Zita Bružaitė (LT)
„If Lithuania has a Haydn, her name is Zita Bružaitė. A resident of the country's second largest city, Kaunas, she is a composer, musician, pedagogue, and festival administrator. She composes for adults, children, the stage, concert halls, and schools - based on demand and her own ideas. Though similar to Haydn in the wealth and wit of her ideas, and her aversion to hurting the ear, her music does not sound like his, other than perhaps in the piece called "Hi Haydn" for two oboes, bassoon and harpsichord. Zita Bružaitė has her own style, which includes components of jazz, and ethnic and medieval music and thinking“. (Göran Bergandal).
Zita Bružaitė (b.1966) graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music (1994). The composer previously emphasized the two trends in her creative work. One of them includes works based on certain philosophical ideas, which are mainly performed in the contemporary music festivals; due to specific philosophical concepts embodied in music, definition of genre here is of minor importance.
Another group of compositions includes traditional concert music for various instruments (clarinet and piano, two pianos, Lithuanian folk instruments and others). Music for children, instrumental pieces, as well as compositions for choir and folk instruments, could be further defined as distinctive areas of her concert music.
The structural organization in Zita Bružaitė's music is so organic that the rationality of construction is almost imperceptible by ear. Her concert works are often influenced by theatrical imagery; here one can hear echoes of jazz and ethnic music, medieval asceticism as well as processions of modern harmonies, rhythms, and timbres.
Jerzy Cembrzyński (PL)
He completed his music studies at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw in 1980, in the double bass class of Associate Professor Tadeusz Pelczar. Since 1979, he has worked in the orchestra of the National Philharmonic as a double bassist. In 2001, he became a soloist with the orchestra.
In 1999, he participated in a world tour with the Polish Festival Orchestra under Krystian Zimerman, marking the 150th anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth. The tour culminated in the recording of Chopin’s piano concertos for Deutsche Grammophon. He is also a Grammy Award winner as a soloist (for the recording of works by Krzysztof Penderecki).
He began his work as a composer over 20 years ago. He has recorded ten albums featuring his own compositions and arrangements. He is the author of, among others, the Polish Mass, the oratorio The Righteous, dedicated to Mother Matylda Getter who saved Jews during World War II, the oratorio They Said He Lost about Saint Zygmunt Szczęsny-Feliński, the Laments cycle to the poetry of Aldona Kraus, and the Jacob’s Oratorio, composed for the 500th anniversary of the oldest Gothic church in Warsaw, among many others.
Since 2018, he has been collaborating with the AVE Foundation and the AVE Choir. Together, they have completed 12 major music projects and productions, which have been viewed by several thousand people.
