viii m. k. čiurlionis international piano and organ competition

Leonidas Melnikas

| Lithuania

LEONIDAS MELNIKAS (Lithuania) is a professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, where he heads the department of organ and harpsichord and is the chairman of the Senate. He graduated from the National Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis School of Art in Vilnius and then studied organ with prof. Nina Oksentian, piano and musicology at the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, receiving first an honors diploma and then a Ph.D. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Franz Liszt Higher Music School in Weimar with prof. Rainer Bohm, where he consulted with the legendary organist prof. Johannes Ernst Köhler. Prof. L. Melnikas has given organ concerts at the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Riga Cathedral (Dom), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. He has performed with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra, the Minsk Chamber Orchestra, the Rostock Philharmonic Orchestra and the Thuringian Symphony Orchestra in Gotha. He has made numerous organ recordings, which were released in Lithuania, in Russia, in the USA and in Portugal. He has published many academic works and articles, including the works on organ music. His book "C.P.E. Bach and the Baltics: On the Brothers Grotthuss" has been translated into German. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Daugavpils University (Latvia).