Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on April 15, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute, the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York for a panel discussion and concert.
The year 2025 marks a significant date in Lithuanian cultural history: the 150th anniversary of the birth of the esteemed artist, composer, and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911). Over the decades, his legacy has continued to captivate contemporary curators, writers, and art critics, particularly his visionary fusions of sound, color, and symbolism. Living through an era of emerging European national identities, he envisioned a future where Lithuanian folklore would be woven into a broader artistic utopia, drawing on the concept of musica mundana—the music of the spheres—to integrate the cosmic and the earthly. Čiurlionis’ artistic explorations have resonated beyond Lithuania, influencing generations of artists internationally. Notably, the distinguished French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1991) and Vytautas Bacevičius, who expressed profound admiration for Čiurlonis.
To commemorate this occasion, the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York, and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University present a panel discussion and concert, which will not only commemorate Čiurlionis’ work, but will also reveal the ongoing relevance of his artistic legacy. His work remains deeply intertwined with late 19th and early 20th century artistic movements, particularly Symbolism. This event aims to shed light on the enduring significance of his ideas in contemporary creative and academic discourse. During the discussion, a selection of piano works by Olivier Messiaen, Vytautas Bacevičius, and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis will be performed by a prominent Lithuanian pianist residing in New York, Gabrielius Alekna. The event will be moderated by Kristupas Bubnelis (Composer and DMA Candidate in Composition, Columbia University).
Participants
Rūta Stanevičiūtė is professor of musicology and research director at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Her current fields of interest are modernism and nationalism in 20th- to 21st-century music, philosophical and cultural issues in the analysis of contemporary music, music and politics, studies of music reception, and the theory and history of music historiography. She is the author of the monographs on ISCM and Lithuanian music modernization (2015, in English in 2024), and on moral imagination in Lithuanian music (2025), co-author of the books on Cold War and international exchange of Lithuanian Music (2018), on (trans)avant-garde movement in Lithuanian music (2023), and Lithuanian history and mythology on opera stage (2025). She has also edited and co-edited several collections of articles, including the recent collections Of Essence and Context (Springer, 2019), Microtonal Music in Central and Eastern Europe: Historical Outlines and Current Practices (Ljubljana University Press, 2020), and Music and Change in the Eastern Baltics before and after 1989 (Academic Studies Press, 2022). In 2005–10, she was chair of the musicological section at the Lithuanian Composers’ Union. Since 2020, she serves as an editor in chief of the journal Lithuanian Musicology. In 2020, she was awarded the National Prize of Lithuania.
Described by Daniel Barenboim as “a highly gifted pianist and musician,” pianist Gabrielius Alekna has built a prolific performance and recording career bridging the cultures of his birth country of Lithuania and his present home of the United States. A winner of the second prize at the 2005 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna, Austria, Gabrielius Alekna has given solo recitals at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Weill Recital Hall Carnegie Hall. As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with such ensembles as Vienna Radio Symphony (RSO Wien), Juilliard (New York), and Bilkent Symphony (Turkey) Orchestras as well as with every major orchestra and ensemble in his native Lithuania. Alekna’s discography contains multiple world première recordings by composers such as Žibuoklė Martinaitytė and Vytautas Bacevičius, issued on Ondine, Toccata Classics, and Naxos labels. He is also a researcher and editor of Vytautas Bacevičius’s piano and orchestral works. Born and raised in Vilnius, Gabrielius is the first Lithuanian to receive a Doctorate of Musical Arts from The Juilliard School, where he also earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree under the tutelage of Jerome Lowenthal. [More information: www.gabrieliusalekna.com]
Greta Berman is an art historian with nearly fifty years of teaching experience at the college level. She recently retired from her professorship in the liberal arts department of the Juilliard School in New York City where she taught from 1978 to 2024, and holds an Emerita standing. Dr. Berman received her B.A. from Antioch College, her M.A from the University of Stockholm, and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has guest-curated numbers of exhibitions, including at Lehman College, Rutgers University, and McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. Among Dr. Berman’s full-length publications are “The Lost Years: Mural Painting in New York City under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, 1935-1943”; “Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960.” (Co-author with Jeffrey Wechsler); “Synesthesia: Art and the Mind” (Co-editor and Author, with Carol Steen). She also co-authored (with Carol Steen) Chapter 34 “Synesthesia and the Artistic Process” in The Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia. Oxford University Press. She recently published Chapter 21 “The Engaged Artist: Considerations of Relevance.” In Companion to Modern Art. Wiley-Blackwell. Dr. Berman has given invited lectures in France, Belgium, China, Japan, and Lithuania, as well as in many parts of the United States. In September 2011, she participated in a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. The title of her talk was “Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: Symbolist Painter and Composer of Music.”
Kristupas Bubnelis (b. 1995) is a Lithuanian composer whose work is distinguished by its exploration of temporality and the dynamic interaction between timbre and time. His music, praised for its “decisive clarity and captivating harmonic brilliance” (Bernhard Uske, Frankfurter Rundschau), focuses on the manipulation of sound perception, where textures and timbral shifts form the core of his musical language. By focusing on the continuity and transitory states of sound, Bubnelis creates works that merge collage-like structures with fluid transformations, resulting in a rich and hybrid sonic expression. Bubnelis has composed for a variety of ensembles, symphony and chamber orchestras, and solo instruments, working across multiple genres and mediums. His music has been performed internationally in countries such as Germany, Austria, Denmark, France, Indonesia, the UK, the US, and Switzerland. Recognised as one of the leading voices in Lithuanian contemporary music, Bubnelis won the 2nd International Eduardas Balsys Young Composer’s Competition in 2021. Currently a Doctoral candidate at Columbia University in New York, Bubnelis studies under Georg Friedrich Haas. His achievements include the Lithuanian Composers’ Union Prize (2024) for best works in chamber orchestra and ensemble categories, as well as the Young Composers Prize and Best Chamber Composition Award (2022). In 2025, the Lithuanian Music Information Centre will release his debut album. [More information: https://music.columbia.edu/content/kristupas-bubnelis]
