Krists Auznieks: Music for theater production ‘Phaedra in vlammen’

Krists Auznieks is a Latvian composer whose music has been described as “exhilarating, stunning, luminous” (San Francisco Classical Voice), praised for its “astonishing complexity and beauty” (Broadwayworld), “extraordinarily imaginative writing” (BBC Radio 3), and “old-fashioned elegance” (Herald Tribune). His quintet Piano was named by The New York Times among the week’s best classical music moments.

Rooted in a deep belief that beauty offers moral clarity, Auznieks composes at the intersection of music, memory, and metaphysics. His work often explores inner landscapes of longing, grace, and transformation — inviting listeners into experiences that are both refined and emotionally immediate.

In 2025, his piece Turning the Wheel will be presented at the ISCM World New Music Days in Porto, continuing a trajectory of international recognition. Auznieks is the youngest composer to receive the Latvian Grand Music Award, and has received the Jacob Druckman Prize (Aspen Music Festival), the International Rostrum of Composers Award, the Richard Wagner Scholarship, and fellowships from the Hermitage Artist Retreat and Civitella Ranieri Foundation. In 2021, he was named Person of the Year in Latvian Culture.

His music has been commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Aspen and Norfolk Festivals, Bang on a Can, MATA, Swedish Radio, Kremerata Baltica, Latvian Radio Choir, Cappella Amsterdam, and Sinfonietta Riga. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royal Danish Theatre, Beijing National Arts Centre, Muziekgebouw, The Southbank Centre, and National Sawdust, among others.

Recent theatre work has drawn critical acclaim in Latvia: Diena described his music as “transcendent” while IR called it “supernaturally beautiful… a score in which nature enters the human consciousness almost as a bodily experience.” TVNET noted its “secular spirituality,” its “intimations of the sacred,” and a sound “that enters the theatre like northern light, only to dissolve into a million atoms and vanish into silence.”

He is currently composing two operas—one for the Latvian National Opera, and another for the Riga Wagner House. He is also developing two theatre scores for Daile Theatre and the Dutch National Theatre.

Auznieks earned his Doctorate from the Yale School of Music and has taught at Yale, Montclair State University, and the Latvian Academy of Music, where he is currently Associate Professor. He also chairs the Latvian Composers Union and has worked with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program.

His work continues to unfold at the meeting point of the spiritual and the sonic—drawing quiet influence from Buddhist practice and a lifelong inquiry into exile, transformation, and awareness —composing not just music, but experiences of stillness, presence, and wonder in a restless world.

Celia Swart (1994, NL) is a new music composer, saxophone player and visual artist. Growing up playing saxophone and piano, she found her love for composing.

"Creativity is an unconscious act of insanity, in a burst of which the truth is born. No matter how beautiful or disgusting it may seem to people far from madness, its value is beyond doubt, both for the author and for those able to sense its invisible beauty. After all, gratitude for endless trials and suffering brings joy and blissful emptiness… Being shocked by music is about pain turning into beauty and getting under your skin, taking away your breath; about everything stopping to move. I want to be scratched inside by sound and experience the fleeting, invisible beauty." - Maxim Shalygin

Education Michael has a degree in English Literature from the State University of New York. Despite having no formal music education, he has an active international career in several aspects of the music business.