Marius Salynas (b. 1975) began his musical career as a musician with various jazz, rock and experimental groups while studying violin, piano and double bass at the Juozas Naujalis Gymnasium of Music in Kaunas. After graduating from the Vilnius Conservatory where he obtained a diploma in the arts management, he started working as a music producer and continued writing music for commercial advertisements and television. Many of his works in this specific genre have garnered him high distinctions at a number of national and international competitions and festivals. In 2002, he also debuted as a theatre composer, in the production of Daniel Danis’ Le Chant du dire-dire (Dūda-Dūdo daina) at the State Youth Theatre in Vilnius (directed by Gintaras Liutkevičius). He went on to study composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with Prof. Rytis Mažulis (2003–2009) and at various international courses and workshops for composers in Silesia, Poland, with composers Vaclovas Augustinas and Aleksander Lason (2006), and at the Académie musicale de Villecroz in France, with Japanese composer and marimba player Keiko Abe (2007). In the meantime he also started presenting his academic output at contemporary music concerts.
Salynas’ work in the latter genre has been featured at various contemporary music festivals in Lithuania, including Jauna Muzika and Gaida in Vilnius, Druskomanija in Druskininkai, and Iš Arti in Kaunas. He has also taken part in several interdisciplinary art projects, such as an audiovisual piece Ratas (Wheel), in collaboration with the graphic artist Birutė Zokaitytė (2008); the sound installation Literatų gatvė for the launch of the project to celebrate the work of Lithuanian literary artists, scholars and translators with the plaques mounted on the walls of the Literary Street in Vilnius (2009); and the sound installation with painters Linas Liandzbergis and Vytautas Vasyliūnas at the Arka Gallery in Vilnius (2011). In 1999, he released an album of instrumental music for relaxation; some tracks from this album have been frequently used in TV films, news reports and internet media ever since then. The album of his original pop songs Karalių delnuose (In the Kings’ Palms) and rock music album Stranger appeared in 2008.
The style of Marius Salynas’ art music seems to form independently from his work in the other genres. According to music critic Jūratė Katinaitė, some of his works are more like sketches, in which he explores the expressive possibilities of various instruments, combinations of their timbres, and novel formal models. These works can be said to toe the post-minimalist line, representing characteristically short repetitive patterns, ‛paratonality’, and quasi-Baroque spirit. However, his main field of artistic work is related to the use of new digital technologies in composition process. Most of his works are computer, electronic and electroacoustic pieces, distinguished for restrained experimentation and narrativity. At the same time he pursues an individual aesthetics of sound design and dynamism of overall structure in a musical work.
