The album Acting Music by Rita Mačiliūnaitė represents a great deal of what she has worked on as a theatre composer as yet. Comprehensive in its wholeness, it includes music for remarkably diverse genres of performing arts, such as contemporary dance, unconventional theatre, dance opera and other types of stage performances involving puppets, masks, sculptures and objects.
Her music in the large format productions, intriguingly, often becomes “almost imperceptible,” while the layer of sound generated by the non-verbal theatre – particularly that involving dance, puppetry and objects – emancipates and takes on certain functions of acting and dramaturgy. This is why for the Acting Music the composer has selected the pieces that knit into their own distinctive narrative, while the text is considered merely as a musical sound. Therefore, the album may be seen as an attempt to find an answer, whether theatre music remains meaningful without stage movement, scenography and drama.
In other words, while selecting compositions for her album, Rita Mačiliūnaitė wanted her music to be heard as an uninterrupted whole. “I value consistency, both in all of my music and in this particular album,” she said. “Even pop releases are nowadays often put together as single stories, with textual additions accompanying each piece. I find this kind of narrative-building charming.”
Rita Mačiliūnaitė’s album Acting Music also features extensive explanatory texts, QR codes and photographs.
credits
released March 16, 2021
Sound engineers: Vytautas Bedalis, Monika Zenkevičiūtė
Tracks 7-10 recorded at Mama Studios, 2020
Editor: Asta Pakarklytė
Translator: Erika Lastovskytė
Cover photo: Laura Vansavičienė
Designer: Gabrielė Vingraitė
Producer: Sigita Ilgauskaitė
Released by Music Information Centre Lithuania
Suppported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
Partners: contemporary music theater production house Operomanija, Lithuanian Composers' Union
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