Ruta Vitkauskaite: The Open Fund for Music Creators
Modern Chants
Rūta Vitkauskaitė is a composer, performer and producer of contemporary music events. She holds PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (London 2017); Royal Philharmonic Society award (2020); and Golden Stage Cross Award (LT) for collaborative opera for blind-folded audience, ‘Confessions’ (having toured EU with 47 shows to date), besides many other smaller awards and prizes. Her particular interest is bringing contemporary music to wider communities through participatory environment – in 2019 she has initiated and now is a music director of CoMA – Contemporary Music for All Glasgow branch.
Modern Chants, supported by PRS Foundation, is a crowning project of Rūta’s professional skills, and her passion of bringing highest quality new music to wider communities. It will result in a semi-digital concert – a new music experience through audience participation and storytelling, livestreamed as part of Book Week Scotland. The commissioned new music works will reflect of Scotland’s onomatopoeic musical heritage, and explore deeper connection between spoken and musical sound. The audience will be invited to take part in new music performance by contributing their ideas, reflections, and even vocal expressions.
Modern Chants is a collaboration with An Lanntair (Outer Hebrides); clarinettist Joanna Nicholson (Story Specialist, Scottish Book Trust), violist Katherine Wren (Nordic Viola), poet-storyteller Dawn Wood (Templar Poetry); composers Gemma McGregor (Orkney Islands), Emily Doolittle (Research Department at the RCS).