Attendees:

Programme - George Gershwin, Georges Bizet

At the Pažaislis Festival on August 24, 2025. A composer who has never studied composition professionally, who has reached incredible heights in the world of academic and jazz music, and a musician who brings to the stage fifteen kilograms of passion, constructed from twelve thousand parts, who calls birds and trees his first music teachers, and the Lithuanian forest his best concert hall.

Yes, that's George Gershwin, a composer of incredible talent, and Martynas Levickis, an accordion virtuoso of extraordinary charisma. Together with the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, the soloist will perform his own version of Rhapsody in Blue, arranged and specially adapted for the accordion (in the original version, the solo part is played by piano). As the performer himself says, the accordion adds a special colour to this part, simply because the chord played on the piano fades in and out, while the chord played on the accordion varies and evolves in response to the instrumentalist's interpretation. The programme continues with the French genius Georges Bizet's Carmen Suite, based on the immortal themes of the opera Carmen.

Mr Levicky has been described by The Independent as "an incredibly talented man who is single-handedly reinventing the accordion". He describes his instrument as "a magical box of magic tricks". So we have no doubt that magic will reign in the courtyard of Pažaislis Monastery one evening at the end of August!