The annual SALT New Music Festival is back for its third year, and this time it has expanded its musical horizons.
The Tsilumos Ensemble: Kristofer Covlin (left), Joanna Hood, Ajtony Csaba and Dániel Péter Biró (Miles Lowry, photo)
The SALT Festival is hosted by the Tsilumos Ensemble, made up of UVic School of Music professors Dániel Péter Biró (guitar), Joanna Hood (viola) and Ajtony Csaba (piano, harpsichord and conductor), plus Kristofer Covlin (saxophones). And this year, SALT will not only include the expected lineup of local and international performers presenting concerts of groundbreaking new music to Victoria audiences, but will also feature a new series of lectures and masterclasses during its one-week run.
Quasar Saxophone Quartet
“Our festival lineup this year is extremely strong, including some of the world’s top performers of new music,” says co-organizer Kris Covlin. “Combined with a rich program of new works, lectures and score readings, audiences attending the festival will be able to interact with our composers and performers, allowing them to delve as deeply as they wish into the music.”
Taking their name from the words Tsil (based on the Hebrew “tsiltsul” or “ring”) and Lumos (Latin for “light”), the locally based Tsilumos exists 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 in 2011, the ensemble has brought high-quality, challenging new music to the larger community of British Columbia.
Running from May 25 to June 2 at both Open Space and UVic’s School of Music, the third annual SALT Festival will bring experts in the field of contemporary music to Victoria in the hopes of creating a new framework for the study, research and performance of contemporary and electronic music.
Ensemble Dal Niente
This year’s guest artists include Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente (recent winners of the Darmstadt Summer Course Kranichstein Prize), the world-renowned members of Germany’s Experimentalstudio, Montreal’s Quasar Saxophone Quartet and Berlin tuba soloist Max Murray. Invited composers include Dániel Péter Biró, Wolf Edwards, Suzanne Farrin, Detlef Heusinger, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Steven Kazuo Takasugi and Gianluca Ulivelli. As part of SALT, the Tsilumos Ensemble will premiere three new compositions by Wolf Edwards, Steven Takasugi and Gianluca Ulivelli. (The commissioning of these new compositions was made possible through a grant from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation for Music.)
But in addition to the concerts, there will also be masterclasses, lectures, reading sessions and private lessons with composers and interpreters of contemporary music from around the world. Students will be given the chance to take part in lessons in composition and contemporary music interpretation, in addition to reading sessions with the Tsilumos Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente and the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, and workshops in electronic music with Experimentalstudio and the School of Music’s own recording engineer Kirk McNally, who also plays with the experimental electronic ensemble The Krells. (Scroll down for a complete SALT fest schedule.)
All lectures, colloquia, reading sessions and masterclasses are free of charge and open to the general public. Concert tickets will be sold at the door for $10 (students) or $15 (general public). Events will take place at both Open Space (510 Fort Street) and UVic’s School of Music (MacLaurin Building, B-wing).
Complete schedule of events for the SALT New Music Festival and Symposium:
Saturday, May 25
• 2pm – General meeting of all participants (Room B115 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 8pm – Concert of the Quasar Saxophone Quartet (Open Space, 510 Fort Street). Program: Philippe Leroux Du Souffle, Donal Stewart …su Innocent X , Dániel Péter Biró Udvarim Achadim, Paolo Longo Giants, Jimmie Leblanc Fil Rouge, L. Andriessen Facing Death
Sunday, May 26
• 10am-1pm – Reading session with the Quasar Saxophone Quartet (UVic’s Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, MacLaurin Building)
• 2pm-5pm – Conducting workshop with Ajtony Csaba (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
Monday, May 27
• 10am-1pm – Conducting workshop with Ajtony Csaba (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 2:30pm-4pm – Lecture by Wolf Edwards: “Discussion about Music and Anarchist Politics” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 4:30pm-5:30pm – Reading session and performance practice workshop with the Tsilumos Ensemble (UVic’s Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, MacLaurin Building)
Tuesday, May 28
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Gianluca Ulivelli: “My Connection to Paul Celan” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 2pm-4pm – Max Murray and Liam Hockley, reading and workshop with Gianluca Ulivelli (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 4:30pm-7pm – Conducting workshop with Ajtony Csaba (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 7:30pm-9pm – Dinner at Felicita’s Pub (UVic Student Union Building)
• 9:30pm – Film screening: The Matchstick Man (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
Wednesday, May 29
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Dániel Péter Biró: “Toward the Unknown: Parametrical Composition with Gematria” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 2:30pm-4pm – Lecture by Kirk McNally: “Improvisation with Live Electronics” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 4:30pm-7pm – Conducting workshop with Ajtony Csaba (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 8pm-11pm – Dinner and roundtable Discussion at the Black Hat Restaurant (1005 Langley Street).
Thursday, May 30
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Prof. Dr. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (Musikhochschule Leipzig, Germany): “Dealing with ‘Content(s)’. Introduction into my music and the ‘Hommage à Brian Ferneyhough’” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 2pm-4pm – Performer’s workshop with UVic Artist-in-Residence Joanna Hood (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 4:30pm-6pm – Conducting Workshop with Ajtony Csaba (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin building)
• 6pm-8pm – Reception for all participants (Room B115 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 8pm-9:30pm – Lecture by Detlef Heusinger (Experimentalstudio, Freiburg, Germany): “The Flood (Sintflut) ” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
Friday, May 31
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Steven Kazuo Takasugi (Harvard University): “Travelogue Through Two Decades of Sound Samples” ” (Room A169 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 3pm-4:30pm – Performance workshop with Liam Hockley and Suzanne Farrin (SUNY Purchase, New York) ” (Room B037 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 7:30pm-10pm – Reading session with Dal Niente (Chicago, USA) (Open Space, 510 Fort Street)
Saturday, June 1
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Jonathan Goldman (University of Victoria): “Inside Claude Vivier’s Composition Workshop” (Room B117 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 2pm-3:30pm – Lecture by Suzanne Farrin (SUNY Purchase, New York): “Inner Voices: My Sound World and Petrarch” (Room B117 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 4pm-6pm – Composition masterclass with Suzanne Farrin, Gianluca Ulivelli and Wolf Edwards (Room B117 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 8:00pm – Concert with Experimentalstudio and Dal Niente (Open Space, 510 Fort Street)
Sunday, June 2
• 10:30am-noon – Lecture by Thomas Hummel (Experimentalstudio, Freiburg, Germany): “The Experimentalstudio Inside Your Laptop” (Room B117 of UVic’s MacLaurin Building)
• 2pm-5pm – Composition masterclass with Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf and Detlef Heusinger (Room 051 of of UVic’s McPherson Library)
• 8pm – Concert with Tsilumos Ensemble and guests Max Murray and Liam Hockley (Open Space, 510 Fort Street)