BIOGRAPHY
Gunda Baranauskaite is a Lithuanian prize winning cellist and educator. Starting at the age of 6 at Eduardas Balsys School of Arts she made her concerto debut with Klaipeda's chamber orchestra aged 8. During her 12 years in the specialist school she participated and became a laureate of various national and international competitions.
For her Bachelor's and Master's degrees she studied at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy where she found the joy of chamber music and orchestral performance. As a third year Bachelor student she was appointed as section cellist at the prestigious Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 Gunda moved to Manchester, UK to gain an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Cello Performamance at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she stayed for an additional year of Continued Development Studies with Nicholas Jones and Nicholas Trygstad (Then principal cellist of Hallé) alongside receiving private lessons with Maria Zahariadou (Associate principal cellist of BBC philharmonic).
In 2016 Gunda has been invited to join the contemporary music ensemble ‘Synaesthesis’ with which she has performed in international festivals such as Gaida (Lithuania), Melos Ethos (Slovakia), Eufonie (Poland) as well as giving performances in the Netherlands and Austria.
Since the beginning of 2019 Gunda has regularly worked with The Hallé orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic on various projects around the UK including the BBC Proms as well as going on tour with the former to perform at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany and Denmark.
Around the same time Gunda started her private work as an educator working with cello students of various levels in different stages of their learning journeys. She has been invited as a deputy cello tutor at the Junior RNCM on multiple occasions.
In 2020, when the pandemic made what was considered 'normal work' impossible, together with pianist Ugnius Pauliukonis, Gunda formed a free-form chamber group and called it the SONO ensemble. Since then the SONO ensemble continues to push boundaries with their exhilarating programmes and multidisciplinary projects.
In 2022 Gunda became a full-time member of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and has been enjoying playing fabulous classical repertoire to local audience, going on tour and recording film and video game soundtracks for world-known production companies.
Gunda has performed in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Southbank centre, Royal Albert Hall (London, UK), Bridgewater Hall (Manchester, UK), Symphony Hall (Birmingham, UK), Usher Hall (Edinburg, UK), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (Glasgow, UK), Musikverein Vien (Vienna, Austria), Queen Elisabeth Hall (Antwerp, Belgium), Bella Bartok Symphony Hall (Budapest, Hungary), Rudolfinum Hall (Prague, Czech Republic), and other venues throughout Europe and the United States.