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I wrote Hightet based on two old ideas I had for years. One is a direct association with the string instruments for me, as the violin player. I often joke, you can recognise a violinist by his/her exhausted from the high frequencies look. Here I explore this very high and sometimes not very pleasant register of the instrument. The second idea I got when hearing composers Johannes Schöllhorn’s violin concerto, written inspired by the imaginative changing view which he sees when turning around his axis. The long continuous glissando in violin part was describing view of the sea and it created amazing effect on me - feeling of changing space and static time, and association with something continuous but monumental.
Composer: Rūta Vitkauskaitė
Ruta Vitkauskaite’s (b.1984) musical interests are widely varied – while working in the field of classical composition, she has also dedicated much of her time for research in collaborative music creation and music personalisation. Ruta is a recipient of Royal Philharmonic Society composition prize, and is holding PhD in Composition from the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her collaborative electro-acoustic opera for blind-folded audience, Confessions (Spatial Opera Company) has won Golden Stage Cross in Lithuania, and since then has toured across Lithuania, Sweden and EU. Her Walking Opera (opera co-created with local communities and presented as sound-walk around local areas), has been premiered in Aarhus Capital of Culture 2017, and re-created in Notting Hill, London. Her ensemble and orchestral compositions have been five times awarded as Best Composition of the Year by Lithuanian Composer's Union, while her music has been performed in festivals across EU, including Gaudeamus, Operadagen (NL), Apeldoorn, Sound (UK), Norbeg, BZZZ, Halland (SE), Gaida, NOA (LT), Q-O2 Winter fest (BE), SUSA (DK) and has been broadcast on Lithuanian National TV, LRT Classic, BBC Radio 3, Deutschlandradio Kultur (a special one hour long portrait).
Ruta has also been active initiator of experimental music projects, from collaborative groups to large scale festivals: she was director of Druskomanija festival, and laboratory The Process in Lithuania for several years, facilitator of New Music Incubator in Nordic/Baltic countries and across EU, facilitator and tutor at ComposersPlus Summer Academy, and currently – initiator of CoMA, Contemporary Music for All, Glasgow branch.