April 17 at Paliesius Manor – eight cellos, one pianist, the hypnotic, pulsating music of Philip Glass, and two works by Lithuanian composers related to the minimalist tradition.

The centerpiece of the program is American composer Philip Glass’s suite “Dracula”, written for a cello octet and piano. In this concert, “Cello Club” will perform in this line-up for the first time – the ensemble, having grown to an octet, will play together with pianist Indrė Baikštytė. This version for cello octet and piano was created by Ph. Glass’s longtime collaborator, pianist and conductor Michael Riesman. The piece creates a slow, hypnotic soundscape – a pulsating, layered structure, with the dramaturgy developing through slowly changing, varied repetitions.

The work was born at the end of the 20th century when “Universal Pictures” invited Ph. Glass to compose a new soundtrack for Tod Browning’s classic 1931 film “Dracula”. Since there is almost no music in the original version of the film, the composer chose the instrumentation of a string quartet – a chamber line-up that allows for the creation of both an intimate and a tense emotional field, avoiding direct genre clichés. This music was first performed in collaboration with the legendary ensemble “Kronos Quartet”.

Alongside Ph. Glass’s music, the program will feature works by Lithuanian composers Justė Janulytė and Rytis Mažulis – two different compositions related to the minimalist tradition. In J. Janulytė’s piece “Unanime”, the cello octet is perceived as a single organism – a seamless, breathing sonic body in which individual lines dissolve into a common timbral flow. Meanwhile, R. Mažulis’s “Circulatio” is based on the principle of cyclical movement – repetitions, rotation, and a precisely organized progression that takes on a live, pulsating form during the performance. Both works, in their own way, extend the same idea of music as a constantly changing system developing in the flow of time.