Georgs Pelēcis is one of the most respected composers and musicologists of Latvia.
The main features of the composer's music are positive emotion, joy and lightness of sound, deep reflection on the problem of the ideal, and the striving towards it.
Georgs Pelēcis was born in Riga in 1947. In 1970 he graduated from Aram Khachaturian's composition class at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory. There he met and became close to Vladimir Martynov. Georgs Pelēcis studied at Oxford (1995) and Cambridge (1997). Since 1990 he has been a professor at the Latvian Conservatory, where he teaches the theory and history of counterpoint and fugue. Georgs Pelēcis became the first president of the Riga Centre for Early Music.
As a musicologist Georgs Pelēcis is the author of two works on Johannes Ockeghem (the fifteenth-century Netherlandish composer) and Palestrina (the sixteenth-century Italian composer). His "Study of the Style of Palestrina" was recognised by the International Palestrina Centre in Rome (1993). He has studied in depth, and written many articles on, problems of form in the music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as in the work of many Baltic composers.
As a composer Georgs Pelēcis performs regularly and takes part in various music festivals.