A professional harpist with international performance experience and a pedagogy degree holds face-to-face harp lessons for any levels and ages.

Find out more about Justina

• When did you first develop a passion for music and your favourite instrument?

  At around the age of 3-4, I used to go to the countryside a lot with my grandfather and he would always turn the radio on with his favourite songs playlist. I knew them all by memory and just started singing along every time on these road trips. He always said I had a loud voice when crying as a toddler, so that's why maybe I loved singing too.
  
  Later on I used to be very active in my kindergarten's plays, where we all would get to act, sing or even host the events. I got the roles of a host and singer and loved every moment of it when I got the microphone in my hands. Since then I was noticed by a teacher from one of the leading art schools in Europe and was invited to study choir conducting.
  
  I didn't like choir conducting much and when I was 11 years old I learnt about the harp. I felt mesmerised by the sound of it and how pretty it was and eventually decided to give it a go.

• Is there a particular type of music or artist that you listen to on a loop without it driving you crazy?

  I love one of our local Lithuanian indie rock bands called "Garbanotas" (in English it would mean "curly"). I could listen to them all day long, all the songs are so different and paint such amazing pictures in your head letting you flow together with the music to the undiscovered worlds. The sound effects, timbres, the lyrics, the melodies, everything is just insanely beautiful and catchy to me personally. In the past few years they had become a really big thing in Lithuania and I started listening to them from early stages before that!

• Explain to us the most difficult or 'riveting' lesson you could personally give to one of your students.

  The most difficult would probably be on how to not lose that primary burst of motivation you had to learn to play an instrument and how to maintain it for long years after starting out (including the practicing every now and then!). I have been trying to figure this out myself for many years and surely have been going through ups and downs, but certain factors in life always remind me why I chose this and made me appreciate it to the core. Overall, being able to choose what you love and dream of doing, can bring imense amount of joy, you just sometimes need to put a tiny bit of spark in there to keep that fire burning!

• What do you think is the most complicated instrument to master and why?

  Every instrument can be difficult and definitely requires a certain amount of time to master it completely. I think playing the harp is hard when it comes to learning how to play virtuosic pieces, developing your technique, but the beginning to learn to play the harp might not be as hard as a violin for example. Other than that, I personally think playing the organ is super hard, harpists use feet for pedals in playing, but the organists have a whole other keyboard for their legs and then two or three for their arms, overwhelming!

• What are your keys to success?

  To always be interested in learning new things, developing yourself. Not losing hope and no matter what happens in life or your career, to just keep going, while also at the same time being empathetic to yourself to not overstrain. Also, being ambitious about what you do, as long as you love what you do, you will always find ways to fulfill yourself and the success will come with that at the right time.

• Name three musicians you dream of meeting in your favourite bar in the early hours of the morning. Explain why.

  This is a tough question, probably because even people that I dream of meeting with, I still see them as just pure human beings with their own struggles and successes in life and it doesn't make me see them as far away unreachable super heroes. But if I had to name three, it would probably be the whole Beatles band, I'd love to know what was happening in their minds when they were creating their music albums, they were the inventors of contemporary music in their own time. Second one would be Lara Somogyi, a harpist from the USA, who has brought the classical harp to another level as an electronic instrument, something that I am insanely interested in. And the third one would be a French composer from the impressionist era Maurice Ravel, a musical genius with his incredibly mesmerising and unique sound, would love to learn from him, how he came up with such beautiful harmonies and musical ideas.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your musical journey, or your days at 'music school'.

  It took me a while to come up with something, but this one is surely accurate, though not an original anecdote by me. "A musician is a person who carries a 50 000 dollar worth gear to a 20 dollar paid gig". Story of many of my harp gigs.

• What are the little touches that make you a Superprof in music?

  I love teaching people to play the harp, their progress and passion to learn inspires me a lot as a musician and reminds me of my beginning on how excited I was. It is a two way process, I give my students my knowledge and experience and in return I get so much inspiration from them too and then we all just ignite passion for "harping" together! The lessons are not only about the teacher teaching, student's needs and opinion are just as important as mine and we both can adapt, adjust the lesson in the way we both would be happy and learn a lot from each other.