Lithuanian National Prize in Arts and Culture winner, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, grew up when Lithuania was still forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, a time when people were often afraid to speak openly. She realised quite early in her life that music was a medium where she could freely express herself without any kind of self-censoring.

By the time of the early years of the newly established Lithuanian democracy, Martinaitytė was studying composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. One of her principal teachers there was the fiercely independent Bronius Kutavičius (1932–2021), whose defiant primal music was even more radical than the by-then hegemonous musical modernism that had been previously discouraged throughout Eastern bloc countries.

Martinaitytė’s appetite for musical experimentation was strongly encouraged, but so was her innate ability to craft extraordinarily beautiful sonic landscapes that contained their own non-syntactic, yet clearly perceptible narratives, which continue to grow progressively richer with each new work.

In 2020 she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Lithuanian National Prize in Arts and Culture winner, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, grew up when Lithuania was still forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, a time when people were often afraid to speak openly. She realised quite early in her life that music was a medium where she could freely express herself without any kind of self-censoring.

By the time of the early years of the newly established Lithuanian democracy, Martinaitytė was studying composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. One of her principal teachers there was the fiercely independent Bronius Kutavičius (1932–2021), whose defiant primal music was even more radical than the by-then hegemonous musical modernism that had been previously discouraged throughout Eastern bloc countries.

Martinaitytė’s appetite for musical experimentation was strongly encouraged, but so was her innate ability to craft extraordinarily beautiful sonic landscapes that contained their own non-syntactic, yet clearly perceptible narratives, which continue to grow progressively richer with each new work.

In 2020 she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.