Gintaras Sodeika

Gintaras Sodeika (born 1961) graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music, prof. Julius Juzeliūnas composition class (1986). Member of the group of artists "Žalias lapas" and exhibitor. Creator and curator of three happening festivals AN-88, AN-89 and NI-90. Since 1990 works together with the director Oskars Koršunovs, created music for almost all of this director's performances. Creates "sound design" for non-traditional environments, fine art presentations. Gintaras Sodeika's works were heard in Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Poland, Holland, England, USA, Canada. He was awarded St. Kristoforos sculpture (1998) and Golden stage cross (2006) as the best theater composer of the season, received the Radio GRA award for the best music for a play at the KONTAKT international theater festival in Toruń (2006), 2014. won the "Fresh Tradition Interpretations" prize of the Lithuanian Composers' Union for Concerto for piano and symphony orchestra. 1999-2003 - Chairman of the Lithuanian Composers' Union, 2000-2006. - President of the Lithuanian Copyright Protection Association, 2003-2008. - Lithuanian Vice Minister of Culture. Gintaras Sodeika is currently the director of the Jonas Mekos Visual Arts Center. All of Sodeika's work could be broadly divided into three categories. The first is various "unconventional" creations, such as happenings, sound installations, works of the genre of instrumental theater, etc. This is where the composer expressed himself mainly in the 1980s, and the most famous of his works in this area was "Baza Gaza" - an event for audio and video tapes and smells, which at that time (1988) caused many and varied, quite controversial reactions. The composer's transition from this kind of creative activity to music for dramatic performances seems quite natural. The result of the close and long-term cooperation between the director Oskars Koršunov and the composer Gintars Sodeika is the unique role of music in their performances: there is always a lot of music, it actively directs the dramaturgical course of the performance, modeling it according to its own, internal regularities of musical forms. Another area of ​​Gintaras Sodeika's creativity is "conventional" chamber, vocal, choral, symphonic music. There is also no lack of distinctive "theatricality" or creative connections with modern pop culture. For example, one of his works most often played in both Lithuanian and foreign concert halls - "Sound Ontology No. 2" for two pianos - is an intriguing stylization of techno music for traditional instruments and a traditional concert environment. The concert direction of Sodeika's work is extended by compositions with elements of minimalism and jazz (such as "Tremors" for ten instruments), where humor and playfulness often combine with a kind of strict, harsh sound - this is one of the paradoxes that are characteristic of this author's music in general.