About Viktorija Gečytė – jazz singer

A voice that doesn't perform — it tells a story

Vik has a dark, grounded alto, the power to fill a room – and the taste to know when to use it. What draws you in is her timing, her poise, and a conversational ease that makes a standard sound like something she’s telling you for the first time.

"The jazz vocalist commands the audience not through virtuosic flourishes, not through vocal power or dramatic one-woman shows, but through the very essence of the song." – Laima Slepkovaitė, 7 meno dienos, 2026

The phonetic years: where it all started

Vik was five when she first stepped on stage in her native Vilnius, and six when she appeared singing in a music clip on national television. From nine to sixteen she took after-school music lessons at the Balys Dvarionas music school, including with vocal teacher Nijolė Maceikaitė, who opened the door to jazz standards, initially playing them on a reel-to-reel tape player, again and again to catch what singers were doing. In high school, music teacher and former jazz violinist Ričardas Jankauskas gave Vik her first live band training, and at seventeen she was invited to sing with a dixieland sextet – that was her first live band.

She had been studying English since the age of seven, but in post-Soviet Lithuania she learned songs phonetically - by ear. At fourteen, she sang Ella Fitzgerald's "Mr. Paganini" on a national TV show without knowing what Carnegie Hall was, or what most of the words meant, so she got half of them wrong. At nineteen, she left for America to find out.

She never went to jazz school, she went to jam sessions

On a full scholarship at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania she earned a double BA in mathematics-economics and French, and learned jazz the way it has always been learned: by listening, sitting in, and singing with whoever would have her, from the college jazz ensemble to monthly gigs at a local bar. She rode 6,100 km across the United States by bicycle, for charity and adventure, and paid for part of the fundraiser by holding a jazz concert at a local church.

"There's also enormous fun and sweetness and vulnerability for those who know her well. It's always there in the music. Sometimes it makes us cry." – Sean Gough, pianist, Lafayette College News, 2012

A year as an exchange student in Paris did the rest: jam sessions two or three nights a week, sometimes until 3 am, and a first Paris concert in Le Marais’ bohemian jazz cellar, Les Sept Lézards, where a local singer lent her a mic for her first-ever show as a leader. In 2008, she settled in Paris for good.

The standards, the improvisation, the scatting: she learned all of it on the bandstand.

Embraced by the jazz community

A two-time finalist of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, she took the third place in 2019, behind winner Samara Joy.

In 2026 she won the Grand Prix at Birštonas jazz festival, one of the oldest in Lithuania, and only the second woman to do so in 45 years. The same festival where, in her late teens, she used to slip into jam sessions without a ticket.

Her songs were chosen for the Lithuanian Jazz Federation's jazz-of-the-year albums in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and as part of a special edition for jazzahead! in 2026.

"Viktorija is one of the most outstanding jazz artists from Lithuania." – Laima Slepkovaitė, 7 meno dienos, 2026

Sharing the road, and the laughs, with Gene Perla

Her most lasting partnership is with Gene Perla, the American bassist who played with Elvin Jones, Sonny Rollins, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.

"Vik is someone I can trust to know exactly where we are. The connections with her audiences make her performances sincere and meaningful." – Gene Perla, liner notes, In The Moment, 2020

She has toured with Gene's trio since 2008, with Gene as musical director, arranger, composer, tour leader, close friend and mentor. In the US, they have played on both coasts, including a dozen times at Miller Symphony Hall’s Jazz Upstairs series in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where PBS39 and the hall presented them in a full concert recorded live in 2018. In Europe, they have played across Lithuania, France and Switzerland, with festivals in Vilnius (2015), Edinburgh (2016) and Birmingham (2017).

Their records include In The Moment (P.M. Records, 2020) that “overflows with charm" according to Télérama and which Couleurs Jazz called "a major record", and Mother (self-produced, 2025), which All About Jazz rated four stars, praising "a vocal presence grounded in storytelling, where timing, nuance, and restraint shape the music's quiet authority."

“Vik captures your attention with her swing, her perfect phrasing and, let’s face it, her tremendous class.” - Philippe Desmond, Action Jazz, 2022

At home in front of a horn section

She has been at home in front of horns since the dixieland band of her teens. In Paris, she performed and recorded with pianist Julien Coriatt's Orchestra, and wrote the lyrics for Blue Lake (2015), an album that fuses jazz, classical and folk. Its title song is a blues about the lake by her family's country home in Lithuania.

The Frankfurt Radio Big Band (hr-bigband) found the album and invited her to open the 2018 Europa Open Air festival, in the year Lithuania was its partner country, with Blue Lake arranged for big band. The band's manager chose her for "the folk colour she brings." It was her first concert in Germany. The band invited her back the following year, to another open-air concert at the historic Schloss Wolfsgarten, with arrangements of her album No Detour Ahead.

"When she sings in the language of her country, that power even seems tenfold." – Jazz Magazine, 2015

Other big band dates followed, with the Galaad Moutoz Orchestra (2019, 2020) and as guest at the Šiauliai Big Band's 20th anniversary (2023), where the local press praised the "lightness and elegance" of her singing.

Playing for dancers is among her favorites. Since 2019 she has sung at swing balls, with the Need for Swing septet at Rouen's Festival Vibrations, with the Moutoz Orchestra, and in a quartet at the historic Caveau de la Huchette in Paris.

She can sing the blues in her sleep

"Her first mother tongue is the blues," Jazz Magazine writes. A voice that conveys "an emotion for which no other adjective will do but fraternal." Alongside classics, her blues band reaches for songs by James Taylor, Tom Waits, Mose Allison and Sting. The repertoire's first recording is due in 2027.

“She communicates a kind of warm fraternity. It is rare and deeply moving." – Jazz Magazine, 2014

Leader of her Parisian tribe

Since 2019, she’s been leading Vik & The Vibe Tribe, a quartet with Nicholas Thomas on vibraphone, Peter Giron on double-bass and backing vocals, and Mourad Benhammou on drums. With the vibraphone as the only harmonic instrument, the quartet traces the bebop lineage with folk inspirations, piercing ballads, and swing. The quartet plays originals by Vik, Nicholas and Gene Perla, and arrangements of the Great American Songbook. The band's first recording is due in 2027.

"Vik's voice… at times deep and expressionist, at times mischievous or restrained… supported by the light touches of Nicholas Thomas's mallets… the roundness of Peter Giron's bass lines and the unfailing precision of Mourad Benhammou's playing" - Francis Capeau, Académie du Jazz member, 2021

And so, of course, she smiles

Over the years she has also shared the stage with drummer Adam Nussbaum, saxophonist Nicole Glover, trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, pianists Ignasi Terraza and Alain Jean-Marie, among many others.

She also continues to dabble with different sounds – regularly blowing kazoo solos or experimenting with folk instruments, such as clay whistles, kalimba, balafon or chimes. She was gifted her first kazoo at Burning Man in 2017. "This is the first time I've ever applauded a kazoo solo!" exclaimed Jeff "Tain" Watts after hearing Vik play it a few years later.

Singing for Vik is more than making music. “It’s a conversation, an endeavor, and a never-ending journey,” she says.