The members of LENsemble share the openness to a wide range of creative experiences and ideas. The audience will be able to witness that in the programme devised for Vilnius Jazz festival – a musical portrait of Louis Andriessen (1939–2021), one of the foremost Dutch composers of his generation, who combined the principles of jazz and avant-garde composing in his work.

The composer’s early works feature the use of tape and his experiments pertaining to various contemporary music movements, while his mature compositions display elements of jazz, European atonal modernism and rhythms of American minimalism. Since the 1970s, the composer has written music for atypical combinations of instruments.

All this will be showcased in the works selected for Andriessen’s musical portrait: Workers Union for any loud-sounding group of instruments (1975), Il Duce for tape (1973), M is for Man, Music, Mozart for jazz vocalist and ensemble to the texts by Jeroen van der Linden and Peter Greenaway (1991).

Founded in 2009 by composer and conductor Vykintas Baltakas, LENsemble (Lithuanian Ensemble Network) presents the most interesting foreign modern music trends and their representatives in Lithuania and promotes the new Lithuanian works abroad. The ensemble enables country’s most prominent performers to specialise in the interpretation of contemporary music by bringing them together for individual projects by an instrumental ensemble constantly reinventing its line-up.

LENsemble’s participants include Chordos String Quartet, Kaskados Piano Trio, St Christopher Woodwind Quintet, accordionist Raimondas Sviackevičius, saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas, and other renowned musicians.

The ensemble has developed and presented many original and innovative programmes. One of the most impressive projects of recent years has been a series of seven monographic concerts dedicated to the capital’s jubilee and featuring works by the world’s contemporary music celebrities who have composed works to be performed at specific venues in Vilnius.

The ensemble has performed at major international events and concert halls in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Egypt, Serbia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia. It has presented monographic programmes of Bronius Kutavičius, Osvaldas Balakauskas and Julius Juzeliūnas among other giants of contemporary music.

Louis Andriessen was born into a family of musicians: his father, uncle, brother and sister are all composers. He studied at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague and attended Luciano Berio’s lessons in Milan and Berlin.

His range of inspiration was wide, from the work of the American Charles Ives to writings on shipbuilding and atomic theory. Andriessen’s works have twice been awarded the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize, the most important prize for composers in the Netherlands, as well as the Grawemeyer, 3M Music, Edison, Marie-Josée Kravis and other prizes.

He has been commissioned by many renowned ensembles, including San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonics and New York Philharmonics, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta, the US ensemble Bang on a Can All Stars, and the Dutch Chamber Orchestra Asko|Schönberg. Two Dutch ensembles, De Volharding and Hoketus, have borrowed the titles of Andriessen’s works for their names.

The composer also contributed to the development of contemporary music as a teacher. Since the late 1970s, he has taught at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague and lectured in various countries. His pupils have included such renowned composers as Michel van der Aa, Julia Wolfe and Steve Martland.

A versatile performer, Dutch soprano Naomi Beeldens has a predilection for all things experimental. She likes exploring the boundaries between genres, genders, disciplines, high & low cultures.

After completing her degree in Modern Literature at the University of Antwerp, Naomi studied classical singing at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp. She was Artist-in-Residence at the Muziektheater Transparant and has appeared many times in its operas. She is also a regular soloist in productions of ChampdAction, One Trick Pony, HERMESensemble, Zonzo Compagnie and Post Uit Hessdalen. In 2019, she was nominated for the Schaunard Opera Award for her role as Alice in the opera Harriet.

Beeldens has collaborated with conductors Manoj Kamps, Philippe Herreweghe, Frank Agsteribbe, theatre director Guy Joosten, singer Liesa Van der Aa, harpsichordist Ewald Demeyere and composers such as Annelies Van Parys, Szymon Brzoska, Maarten Buyl, Hilda Paredes and Jan Van Outryve.

As of September 2021, she is affiliated to the Conservatory of Antwerp as coach of Artistic Graduation Projects.

Vykintas Baltakas, the initiator and leader of LENsemble, was one of the first Lithuanian musicians to discover his creative path and audience in the West. The composer left Lithuania in 1993 after completing three-years of courses at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. He went on to study at the Karlsruhe Academy of Music in Germany with the renowned composer Wolfgang Rihm, studied conducting with another famous composer Peter Eötvös, had a fellowship at the Paris Conservatoire and L’Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique et Musik (IRCAM) in Paris, and studied philosophy in Belgium.

Baltakas’ works have been performed by leading ensembles in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries, including Ensemble Modern, the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, and he has been active as a conductor in Europe.

His work has been awarded prizes at the Darmstadt International Courses (1996), the International Competition de Piano XXème siècle d’Orléans (2002), the International Claudio Abbado Composition Prize (2003), and the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Advancement Award (2007).

Having gained solid experience as a composer and conductor in the West, Vykintas shares his knowledge in Lithuania. In 2016, together with jazz master Liudas Mockūnas, he created and launched a new master’s degree program for the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, combining the performance of contemporary academic as well as improvised music, so that students of both disciplines can acquire dual knowledge and skills.

This program has already harvested a generation of receptive and flexible musicians. Today, they perform at all Lithuanian contemporary music and jazz festivals and initiate various projects themselves.

Baltakas holds professorship at the LAMTA and also teaches composition at the Conservatory Maastricht (the Netherlands).