Aleksandra Kerienė and Vilius Keras, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) graduates have received the Nomination for Best Opera Recording in the 61st Grammy Awards, which were taking place earlier this month.
Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto featuring the late Dmitrij Chvorostovskij, Russian tenor, Nadine Sierra, young talent from New York Metropolitan Opera, Italian singers – tenor Francesco Demuro and bass Andrea Mastroni – Belarussian mezzo-soprano Oksana Volkova together with prominent Lithuanian singers and Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra was recorded in Kaunas in 2016. The nominated Rigoletto performance was conducted by maestro Constantine Orbelian.
The record was produced by Baltic Mobile Recordings acoustic music sound recording company, founded and headed by KTU graduates – tonmeister Aleksandra Kerienė and sound engineer Vilius Keras.
“I read the message that our record has been nominated three times. Then I checked the list of Grammy Nominees online and started to jump from happiness”, says Kerienė.
Her partner in personal life and in work Vilius Keras admitted that to record an opera is a very challenging endeavour as it is a very complicated genre: “There are many soloists, a lot of singers and action; not all of this is happening on the stage. Onto the record we have to transfer the whole picture”, says Keras.
Kerienė says that she has always been fascinated by music and knew that she’d like to connect her career with it. After graduating from music technologies at KTU Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities she was one of the 4 students accepted to the masters at The Royal Danish Academy of Music. Aleksandra is a tonmeister, a sound director for classical recordings, working with orchestras and classical music performers. There is only a handful of these professionals in the world, and even fewer in Lithuania.
“My work is truly amazing – sometimes I feel as if I am a painter adding colours to a certain moment. I am happy if my work increases happiness both to musicians and to listeners”, says Kerienė.
This is not the first nomination for Keras and Kerienė. In 2014, their record Virtuoso Rossini featuring Lawrence Brownlee and Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra was nominated for Grammy in Classical Vocals category.
