Composer Mārtiņš Viļums (b. 1974) was born in Riga. He studied accordion at the Mediņš Music School (1991–1996) and composition at the Vītols Latvian State Academy of Music preparatory class with Pēteris Plakidis (1995–1996). He also studied accordion at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and Composition with Osvaldas Balakauskas (1996–1997), and then focused only on composition with Julius Juzeliunas and Rimantas Janeliauskas (1997–2001), obtaining his Bachelor’s Degree. In 2002, he continued his studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in the Master’s Programme with Rimantas Janeliauskas. His topic concerned the understanding of aspects of time and space in 20th-century music. In 2004, he received his Master’s Degree and began his post-graduate studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, completing his graduate studies in 2006. In 2011, he received his PhD in Humanitarian Sciences. The theme of his dissertation was “The compositional principles of articulation of the musical time-space (the aspects of spatialization of sound parameters in music in the second half of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century)”. Since 2015, he is an associate professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. His string quartet Sansara received the first prize in the Latvian Philharmonic and Latvian Composers’ Union’s organized competition (1996); the work also received wide acceptance at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (1997) and the Luciano Berio Festival in Japan (at the Tokyo Opera); at concerts in Lithuania, and in Russia. Many of his works have been premiered in Latvia, Lithuania, Holland, Germany, Norway and Estonia. The composition “Le temps scintille” by Mārtiņš Viļums won the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Vienna (2005). He received the Latvian Great Music Award 2012.