The Salt Festival Orchestra presents Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Sternklang (Star Sound). This monumental, immersive ‘musical ritual’ features amplified quartets, arranged in a star-like shape across Finnerty Gardens.

4:15-5:00 PM Pre-concert talk with Professor Kim Venn, UVic Astronomy Research Center I UVic Phillip T. Young Recital Hall

This is not your usual concert experience. In a nighttime park, groups of musicians perform under the open sky, each at a distance from the others, drawing their music from the varying positions of the stars. This concept was envisioned by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in his seminal work, Sternklang.

The SALT Festival Orchestra introduces this immersive experience to Victoria for the first time. Star constellations such as the Big Dipper, the Lion, Aquarius or Virgo determine the composition: reading the stars as musical scores, the composer wrote rhythms, timbres and melodies from them, which influence the musicians’ playing together and their relationship with each other. Music flows throughout the entire garden as “sound couriers ” and “ light bearers ” carry the sounds from one location to another. The result is similar to a journey in a fairytale sound world, where the boundaries between the performer, the audience and the environment are blurred and transcend the concept of a traditional concert space. The nature — and stargazing audience — is invited to inhabit this multidimensional space, whether by walking among the groups or sitting down to the lawn.

Listeners are invited to enter through the gate at the Multifaith Center and proceed with their respective individual listening strategies.

This event will take place in Finnerty Gardens.
For details about this event and what to expect, visit https://tsilumos.org/star-sound/

Entrance is free, but RSVP is required. Donations will be gratefully accepted.

ABOUT SALT
SALT is produced by Tsilumos, a new music ensemble based in Victoria. Formed in 2011, the Tsilumos Ensemble performs chamber music ranging from duos to large instrumental combinations. Its main objective is to give new and little-known Canadian and international works an optimal performance, regardless of technical and intellectual demands or compositional style. Since its inception the ensemble has brought high quality, challenging new music to the larger community of British Columbia and in 2011 created the SALT Festival for New Music