[#249] April 22, 2024
2014/2022 | Chamber Winds | Grade 5-6 | 5'-10' | Chamber Music
Two works by Lithuanian composer Justina Repečkaitė, PULSUS FLATUS VOX (for chamber winds) and ATROPINE (for Brass trio and electronics) are our Composition(s) of the Week.
Pulsus Flatus Vox was premiered on July 5, 2014, in Paris, by the soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Sophie Cherrier (flute), Alain Billard (clarinet, bass-clarinet), Jean-Christophe Vervoitte (horn), Jean-Jacques Gaudon (trumpet), Jérôme Naulais (trombone) during the ManiFeste Festival.
The work has a duration of 7 minutes.
The more recent, Atropine, for Brass trio and electronics was finished in 2022. It was commissioned by the Electrocution Festival, in Brest, France. The premiere performance took place on March 26, 2022, with the Ensemble Collegium Novem Zürich, from Switzerland, with Tomas Gallart (horn), Stephen Menotti (trombone) and Jens Bracher (trombone).
Justina Repečkaitė began her musical training with singing and piano in her native Lithuania. After graduating in composition from the Vilnius Academy of Music (2008-2012), where she studied with Osvaldas Balakauskas and Ricardas Kabelis, she moved to France to continue her studies under the Erasmus program.
In Paris, she joined Stefano Gervasoni's class at the “Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris” (2010-2011), then, at the Sorbonne Paris IV (2013-2015), obtained a degree in musicology with a specialization in medieval music, a subject for which she is passionate, and which has infused her work ever since.
In 2013-2016, she studied with Jean-Luc Hervé and Yann Maresz at the “Pôle supérieur d'enseignement artistique de la musique de Paris Boulogne-Billancourt”, from which she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in composition.
After a stopover in Lyon, where she obtained a master's degree in composition at the “Conservatoire national supérieur de musique” with Philippe Hurel and Martin Matalon (2016-2018), she returned to Paris and joined the 2019-2020 class of Ircam's “Cursus de composition et d'informatique musicale”, supervised by Thierry De Mey. Her final piece, Transduced for percussion and electronics, is presented in the main hall of the Centre Pompidou.
Her career has been marked by artistic residencies, notably at the “Fondation Singer-Polignac” in Paris (2017-2018), the “Villa Waldberta” in Munich (2022) and the “Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation” in Niederer Fläming (2023). In 2017-2018, she received a grant from the “Centre international Nadia et Lili Boulanger”. In 2018, the ensemble “Le Balcon” directed by Maxime Pascal invited her as composer-in-residence.
Justina Repečkaitė receives commissions from orchestras and festivals such as Radio France, Arte No Tempo, Electrocution, Le Balcon, Fondation Royaumont, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and Gaida, the largest contemporary music festival in the Baltic States, for which she writes several pieces for orchestra. Her compositions are also performed at Baltic Music Days, a contemporary music festival jointly created in 2021 by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and held each year in one of these states on a rotating basis. Her work Chartres is recommended by the International Rostrum of Composers and represents Lithuania at the 2015 World Music Days. At the Darmstadt Summer School in 2021, she and four percussionists have premiered Pulsating Skin, for four snare-drums and electronics.
Her works have been performed by such renowned ensembles and orchestras as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Court-Circuit, Collegium Novum Zürich, 2e2m, Spectra, Asko/Schönberg, Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, OSSIA, Platypus, ars ad hoc, Lithuanian Ensemble Network, Ithaca College Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus, Ensemble XXI. Jarhundert, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Sinfonietta Riga.
Justina Repečkaitė's music spans a wide variety of genres, from orchestral to vocal, mixed to electronic and electroacoustic. Deeply influenced by the culture of the late Middle Ages (La Cité des Dames, Vellum, Cosmatesque), her writing and musical ideas are based on geometric and mathematical concepts, and are sometimes inspired by the visual arts, as in her string quartet Unbennant-2 composed from a painting of the same title by Armenian artist Sam Grigorian.
She has been a member of the Lithuanian Composers' Union since 2015, which awarded her the "Debut of the Year" prize.
More on Justina Repeckaite