ABOUT RŪTA VITKAUSKAITĖ 
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While working as a concert music composer for over 18 years, I have also dedicated much of my time working in community and participatory projects. My highest professional achievements include PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (London 2017); Royal Philharmonic Society award (2020); and Golden Stage Cross Award (LT) for collaborative opera for blind-folded audience, 'Confessions' (having toured EU with 47 shows to date), besides many other smaller awards and prizes. Over the years, my scores were performed in festivals across EU, including Gaudeamus, Operadagen (NL), Sound (UK), Nordbeg, Halland (SE), Gaida, NOA (LT), SUSA (DK) and elsewhere, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Deutschlandradio Kultur (a special one hour long portrait), Lithuanian National TV. With self-performed works, I have attended residencies, Serde (LV), Q-O2 (BE), EMS (SE), and performed at festivals, Aldeburgh (UK), Halland (SE), Aarhus (DK).
I have also been an active initiator, organiser, and facilitator of new music events: I was director of 'Druskomanija' festival and workshop series 'The Process' in Lithuania, facilitator of 'New Music Incubator' (Nordic, Baltic countries, EU), and currently – initiator and Music Director of CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) Glasgow branch.

WEBSITE: www.rutavitkauskaite.weebly.com

CHRYSALIS 
for percussion solo and symphony orchestra 

The idea for Chrysalis emerged from exploring  Indian konnakkol performances, and merging those rhythms with my interest in sound exploration. The percussion part was a result of many hours spent in Jude Carlton’s studio, listening to some very tiny and some big and dramatic sounds of hundreds of percussion instruments. The form of the piece became a journey from a very structuralized rhythmical world, into a world of timbral abstraction, and back. Many of the instruments are owned by myself or Jude personally, some of them even built by Jude. For some of those tiny instruments, it will be first time on the big stage. So listen carefully…

Chrysalis for percussion solo and symphony orchestra

Ruta V