About the eventDavid Lang, winner of the Grammy, Oscar and Pulitzer Prize, author of the music for the film "Youth" by the famous director Paolo Sorrentino, accepted an order from "Vilnius Festivals" and agreed to write a new piece dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the capital. The piece was recently completed - the famous American composer sent the score and is preparing to come to Vilnius for the world premiere. David Lang's work called "Vilne Alef-Beys" (Vilnius Alphabet - "Vilnius Alphabet") will have its world premiere on October 17. Vilnius St. Catherine's Church, at the concert of the elite Lithuanian chamber choir "Jauna muzika". This exclusive concert will also feature some of David Lang's most famous compositions, such as "Just" from the famous film "Youth", several parts from the Grammy-winning cycle "The Little Match Girl Passion" and the crowd-pleasing "Again". This concert will be the start of the largest contemporary music festival in our country "Gaida".New York musical luminary David Lang (b. 1957) is one of America's most performed composers. For a long time, he was best known as the co-founder and artistic director of the cult New York band Bang on a Can and the festival of the same name. However, in 2013 after the release of Paolo Sorrentino's film "The Great Beauty" (La grande belezza), and even more so in 2016. for the same director's film "Youth" ("Youth" / "La giovinezza"), for which D. Lang received an "Oscar" and "Golden Globe" for the soundtrack, his name became especially widely known throughout the world. The song "Just" from the movie "Youth", loved by music lovers, will also be performed in Vilnius. The basis of the work is the wonderful text of the "Song of Songs" from the Old Testament. Just premiered in 2014. was performed by the Norwegian vocal group Trio Mediaeval and an instrumental trio led by the famous violinist Garth Knox, and a year later the piece was adapted for the soundtrack of the film Youth. (https://youtu.be/WTGtgvMQFm8?si=wS7JnSemE8Ka44Z6)David Lang creates music of various genres: operas, works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, choir, soloists. His works are performed by such famous ensembles as the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, Malmö and other opera houses, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Paul Hillier ensemble "Theatre of Voices", the Kronos Quartet and many others. D. Lang's music is performed at New York's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, Washington's Kennedy Center, London's Barbican Hall, Southbank Center; at festivals "BBC Proms", "MusicNOW", Munich Biennale, etc.David Lang's works have a strong emotional impact on listeners. In his new work dedicated to Vilnius, "Vilne Alef-Beys", the composer looks back to his roots: his grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Lithuania - grandfather from Gargžda, grandmother from Šilalė. They, like many Jews from Lithuania who found themselves in America, felt nostalgia, which was embodied in the song "Vilne, Vilne" created by A. L. Wolfson and A. Olshanetsky in New York in the fourth decade of the last century. It became very popular and was sung as an anthem in the Vilnius ghetto during the war. D. Lang used the text of this song in his new work "Vilne Alef-Beys": it sounds based on the recited Yiddish alphabet ("alef-beys"). Because the legend related to the alphabet, how once a rabbi in the synagogue heard one very sincere among many voices: it was an illiterate young man whose desire to pray was so strong that, not knowing how to read, he simply recited the letters from which he thought God would compose the words of the prayer.The concert in Vilnius will also feature several parts from one of D. Lang's most popular works, The Little Match Girl Passion. In 2008, the author of this opus, created according to the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Girl with the Matches", won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 his recording, released by Harmonia Mundi, won Grammy Awards for artist and author. By the way, in 2017, the legendary Theater of Voices, led by Paul Hillier, performed this entire cycle at the Gaida festival. In addition to the above awards, David Lang has won the prestigious Rome Prize for Composers, the American Composer of the Year Award, the BMW Music Theater Prize, grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, etc. His works are published by Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Teldec, Naxos, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, Cantaloupe labels and other global publishing companies.