For more than two decades, singer INora Flowers (New Zealand) has been immersed in music, weaving together old Lithuanian traditions, the sound of "sutartinės", church hymns and world music into an eclectic mosaic during her concerts.
Having previously sung in Lithuania for over 20 years with the sutartinės group “Trys Keturiose,” in folk ensembles, and in the New Music Ensemble, INora Flowers now composes and performs as a solo artist. She has released two solo albums and numerous singles, collaborating with various producers.
Having lived outside Lithuania for 25 years—first in Sweden and now in the subtropics at the tip of New Zealand—the artist maintains a strong connection to her homeland in her music. Nostalgia, the search for roots, inner peace, and a spiritual journey have become the central themes of her work.
The artist herself describes her strong connection to her homeland poetically:
“I have gone far away. The cuckoo is at home everywhere. The spruce grows by my seaside too. It cries at night.
I still carry the leaven of my daily rye bread with me. I brought it all the way to the subtropics. Now I bake in New Zealand. It smells of roots.
I bake my bread from rye sleeping beneath the snow and the tropical wind, from half a million hymns crumbled into verses, left behind in my homeland... I mix in rough prayers from Sundays of my childhood in a cold church. I pour in time left behind in Lithuania by the beehive. I also add the scent of linden trees and the fragility of liverleaves...
It bakes up crisp, like a sutartinė. It’s hearty, like a prayer. It smells of roots.”
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This performance by INora Flowers at the Magic of Music Club is part of the “RE:TURN” project. The project is partially funded by the Vilnius City Municipality. Media partners: LRT, VilniusFM.lt.
RE:TURN is a project by the Magic of Music Club aimed at bringing professional Lithuanian musicians who currently live abroad or have recently returned to Lithuania into Vilnius’s cultural scene. These are musicians who often have significant achievements on the international stage and are well-known in other countries, but have not yet had enough opportunities to perform frequently in their homeland. This series aims to provide them with the opportunity to take their rightful place among their peers in Lithuania’s musical life and to earn the recognition of music lovers in Vilnius.