Programmes

Concert programmes for solo piano, duo and ensemble. Length, line-up and terms are agreed with each venue separately.

1. 01

   The music of Bill Evans — solo

   Solo piano · full programme

   One of Straižys’s central specialisations. A full solo programme of Bill Evans — the pianist whose records were his first encounter with jazz, and to whom he keeps returning. The programme has been presented at festivals more than once, among them the Kristupas Festival in the Bernardine Garden in Vilnius.

2. 02

   The music of Bill Evans — quartet

   With Deimantas Balys, Aliaksei Kryshtal and Jonas Filmanavičius

   The same music for four. In Evans’s writing what matters is not the theme but what happens between the players once it ends — in a quartet that conversation is at its clearest.

3. 03

   Solo: classical and jazz

   Piano · concert hall or church

   An evening with no breaks between eras. Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Debussy stand beside Oscar Peterson, and between them improvisation, where classical harmony and jazz freedom stop being two different things. The programme rests on twelve years of classical training and on jazz studies in The Hague and Rotterdam.

4. 04

   Piano and voice

   Duo with a singer · jazz standards and the sung classics

   A programme for two — piano and voice. Viktorija Gečytė, Kotryna Juodzevičiūtė, Eivilė Miceikaitė and Godo Yorke have sung with Straižys. The repertoire is chosen for each evening: from Ellington and Gershwin to the contemporary sung classics. Part of the programme he performs himself, singing at the instrument.

5. 05

   007: songs from the James Bond films

   With soprano Marija Arutiunova · original arrangements

   The arrangements are the real surprise here. The harmony of the Bond songs is rewritten so that Rachmaninoff and Scriabin open up in places: a wide, dense texture across the whole keyboard, carrying the weight of late Romanticism and its silences. Sixty years of one film series’ songs gathered into a single evening — from “Diamonds Are Forever” to “Skyfall” and “No Time to Die”. Piano and soprano without orchestra, and nothing is missing for its absence. The programme has been performed at St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius.

6. 06

   Film music

   Solo piano · church or hall

   Film themes rewritten for the piano: “Interstellar”, “Amélie”, “The Godfather”, “Titanic”. The programme is performed regularly at St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius, where it sells out.

7. 07

   Private events

   Reception, dinner, formal occasion

   Piano, or piano and voice, for a private evening. Programme and volume are matched to the room and the occasion; the repertoire runs from jazz standards to classical music and film themes.