Gundega Šmite
Gundega Šmite (b. 1977) was born in Riga, Latvia. She holds a doctoral degree in arts from the Latvian Music Academy. Since 2007, she has been a lecturer at the Latvian Music Academy. From 2009 to 2012, she held the chairpersonship of the Latvian Composers’ Union. She has won numerous prizes and recognitions for her work, including the International Young Composers’ Competition at the Culturescapes Festival (Switzerland) and the Latvian Grand Music Award (2019). Her works have been performed by Berlin, Swedish and Latvian Radio Choir, BBC singers, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Lucilin (Belgium), BIT20 (Norway) and Percussions des Strasbourg, among others. Currently, she is based in Thessaloniki, Greece.