Martynas Levickis

Accordionist Martynas Levickis was the first player of his instrument to top Britain's Classical Albums sales chart and the first signed to the venerable Decca label. He gained wide exposure as a youthful winner on the Lithuania's Got Talent television program. Levickis was born on June 11, 1990, in Taurage, Lithuania. He started playing the accordion at age three and was self-taught for the next five years. When he was eight, he enrolled at the Saulius-Sondeckis arts high school in the city of Siauliai. He began winning championships and competitions in the mid-2000s decade, and in 2008, he moved to the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying with Owen Murray. Unbeknownst to his teachers there, he entered and won the top prize on Lithuania's Got Talent, combining classical and pop materials. He has continued to do so in concert and on recordings. Videos of his winning performance made their way back to England, and Levickis began to accumulate fans there as well. He also won the Accordion World Championship, also known as the Coupe Mondiale, in 2010. From 2014 to 2016, he studied for a master's degree at the Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco in San Sebastian, Spain, working with Iñaki Alberdi; he also took master classes from Frédéric Deschamps, Claudio Jacomucci, Friedrich Lips, and others. Levickis has performed widely, making appearances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, among other groups. His solo recitals have taken him to such prestigious venues as the Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London and the Gangdong Arts Center in South Korea. Levickis is a favorite of festival audiences, appearing at the Berlin Waldbühne and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Lübeck, among others. In 2014, he founded the Palendriai Festival in Lithuania, which has the goal of generating new music for accordion and chamber ensemble. Levickis' Lithuania's Got Talent videos were spotted in the U.K. by agent Rick Blaskey, who facilitated his signing to the Decca label; Levickis released the album Martynas (in the early part of his career, he often used only his first name) in 2013. He returned in 2021 on the Accentus label with an album of music by Astor Piazzolla.
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