Having debuted at the festival with her exhibition Portraits of “Vilnius Jazz” two years ago, the photo artist Greta Skaraitienė is welcoming concert-goers to the Old Theatre of Vilnius this year with a new series of her works on jazz theme Brass MANIA.

“My exhibitions Portraits of “Vilnius Jazz”, Layers of Jazz, Stuck in Jazz transformed, expanded and grew into the jazz photo series Brass MANIA. These photographs feature musicians playing wind instruments: saxophones, trumpets, tubas, flutes and even whistles.

Anything is possible in jazz! Even playing unusual things, like children’s whistles. When I take photographs, I admire the musicians’ adept playing. With every breath they take, I stop breathing and wait for the exhalation to bring the wonderful sounds I try to capture in my photography,” says Skaraitienė, who has been a photographer for almost three decades.

The exhibition in the foyer of the Old Theatre of Vilnius will showcase well-known foreign musicians and Lithuanian greats who performed in the Vilnius Jazz festival in 2015–2023. These include the charismatic Marshall Allen, the world’s oldest jazz musician from Chicago; New Yorker alto saxophone star Lakecia Benjamin; one of the foremost British jazz talents Shabaka Hutchings; saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell; Lithuanians Petras Vyšniauskas, Liudas Mockūnas, Kazimieras Jušinskas and Mikas Kurtinaitis, the winner of the Vilnius Jazz Young Power 2023 competition, as well as others.

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Greta Skaraitienė graduated in photography from the then Vilnius Higher School of Technology in 1990 and has been working as a photojournalist and photographer since 1993. Her photos are regularly published in the most important Lithuanian media channels.

Since 2005, Skaraitienė’s works have been selected annually for the exhibitions of the Lithuanian Press Photo finalists. In 2022, her work became the winner of the Lithuanian Press Photo 2022 in the Entertainment category and won the Golden Frame award.

The artist has held solo exhibitions Bellies (Pilvai), 100 Portraits of Real People (100 tikrų žmonių portretų), Layers of Jazz (Džiazo sluoksniai), Stuck in Jazz (Užstrigę džiaze), Sweet Moment (Saldi akimirka), Our Tine Lives (Mažyčiai mūsų gyvenimai).