Mindaugas Piečaitis
Lithuanian composer
Mindaugas Piečaitis (born 1969) is a Lithuanian composer and conductor who has worked with several major Lithuanian musical organizations. He gained international attention as the composer and conductor of a chamber orchestra piece featuring a performance by Nora, a cat who plays the piano.
On 5 June 2009, the chamber piece was performed publicly by the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra. (Klaipėda is Piecaitis' home town.)
Biography
Born in Vilnius, Piečaitis graduated from its M. K. Čiurlionis School of Arts in 1987. He received diplomas in Choir Conducting, Orchestra Conducting, and Symphony – Opera Conducting from the Lithuanian Academy of Music during the 1990s. Since then he has worked in staging and conducting performances at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Kaunas Music Theater, the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, and the Klaipėda Musical Theater. He is currently the conductor of the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra.
Piečaitis is notable for his innovative approach to classical music, and for supporting young musicians in their careers and including them in his performances.
CATcerto
Piečaitis wrote his first musical composition, CATcerto, after receiving emails about Nora. Her owners replied to his request for video footage; Piečaitis and the Chamber Orchestra first performed the piece on June 5, 2009.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6863738. VIAF identifies the subject as 29165698. The Library of Congress control number is no99043608. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 2009 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mindaugas Piečaitis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.