A native of Chicago, Illinois, Dovas Lietuvninkas received degrees in trumpet and music education at the Eastman School of Music where he studied with James Thompson. In 2017 he received a U.S. Fulbright grant to study trumpet and Lithuanian folk instruments in Vilnius, Lithuania, where, in 2018, he joined the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra as principal trumpet. Before returning to the United States in 2023, he received his master’s degree in trumpet from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki under the tutelage of Pasi Pirinen and spent a season as a member of the academy of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Dovas is now based in Providence, Rhode Island, and is currently principal trumpet of both the Hartford and New Haven Symphony Orchestras in Connecticut. He is a proud alumnus of the Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale (Edward Carroll, director) where, in 2023, in collaboration with fellow trumpeters Bailey Paugh and Demian Spindler, the contemporary collective “something something trumpet” was born. SST seeks to break down traditional barriers surrounding contemporary music and bring new and unusual musical experiences to audiences who might not have been exposed to them otherwise. Dovas is a passionate educator and advocate of new music, having commissioned and premiered many new works for trumpet, and is always seeking to cross boundaries and build bridges across all audiences and musics, from folk to the avant-garde.