Martynas Levickis and Accoakademija
The accordionist Martynas Levickis (b. 1990) is a musician with an exceptional talent and temperament. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and at Musikene, the Higher School of Music of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. He began performing while still a teenager, mesmerising audiences with his virtuosity, style and charisma. He has performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Geneva Camerata, Manchester Camerata, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra. The Independent described Levickis as ‘a man who is single-handedly reinventing the accordion’. Following his popularity, he did not content himself with just a solo career, and founded Accoakademija, which organises master-classes for composers, and other educational projects. Since 2012, it has organised the Accordion Music Week (Akordeono muzikos savaitė) festival, through which it seeks to show the accordion as a versatile instrument, suitable for solo performances of contemporary music, as well as part of an ensemble. Accordion Music Week traditionally closes with a joint concert-marathon of accordionists, which was enterered in the ‘Lithuanian Book of Records’ in 2014 as the country’s longest performance by accordion players.