Music Academy

Music exists in our lives as an exceptionally complex phenomenon, as an art and as a science which requires not just having a natural gift but also long and thorough studies. We are ready to accept talented young people who have chosen to follow the path of music and help them become professional performers and educators of highest qualifications.

Assoc. Prof. Saulius Gerulis, Dean of the VMU Music Academy

Kaunas boasts deep-rooted traditions of training professional musicians, continuing since at least the beginning of the 20th century. Artists that were groomed in a Kaunas’ music school of higher education during the interwar period contributed vastly to the culture of both the provisional capital and the country. Suspended during the Soviet years, the training of musicians with highest qualification resumed in Kaunas in 1989.

VMU Music Academy is a constantly changing, dynamic part of the university, where the best traditions of music education are balanced with broad general university education. In other words, students can master the performing arts, as the lecturers share their professional experience directly and teach a particular specialty in a consistent manner, all the while taking in a broader spectrum of studies: languages, the humanities, social sciences, etc. This develops an individual who is intellectual, creative and able to easily adapt to the job market.

The Music Academy is keeping and constantly strengthening close ties with social partners, heads and employees of various cultural and educational institutions (theatres, music collectives, philharmonics, music schools and gymnasiums). These ties help to create conditions for the future professionals to acquire practical experience in concerts and pedagogy while they are still studying, and successfully fill a job position in the same field after they have graduated. Close contact between the lecturers and the students during the studies often evolves into further creative collaborations.

Currently the VMU Music Academy prepares professional performers of instrumental music, singers and teachers. It has recently started offering the full-time Master’s degree programme of Performance Art in English. The program can be studied while focusing on one of the following specializations: piano, strings (guitar, alto, double-bass, violin, cello), brass and percussion (baritone, bassoon, flute, clarinet, percussion, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, tuba, French horn), jazz (bass guitar, singing, flute, piano, guitar, clarinet, percussion, saxophone, trumpet, trombone), stage genre singing, accompaniment, chamber ensemble (strings, brass and percussion), concert genre singing.

Faculty In Brief

Community

  • approx. 150 students
  • approx. 80 lecturers (famous artists, professional music performers and theorists)

Structure

  • Departments of Singing, Jazz, Piano, Music Theory and Pedagogy, Instrumental Music

Master's Degree Studies in English

BA and MA Courses in English

Exchange Opportunities

  • One semester of studies at one of the universities participating in the LLP/Erasmus Programme. 

Student and Teacher Activities

  • Mixed Choir
  • VMU Music Academy Chamber Orchestra