The Heart of Lithuania (stereo version)

Premiered 13 October 2023, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Multimedia Center, Tallinn, Estonia as part of the EAMT Acousmonium (speaker orchestra) Workshop

Lithuania is a country very close to my heart, both because of its people and due to its rich variety of musical and cultural traditions. The recordings forming "The Heart of Lithuania" are influenced by several of these traditions - a carillon tune played in Telšiai, the capital of the Samogitian cultural region; the traditional multipart songs known as "sutartinės" from northeastern Lithuania (quasi-imitated by an imprecise canon created from my own voice); and the Catholic introitus "Pulkim ant kelių" ("Fall on your knees"), harmonized by late 19th- and early 20th-century composer Juozas Naujalis with words by Antanas Strazdas, recorded outside the Church of St. Theresa in Vilnius's old town.

In a sense, this work follows the ideas of the composer Bronius Kutavičius in his oratorio "Last Pagan Rites"; however, while Kutavičius illustrates the arrival of Christianity and displacement of paganism, my piece highlights the coexistence of multiple traditions as strong parts of Lithuanian identity. This is truly, for me, "the heart of Lithuania" - what makes me constantly drawn to the country as a source of inspiration for both acoustic and electroacoustic music.