her writing.

Since we have not yet made final any cuts, additions, or edits, I won't give away any details about the libretto just yet, but I can say with confidence that this collaboration is off to a great start.

Love and Other Demons and Many, Many Other Concerts

2008-11-11T07:34:00.011-05:00

I woke up on Monday after a two-week concert binge. The 2008 ISCM World Music Days festival finally ended this weekend, and now that I've recovered (somewhat) from my new-music hangover, I will attempt to recall some of the highlights and limit my music criticism to mentioning and providing links to some of my favorites. Be sure to click the link above to see more detail about the concerts and works.

The longest day of the festival was October 25. The first concert began at three in the afternoon and the last note was played at about 3:45 in the morning. The concert by the Lithuanian National Philharmonic included music by Joji Yuasa (Japan), Oscar Carmona (Chile), and Vytautas V. Jurgutis (Lithuania), the latter of which added his own electronic work to Ligeti's Atmospheres. John Adams' Century Rolls was also on the program, and expectedly so, since minimalism, with certain of its characteristics likened to the canonical folk songs sutartinės, holds a special place in modern Lithuanian music.

The following concert, which began at 9:30pm and lasted until 3:45 in the morning, was entitled Procession, and featured both music and food from around the world. Two American composers, Ashley Fure and David Coll, both had works on the program, and Coll gave a spirited presentation at the Academy the morning he headed back to the U.S.

Back-to-back concerts by the Ensemble Modern and the Cello Octet Amsterdam, a Spanish-Dutch group, made for an exceptionally impressive evening. Onutė Narbutaitė wrote works in honor of All Saints Day weekend, and Sunday featured the same work sung simultaneously in at least seven different churches throughout the Old Town (see right). The Strasbourg Percussion gave the premiere of a work by my teacher, Osvaldas Balakauskas, and the group was perhaps most intriguing due to sheer amount of equipment (see left) and noise sharing the stage. The Sound Cube project, hatched at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, brought a 40-speaker (give or take) surround system and sound engineers from Germany to the Great Hall of the Lithuanian Radio and Television. There was a concert dedicated almost entirely, with the exception of Lithuanian minimalist Rytis Mažulis' music, to the works of fluxus pioneer Jurgis "George" Mačiūnas (check out his Piano Piece No. 13).... and it was packed.

Most relevant to this blog was the sold-out Lithuanian premiere of Peter Eötvös' new opera, Love and Other Demons, based on the book by Gabriel García Márquez. Here I must credit my friends from the Academy for knowing how to get into a sold-out concert, for without them, I would never have seen it. You may think that sneaking into an opera performance sounds a little anachronistic today, but there was, after all, a great deal of nudity. In fact, the lead character of the opera, Sierva Maria, spends most of Act II in her birthday suit. I imagine performance anxiety becomes a non-issue after singing the most tragic aria of the opera "in the raw." As for the music itself, this review is generally positive and reflects many of my opinions. I don't have any pictures from the performance, but the picture to the right was taken during intermission in the Soviet-era National Opera and Ballet Theater, famous for its many chandeliers.

I mentioned less than half of all the concerts I attended, and while I enjoyed (almost) every minute of the festival, I can't include everything here. This was the first such festival I have been lucky enough to attend, and like a 21 year-old on his birthday, I simply overindulged. Someone asked me this morning what I thought of a specific piece on one of earlier concerts of the festival. I responded, "I don't remember. I think I heard too much."

Jonas Švedas Festival

2008-10-21T09:04:00.022-04:00

With the weather in Vilnius as volatile as it has been this month, I promptly came down with a cold. But the good news is that I got over it just in time for the Third International Jonas Švedas Festival of Folk Instrumental Music, which ran October 7-11. Though the term "international" usually implies a much larger group of countries and regions, the festival featured mainly folk instruments and performers from the Baltics, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. Some performances were accompanied by the National Lithuanian Philharmonic, and others were solo performances. And the primary venue of the festival, St. Catherine's Church, made for a visually beautiful (albeit acoustically wet) concert setting.

Without going into a detailed listing of all the performers (there is no longer a festival website, so I can't provide a link), I'll just say that each offered a unique contribution to the zither-heavy festival program. But here are a few examples.

Olga Shishkina (Russia) played a Shostakovich-inspired work by Sergei Oskolkov for gusli and orchestra one evening, and performed a few solo works another. Oksana Kuznetsova and Elena Vorontsova, two Belorussian dulcimerists (wikipedia confirmed that "dulcimerist" is a word), also performed with orchestra (Kuznetsova) and solo (Vorontsova).

Many festival participants played the kanklės, arguably the most iconic Lithuanian folk instrument, but Aistė Bružaitė deserves special mention. She played most of a concerto for kanklės and orchestra by Lithuanian composer Vaclovas Paketūras before her aggressively virtuosic playing fatally snapped a string on the delicate instrument, putting a halt to the rest of the performance. Two days later, after a restringing, she appeared in a duet performance with Jolita Sidorenkaitė (also on the kanklės).

However, my personal favorite of the festival was Irmantas Andriūnas (and I really wish he had a website), who gave an impressive performance on the birbynė. The birbynė is another important Lithuanian instrument (a contender with the kanklės for the title of "national instrument of Lithuania") that featured prominently in the festival, and Andriūnas played three birbynės of different sizes during his performance of Gervių šokiai (Dance of the Cranes), a 15-minute piece by composer Vytautas Germanavičius that includes extended techniques familiar to most saxophonists as well as some unique to the birbynė. I couldn't figure out how to make the podcast option work (any tips from more experienced bloggers would be appreciated), so here are the links to two audio clips of Andriūnas playing a soprano birbynė and a contrabass birbynė. More clips of this piece and works for other instruments are available from this link to Germanavičius' Compositions for Lithuanian National Instruments.

Most of the Lithuanian performers at the festival are students or teachers at the Academy, or else closely affiliated with the Academy, and frequently commission composers to write new works for their instrument. Given their willingness to work with composers, it would be interesting to sit down with one of them to learn more about his or her instrument- not just its traditional usage, but any extended techniques that may have developed in the last few decades.

Lithuanian Composers Union

2008-10-07T07:06:00.013-04:00

One of the many legacies of the Soviet Union in Lithuania is its socialist engineering of residential spaces. Images of rows of identical block apartment buildings aside, an interesting example of this type of planning in Vilnius is the Lithuanian Composers Union, situated in a quiet neighborhood west of the city center.

The LCU is the major hub for all Lithuanian composers and houses copies of every score, recording, and other publications by its past and current members. The building is also home to the Lithuanian Music Information and Publishing Center, the major promoter of all Lithuanian composers and performers, including popular and folk music. In addition to maintaining a comprehensive website dedicated to its artists, it publishes and rents scores, operates three Lithuanian record labels, and helps to organize major events, including this year's ISCM World Music Days.

Last week, I visited the LCU in hopes of finding some useful materials about Lithuanian music. Linas Paulauskis, the director of the LMIPC, is quiet but extremely helpful. Not only did he offer to connect me with a few possible librettists, but he did not hesitate to lend me scores (some of which were one of only two copies) and recordings of the most recent and, in some cases, unpublished Lithuanian music. For one unpublished and unperformed opera, I was given a photocopy of the manuscript and a recording of the composer himself singing all the vocal parts over a midi realization of the instrumental parts.

Getting back to the main point of this blog post, the most unique thing about the LCU is its surrounding neighborhood, which is made up of a collection modest rowhouses on quiet alleys branching off of the main street. It was in these houses that Lithuania's composers lived together in a relatively isolated artist community. Each of the houses bears a plaque indicating its former composer resident and the years of residence.

In addition to the rowhouses, there stands a much larger apartment building- at least 14 units- which housed no one but composers. Both Osvaldas Balakauskas and Feliksas Bajoras live there. It is hard to imagine a composer who would not have been influenced by his neighbor at some point.

And while today many Lithuanian composers have chosen to move elsewhere as their economic independence increases, at least half of all important composers in Lithuania live next to the Composers Union. It must have been quite an experience to develop alongside every other composer in Lithuania. Given this fact, the diversity among their works should be seen as evidence of extraordinary creativity in what otherwise might have been a compositional melting pot.

Faces of Vilnius

2008-09-28T05:54:00.012-04:00

Some of the most interesting things I've seen in Vilnius have been either impromptu or brought to my attention at the last minute through word of mouth or a casual e-mail, and this week was no exception.

Last week, a Fulbright scholar who has been living here for over a year mentioned to me that she participates in weekly folk-singing rehearsals as a hobby and that I might be interested in joining this week. I took her advice and asked Dr. Vyčinienė, a member of the group and a professor at the Academy, if I could sit in. It turns out that the rehearsals take place in the same room as most of the ethnomusicology classes, so I just stuck around after her class ended.

It is one thing to hear a folk-singing performance at a festival or in a concert, but it is quite another to be sitting amidst a group during rehearsal. In what I previously perceived as rather basic tonal progressions and vocal harmonizations, nuances in diction and ornamentation jumped out more and more as I read along. And after the fifth repetition of the melody, it was hard not to join in.

But the fun didn't stop there. Two of the members happened to share a birthday on the day of rehearsal, so halfway through, a spread of sweets, cheese, and a big bottle of brandy was introduced. Somehow this seemed to complete the picture as I remembered how my grandfather, after a few glasses of "medicine," would suddenly recall all the songs he learned in his youth and sing loudly with little or no encouragement. By the end of the rehearsal, whatever timidity or restraint shown initially by anyone had been completely shaken.

Perhaps more interesting, though, was the Vilniaus Veidai (Faces of Vilnius) "non-commercial art festival." The absence of an internet link to the festival is an indication of its underground nature. I was sent an e-mail by my friend and student of Osvaldas Balakauskas, Albertas Navickas, notifying me of the three-day event, which featured music by students at the Academy as well as art exhibits and installations by other young Lithuanian artists.

After following the arrows taped to the sidewalk, I entered the venue, which turned out to be an all-but-abandoned three-story 16th-century monastery attached to a recently renovated church. The crumbling rooms and corridors were eerily lit by colored fluorescent lights powered by a complex extension-cord network. Walls and ceilings were cracked, windows non-existent, floors covered with an inch or two of dust, holes in the floor hastily patched, and any wood exposed to the air thoroughly eaten by dry rot.

However, guests did not seem to mind as they walked through its many drafty halls and up its many crumbling stairs to see artwork tucked away in rooms and other settings that could normally only be reconstructed by a film set designer. And despite the cold one should expect from a windowless (but definitely not window frameless) stone structure around midnight, I was able to hear and see some very good music and multimedia collaborations.

I heard works by students Albertas Navickas, Rūta Vitkauskaitė, Rita Mačiliūnaitė, Andrius Maslekovas, and Vytautas Paukštelis, among others. Maslekovas performed a work for accordion, Mačiliūnaitė sang her own works as well as those by Navickas, and Vitkauskaitė played violin on many of the works, including her own. The only time I thought about leaving the concert was during the high-energy (and high-volume) electronic work by Paukštelis- not because I disliked the music, but more so because I feared for my safety as I watched small pieces of the 500 year-old ceiling fall to the floor when the bass "really kicked in."

Overall, the variety in style of the works I heard was very refreshing. I hope I will get to hear many more performances of student works throughout my stay here.

A New Piano, the Seattle Chamber Players, and Art in Unusual Places

2008-09-23T14:36:00.011-04:00

The big event for me last week was the purchase of an upright piano- the first piano I've ever purchased. I found it on http://www.alio.lt/, the Lithuanian equivalent of Craigslist. After a 3-hour tuning (the lower half of the piano was a whole step flat, while the upper half was only half step flat, which helped the keys of C and D-flat meld into a healthy key of D), I found that the instrument plays quite nicely. It's a "Riga," which is the closest thing to "Vilnius" I could find (there are some "Belarus" pianos, which is technically closer, but they can hardly be considered playable).

A few days later, in a concert sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and the LMTA (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater), the Seattle Chamber Players presented a program of mostly American music, including works by Alexandra Gardner, John Luther Adams, Nico Muhly, and Mason Bates, but also a work for flute and tape by Lithuanian composer Antanas Kučinskas, who was present in the audience.

After the concert, I joined the performers, along with theory professor Dr. Gražina Daunoravičienė and composer Onutė Narbutaitė, for a late-night dinner. The Seattle Chamber Players were on their way to the Warsaw Autumn festival in Poland, where they would be playing the same program as well as some works with more complicated electronics setups.

Over the weekend, Vilnius held its annual Art in Unusual Places festival, which has been steadily gaining popularity as 2009 nears. In addition to the many visual art installations on display throughout the city (including a 9-foot bust of Tony Soprano), there were two memorable concerts on the festival program.

The first was a concert given by the Chordos Quartet, Lithuania's best-known "new music" string quartet, in the Vilnius train station. During the first work, which was a long, slowly pulsating piece for string quartet and electronics, each member of the group played inside a white air-filled globe. Coupled with the rock-concert stage lighting, it reminded me a lot of the scene in "This is Spinal Tap" when Derek Smalls gets stuck in the clear plastic pod during "Rock n' Roll Creation."

Appropriate to the venue, the Chordos Quartet played Steve Reich's "Different Trains" for the second (and last) work of the concert. Now, free from their white cacoons, they played in front of a giant screen with projections of stock railroad and WWII footage. In spite of the light show that accompanied the work (and I don't think anyone in the audience was given an explanation of the work), it was quite an effective performance of the work.

The other concert I attended was more of a ritual than a concert. Titled "Winter oh Winter Come Back to the Yard," the ceremony represents, as this title suggests, the call for winter to come to Lithuania. It featured "snow" (white balloons), fire jugglers, chants, and original music by composer Mindaugas Urbaitis, who happens to teach the English-language class on Lithuanian contemporary music at the LMTA. His contribution to the ceremony included a piece for two saxophones and a work for a capella choir, which was performed by the seemingly ubiquitous Lithuanian choral group Jauna Muzika.

The fire portion of this ceremony spilled over into the culmination of the festival, the Fall Equinox celebration, which took place Sunday night at the Neris river and featured huge, flaming, traditional Lithuanian textile patterns along the river banks and floating down the river itself. Word has it that an exceptionally cold winter is on its way...

Fieldwork Expedition and Folk Music Festivals

2008-09-13T10:58:00.027-04:00

Last weekend, I joined some students from the ethnomusicology department for their first fieldwork expedition of the school year. The department rented out a cabin by a lake near the town of Zervynos so their students could have a central base from which to make trips to smaller villages in Dzūkija, the southeastern region of Lithuania. Their goal in the area was to track down as many Lithuanian folk songs as they could in one week's time (I was only able to join them for the weekend), record them, and add them to Lithuania's extensive and ongoing folk-music archive.

I borrowed a bicycle from one of the ethnomusicology professors, took a train to the Zervynos stop (which is literally just a concrete slab, bench, and "Zervynos" sign next to the railroad tracks in the middle of the woods), and rode the bike several kilometers into the woods to meet up with the students. The students had split up into two groups in order to track down singers in the neighboring villages. Most of the time, this search involved little more than a small telephone tip followed by lots and lots of walking and asking around a particular village.

The most fruitful of these searches was in the village of Perloja, where the students originally sought an old woman who was apparently known throughout the village for her singing. After about 15-30 minutes of asking people in the village where she lived, we found her house tucked away on one of the smaller roads. Her husband, Zygmas, answered the door and told us that the woman we wanted to hear was either sick upstairs or out of town to see a doctor (my Lithuanian isn't that refined yet).

The students kept the conversation going, and when Zygmas mentioned he used to sing when he was younger, they seized the opportunity to persuade him to sing. He came up with every excuse he could- he was too old, he couldn't remember any songs, etc.- but the students persisted. After 5 or 10 minutes of coaxing, he invited everyone inside. From there he proceeded to sing, play accordion, show off his drum and cymbal, and show us all the photos documenting his musical life.

The most interesting was his singing, which was exceptionally strong for someone well into his 80s. He sang two partisan songs, one in a minor mode, the other in major. The Lithuanian partisans were those Lithuanians after World War II who chose to put up armed resistance against the occupying Soviet Union. Although this resistance was ultimately unsuccessful and mostly died out during the 1950s, many partisans continued to resist well into the 1970s (some say longer), hiding in the many forests in Lithuania. Zygmas was one of the earliest partisans.

I'm sure the students had countless other experiences just like our meeting with Zygmas, but I unfortunately had to cut my visit short. There will, however, be more expeditions throughout the school year (at least while the weather is still bearable).

In Vilnius, I was able to see some types of folk-music performance a little different than those of the fieldwork expedition. The week was filled by two giant international folk-music festivals, Kolokola and Griežynė, both overlapping (I don't know who schedules these things, but there could have been a little bit more coordination between the organizers of the two). Poor planning aside, I was able to hear several groups, both vocal and instrumental, from all over Eastern Europe.

There were concerts devoted to dance, song, and even some crossover experiments. Particularly interesting was the Lithuanian jaw harp duo, which yielded sounds reminiscent of the twangs, phases, and bleeps of early electronic music. I was both surprised and unsurprised to see Dr. Vyčinienė singing with Lithuania's premiere sutartinė (a type of Lithuanian polyphonic singing) group, Trys Keturiose. She later told me that the group has been singing together for over 20 years.

As I write, the festivals are still in full swing, and I think this is as good a time as any to sign off.

First Week in Vilnius

2008-09-05T04:06:00.002-04:00

After moving into my apartment and getting acquianted with the most basic aspects of living in Vilnius, I actually have been able to move ahead quite a bit with the project. I met with most of my contacts, including Rytis Mažulis, the head of the composition department at the Academy, Feliksas Bajoras, and Osvaldas Balakauskas.

I was even able to bring in the recordings of my grandfather's songs to the ethnomusicology department. The head of the department, Dr. Daiva Vyčinienė, listened to each song and described its possible origin, the meaning of the text, and, in the case of the more well-known songs, whether his singing mirrored closely the most widely sung variant of a particular song. Given my grandfather's age (87 and 91) at the time the recordings were made, it was difficult for him to sing without wavering in pitch, but Dr. Vyčinienė assured me that one of her students would help to transcribe both the text and pitches.

This weekend I will be traveling by train and bicycle to villages near the town of Zervynos, in Dzūkija, the southeastern region of Lithuania, to observe (and perhaps participate in) fieldwork done by the ethnomusicology department's students. The students will be traveling in groups to small villages in the area to record some of Lithuania's oldest songs. Dr. Vyčinienė explained to me that because the only people living in Lithuanian villages are quite old, it is important for their students to collect as many songs as possible, since most of the younger people have moved to the cities and are not interested in learning these songs.

On Monday I will find out more about my prospective librettist, and next week I will begin meeting regularly with Prof. Balakauskas and taking a class on Lithuanian music and a Lithuanian language course. I currently do not have regular internet access, but I hope that will change in the near future. Then I'll be able to upload some pictures and write longer and more detailed posts.

Lithuanian Research and Studies Center

2008-08-08T17:20:00.009-04:00

Earlier this week I was in Chicago, where I spent most of my time at the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center. My goal was to find out more about Lithuanian opera (the Chicago Lithuanian Opera has been staging operas in Lithuanian for the past 50 years) and, more importantly, about my mother's family's experience in Camp Wehnen, a DP camp in Oldenburg, Germany.

The musicological archives are quite extensive. With the help of Lithuanian-American musician Vyto B (Vytas Beleška), who works in the archives, I browsed through an extensive collection of scores and recordings, including some original manuscripts by some of Lithuania's most important composers. Its collection would be an invaluable resource for anyone doing research on Lithuanian music and composers.

Another real treasure housed in the LRSC is its huge collection of documents from the many DP camps in the Allied occupation zones of post-WWII Germany. Camp regulations, protocols, rosters, school and health records, official correspondence, and myriad other documents relating to Camp Wehnen were kept neatly in chronological order and divided by subject. I found a health record from the month prior to my mother's emigration to the U.S., listing everyone in her family as healthy (an emigration prerequisite that was often hard for refugees to fulfill). After that, a camp school roster listing my aunts and uncle. Next, a list of inhabitants in barrack #9, complete with the names and DP numbers of my grandparents, mother, aunts, and uncle. The list goes on, and every piece of information helped to fill the hole between the stories I heard from my mother and her family, and the places, dates, and other historical facts about which I've been reading lately.

With about three weeks to go before my departure for Vilnius, I now have a healthy amount of information and insight into what it meant to be a displaced person in the wake of such a catastrophic war, but, as is the case with any subject into which a researcher delves deeper and deeper, there will always be more to discover.

Capital of Culture

2008-07-28T11:28:00.009-04:00

2008-09 promises to be an eventful time in Vilnius. Along with Linz, Austria, the city has been designated the 2009 European Capital of Culture, a title which has been passed among EU cities every year since 1985. This title will enable Vilnius to host an extraordinary number of events, including concerts, festivals, exhibits, etc. Here is the link to the main music events, which include the Vilnius Opera Festival as well as festivals dedicated to electronic music, jazz, and chamber music (in addition to all the regular concert seasons in Vilnius).

And from October 24 to November 8, Vilnius will host the 2008 ISCM World Music Days, which will feature dozens of concerts, discussions, and other events, including several premieres by important composers and performers. The full program is available at the above link.

An Inaugural Post

2008-07-13T12:36:00.007-04:00

There.... the ribbon has been cut. I'll go ahead and fill everyone in with a little more details. I am an American composer of contemporary classical music and for the next year, I will be living in Vilnius, Lithuania, where I've been awarded a 2008-09 U.S. Fulbright grant to compose an opera. The story will be based on my family's experience in Lithuanian Displaced Persons Camps during and after World War II and the music based on the Lithuanian songs of my late grandfather. The title of this blog, meaning "I sing a song," is taken from the first line of one of these songs.

I'll be arriving in Vilnius on August 30 and should be there through the end of May, 2009. I'll be working primarily with Lithuanian composer Osvaldas Balakauskas, but will also be receiving help from composers Feliksas Bajoras, Rytis Mažulis, and possibly others. You can check out their works and bios on the major Lithuanian music promotion site, Music Export Lithuania, which has information on artists from all genres of Lithuanian music.

Before my departure to Vilnius, I'll be doing research related to my family's time in Lithuanian DP camps from 1941-51. This research includes reading literature and articles on the subject, but also (and more importantly) interviews with family members. My plan is to arrive in Vilnius with a fairly well-developed story to present to a Lithuanian librettist (TBA) interested in working with me.

I probably won't post again until the day of my departure draws closer, but feel free to send me your comments or stop by www.myspace.com/charleshalka to hear some of my music. I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with all of you.