Dr. Darius Kučinskas
Associate Professor at Kaunas University of Technology
Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
Lithuania
E-mail: darius.kucinskas@ktu.lt
Phone: +370 613 26010
Education: BM, Lithuanian Academy of Music, 1993; MM, Lithuanian Academy of Music, 1996; PhD, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, 2002.
Dr. Darius Kučinskas has an active career as a scholar and teacher. He is known as a distinguished researcher and editor of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911) music, as a professor at Kaunas University of Technology and as an international expert of European Higher Music Education.
Dr. Kučinskas studied piano and earned degrees from the Juozas Tallat-Kelpša Music College in Vilnius and the Lithuanian Academy of Music. His mentors were significant Lithuanian piano teachers Rita Sakalienė and Birutė Vainiūnaitė. As a pianist Kučinskas took part in the First J. S. Bach Piano Competition (Saarbrücken, 1992), played recitals in main Lithuanian cities and had performances in Riga, Daugavpils, Minsk and Chicago.
In 1998-2002 Kučinskas was a doctoral student at the Lithuanian Music Academy. His dissertation “Musical text of Čiurlionis (aspect of genesis)” was written under supervision of prof. Eduardas Ignatonis, defended in June 26th, 2002 and published as a separate book in 2004.
Since 2003 Dr. Kučinskas started academic carrier at Kaunas University of Technology. He was invited to form a new Department of Audiovisual Arts and served as a Head of Department for two candences (2004-2014). During that years Department became a significant university unit well known in Lithuania and abroad. There were initiated and successfully run BM, MM, MA and PhD studies, established international collaboration with universities of Vienna, Krakow, Helsinki, Edinburg, Cosenza, Nancy.. Famous European and US professors visited Department with their lectures and training sessions.
After dissertation Dr. Kučinskas started his intensive research activity. He took part in many research conferences in Europe, US and Asia: Glasgow, Paris (Sorbonne IV), Rome (Sapienza), Helsinki, Zürich, Stanford, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Nanjing, Athens, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Kaunas, and Klaipėda.
Dr. Kučinskas had also organized few international research events: International Congress on Musical Signification (Vilnius, 2008), special sections at the semiotical congresses in Paris (2004) and Nanjing (2012), and at the world congress of International Musicological Society (Zürich, 2007), a set of three international conferences „Music and Technologies“ (Kaunas, 2011-2013).
As a supervisor of doctoral studies Dr. Kučinskas conduced writing dissertations of Yumiko Nunokawa (Japan), Rokas Zubovas, Zita Bružaitė, Aušra Strazdaitė, Domas Milius, and Yusuke Ishii (Japan). All of them are active researchers and artists, well known in Lithuania and abroad.
Dr. Kučinskas’ research interests focuse on the music of Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911) and early Lithuanian sound recordings (piano rolls). Other research interests include microhistories and musical migrations, music editing and publishing, the creative process of a composer, genesis of the musical text, and musical semiotics.
Research on Čiurlionis’ music is presented in “The Complete Catalogue of Čiurlionis Music” (2007), 14 editions of music scores (urtexts and first editions), numerous research articles and presentations at international conferences in Europe.
Research of piano rolls is presented in “Ethnic Piano Rolls In The United States” (ed. D. Kučinskas, 2021), “The Complete Catalogue of Lithuanian Piano Rolls” (2014, with 7 CDs), private collection of 100 Lithuanian piano rolls (donated to the National Lithuanian Library in 2017), articles in Fontes Artis Musicae and presentations at the international conferences worldwide.
Dr. Kučinskas is the only Lithuanian expert of an European Higher Music Education officially accredited by MusiQuE (Belgium). As an international expert Dr. Kučinskas is constantly invited for an assessment and evaluation of the music study programmes in Lithuania as well as in other countries: Novosibirsk State Conservatory (2021), Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory (2019), Kazakh National University of Arts (Astana, 2017), Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory (Almaty, 2016). During last years Dr. Kučinskas took part in training sessions organized by MusiQuE in Göteburg, Palermo, Zagreb, Budapest, Turin.
Please see Dr. Kučinskas CV for more information.