Rytis Ambrazevičius

Rytis Ambrazevičius is has a master’s degree in physics and a doctor’s degree in musicology, so he is a physicist making music under the skin. The sources of his music go back to his childhood, a village in Aukštaitija (Eastern Lithuania), where he used to sing with his grandfather. The year 1986 was special to Rytis – he joined the folk band of the History Faculty of Vilnius University, immersed himself deeply into folk songs and began to take interest in kanklės. He also studied vocal technique, acoustics and music psychology, and wrote a large number of scientific works on these topics. Today Ambrazevičius is a Professor of Kaunas University of Technology and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and a member of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union and various international scientific societies. However, despite his intense teaching and scientific activity, Ambrazevičius remains faithful to traditional singing – he develops this style together with his folk band Intakas and runs courses in traditional singing, also outside Lithuania. He is also no stranger to various experiments of marrying folk music with other musical genres. Having founded the post-folk band Namo some time ago, today he sings, plays and composes music for the folk-rock band Atalyja. He also plays solo kanklės in the traditional and post-folk manners – both accompanying to ancient Lithuanian folk songs and creating his own improvisations.

Algirdas Klova