A commanding artistic presence known for marked interpretations with structural clarity, tonal nuance, and profound depth of understanding, Rūta Kuzmickas is a Paris based Lithuanian-American pianist. Most recently, she has appeared as guest artist in Isernia, Italy as a part of festival Tetracordo, in the Gers region of France for TerrOpera, and in Paris at the Lithuanian Embassy. While retaining a focus on classical repertoire, she also performs concerts that weave contemporary ideas into classical works, such as her performance on Radio France of a new chamber work by François Moysan, and concerts in Paris, and Berlin with program entitled ‘Loneliness’ in which she and cellist Johannes Pzygodda explore the inner workings of the Rachmaninoff Cello and Piano Sonata by intersplicing original poetry by Rūta alongside works by Glass, Vasks, and Messiaen.
A competition pianist by age 8 and concerto soloist by age 9, she studied with Ekaterina Melkamini and later Jean-David Coen before earning her Bachelor’s and Masters degrees in piano performance from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where she worked with Dr. Robert Roux and Dr. Jon Kimura Parker. At the Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, she was awarded second prize in the Prix Ravel, and at the Aspen Music Festival and School, she shared a recital with esteemed pianist and pedagogue Ann Schein at Harris Concert Hall. As a two-time winner of the Young Artists Debut Van Buren Concerto Competition, she performed Chopin and Rachmaninoff piano concertos with orchestra at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and in 2014 she appeared as a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist on NPR’s renowned radio program From the Top.
Ruta has brought her large body of creative expression across two continents, performing celeste in the Oregon Symphony premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s “The Right to be Forgotten”, having her poetry selected by Caroline Shaw to be set for piano and voice for “Solataire”, as well as working actively on libretti for contemporaries Alex Berko, Max Vinetz, Sarah Grace Graves, and Alexandre Jamar. Ruta’s explorations in language extend past libretti and take form in two published collections of poetry: Flash Flood Fiction followed by Per Se Phone, which was published by No Reply Press.
At the piano, Ruta has also appeared as a guest artist at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and in Hunter Noack’s In a Landscape series, performing on a Steinway concert grand under open skies in the Pacific Northwest. She celebrates the release of her recordings of the complete Chopin Ballades, with more releases on the horizon, including Mozart’s Sonata K. 379 recorded in France with flutist Thomaz Tavares.