LENsemble founder and artistic leader, composer and conductor Vykintas Baltakas studied composition with Vytautas Barkauskas at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, before studying composition with Wolfgang Rihm and conducting with Andreas Weiss in Karlsruhe from 1993 to 1997. He subsequently studied in Paris at the Conservatoire National Supérieur and took a one-year course at IRCAM. Conductors and composers make up two sides of the coin for the busiest of musicians – an attitude shared by Peter Eötvös who was his teacher between 1994 and 1997. He has also been a regular guest at festivals and with ensembles throughout Europe. Institutions that have commissioned works by Baltakas include the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Biennale, the Wiener Festwochen/Klangforum Wien, the Ensemble Modern and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/musica viva.
Vykintas Baltakas has conducted renowned orchestras such as the RSO and DSO Berlin, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra as well as ensembles including Ensemble Resonanz, the Ensemble Modern and Scharoun Ensemble. He has also collaborated with composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Georg Friedrich Haas and Dieter Schnebel. In 2009, he founded the Lithuanian Ensemble Network (LEN) of which he is the driving force. Vykintas Baltakas’ works have been awarded with prizes such as the International Claudio Abbado Composition Prize (2003) and the Siemens Foundation Prize (2007). Recordings of his compositions were recently released by Ensemble musikFabrik Cologne and Ensemble Modern. From September 2015, Vykintas Baltakas was a guest Professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and in the same year started his composition class at the conservatory in Maastricht. He currently also holds a professorship at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre where he teaches performance of contemporary music, a programme which he created together with Liudas Mockūnas in 2016.
www.baltakas.net
Photo: Daniel Wetzel