Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė

Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė (b. 1957) studied composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music with Prof. Eduardas Balsys from 1975 to 1980 before entering the Moscow P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory for a two-year period of assistantship under Prof. Nikolai Sidelnikov.

Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė teaches courses on music theory and history ("The history of orchestral styles", "Orchestra and score", "Sight-reading of symphonic scores", "Dramatic Form in Opera") at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre since 1983. For her course on the history of orchestral styles she compiled an anthology of musical examples entitled "The Sounding Anthology", a valuable collection of resource materials for everybody concerned with the development of orchestral styles in Western music. Apart from her work at the Academy, she is an editor-in-chief (since 1998) of the montly "Muzikos barai" ("Domains of Music") published by the Lithuanian Musicians' Union. Under her management, "Muzikos barai" developed into a full-length magazine, which first appeared with a CD supplement, featuring the most celebrated Lithuanian performers, in January 2000. Her publications include over 700 musical critiques published in various Lithuanian and international periodicals during the last decade. In 2005-7 Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė was General Manager of the Klaipėda State Music Theatre.

She is a prize-winner of two Stasys Šimkus Choral Composition Competitions ("The Sixteen-year-olds", in 1983, and "Druskininkai Fairy Tale", in 1986). She has also won distinctions for vocal ("The Sixteen-year-olds", "On Return from Far Away", "Nemunėlis", "Hawks, Brothers") and vocal-symphonic works ("Mažvydas") at a number of international and republican competitions (1977, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1989). A collection of her choral works entitled "Tavo skaidriam skambesy" ("In Your Lucid Sound") was published by the "Vaga" Publishers in Vilnius, 1988. Her other works are included in various musical collections.

Her creative work focuses primarily on the development of symphonic and vocal style devised by Richard Wagner and taken up by his immediate successors - Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. From her first large-scale work, the opera "Mažvydas", Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė has displayed an extensive use of leitmotif system, the serial technique, and through-composed forms of vocal and symphonic music, flavoured with aleatory and experimenting with sound colour. In all her scenic works she pays close attention to dramatic capabilities of choir and ballet.