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Artūras Anusauskas

Jazz pianist

About Me

Arturas Anusauskas (born in 1964) is a jazz pianist, composer, head of jazz Department at Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

In 1983 he finished M. K. Čiurlionis Art School and in 1988 graduated from the Lithuanian Music Academy. He has given a number of solo piano concerts and performed with the State Symphonic and Lithuanian Chamber Orchestras. At the age of 14 he became interested in jazz music. As a student of the Lithuanian Music Academy he became the 1st prize winner in the International Jazz Improvisation competition in Vilnius (1985). He has been performing not only solo but also with the most eminent Lithuanian jazz performers in Lithuania and abroad. He has also participated in various jazz forums, seminars, symposiums in Lithuania and foreign countries. The most memorable were Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen Acoustic Jazz Symposium (1993) and Jazz, Rock and Vanguard Music at Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium starring jazz professionals from all over the world (1991),the Berklee College seminars in Germany. Now currently teaches jazz improvisation at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since then, he has played with the most prominent Lithuanian jazz musicians, including V. Labutis, and the quintet Gone with Jazz (1996), and the Danish vocalist A. Kierulf and the American percussionist Aras Biskis. With his quintet the winner of the Grand Prix at the Birštonas Jazz Festival in 1994, he has appeared at jazz festivals in Romania, Minsk and Tallinn, and has given concerts in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and elsewhere.

In 1983, Anusauskas began appearing also as a soloist. His major performances include Gershwin‘s Rhapsody in Blue, performed with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gintaras Rinkevičius. In 1997, Anusauskas became a laureate of the International Improvisation Competition in Leipzig, winning also a special prize for the best polyphonic improvisation.

Anusauskas has participated in the jazz festivals of Kaunas (1995, 2005,2006,2007), Birštonas 2006,2008, Vilnius (1996), Montreux (1996, 1998, 2004), Minsk, Bucharest and Kishinev, and has given concerts in Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. For a time, he was artistic director of the international student piano music festival, Jazz Improvisation. He has given master classes in Romania (1994), Moldova (1999, 2001), and at the Sibelius Music Academy in Helsinki (2005), participated in international project HARMOS (2004). In the spring of 2003, he participated in the International Jazz-Transit Festival in Ekaterinburg (Russia), and in the summer that year gave concerts in Moscow, Slovenia and Germany.

The pianist has recorded CDs: Sleeplessness, with the group Gone with Jazz (1996), Jazz Classics (2002) and Feast of Silence (2003) with the Artūras Anusauskas Jazz Quartet as well as participated recording CDs Christmas Flowers (1999), Die Frauen von Kurt Weill (2002), Gipsy Songs and Romances (2002).

Making full use of his academic background, Anusauskas intelligently and inventively, yet at the same time spontaneously, combines of jazz and academic music.

My Jazz Story

I love jazz because it has a swing, improvisation and all styles of music.