Jonas Osvaldas Balakauskas (Miliūnai (Ukmergė), December 19, 1937) is an Litauws componist.
Balakauskas received his musical education at an institute in Klaipeda (1953-1956) and then at the faculty of music from the Pedagogical University of Vilnius from 1957 to 1961. He had to serve in the Soviet army afterwards, but then he continued his studies At the Conservatory of Kiev, his teachers there were Boris Lyatosjinski and Myroslav Skoryk (1964 to 1969). He was also friends with the then radical Valentin Silvestrov. In Kiev, he also led Ukraine's publishing house. The musical courses in those days were still extremely well-preserved, too modern music was not yet tolerated. He was a member of the Sąjūdis organization, which sought independence within the Soviet Union and Russia, resulting in an embassy for Lithuania in a shared Embassy in Paris for France, Spain and Portugal (1988-1992). At the same time and from 1994 to 2002 he was Head Composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater in Vilnius. In 1996 he won a state award and in 1998 he was distinguished.
In addition to composing, Balakauskas also wrote some books about music; special attention was given to his own interpretation of serialism, a flow within which he composes. He does not use the twelve-tone system, but 8, 9 10 and 11-tone systems.
His music was mainly played in Lithuania, Poland and Germany. Recordings of his music are widely available, Naxos has released some, but the Lithuanian Music Center has almost all works on CD-R. The main works are his symphonies (No. 1 of 1971, No. 2 of 1979, No. 3 of 1989, No. 4 of 1998 and No. 5 of 2001) and the Requiem in memorandum Stasys Lozoraitis (1995), are the only ones religious work to date (2012).
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