SALT 2015

New Music Festival and Symposium
July 23 – July 27, 2015
Victoria, BC, Canada.

The 2015 SALT New Music Festival and Symposium continues to attract world-renowned Canadian and international composers and performers to the west coast of British Columbia.

The 2015 Festival’s host ensemble, Tsilumos Ensemble (Victoria, BC), is pleased to collaborate with the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble Neue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart, Germany), flautist/composer Sylvie Lacroix (Vienna, Austria), Kirk McNally (Victoria, BC) and Cathy Lewis (Victoria, BC).  New works by Canadian and international composers Charles-Antoine Fréchette (Montreal, QC), Annesley Black (Ottawa, ON), Justin Christensen (Langley, BC), Dániel Péter Biró (Victoria, BC), Linda Catlin Smith (Toronto,ON), Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro (Brazil), Marcílio Onofre (Brazil), Georg Friedrich Haas (Austria/USA), Samir Odeh Tamimi (Israel/Germany), György Kurtág (Hungary), Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes (Estonia), Robert Hansler (USA), Zaid Jabri (Syria) and others will be presented in the program.

Students of contemporary music from across Canada and around the world were invited to apply to the program. Participants had the chance to take part in lessons in composition, electronic music, and contemporary music interpretation with guest artists and composers.

Symposium events (lectures, masterclasses, reading sessions, individual lessons) will take place at the University of Victoria School of Music.

All concerts will take place at Open Space 510 Fort St. Victoria, BC.

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For additional inquiries please contact the organizers at [email protected]

 

Salt Poster

Video Highlights from the 2015 SALT New Music Festival and Symposium:

Here is a video interview with Palestinian-Israeli composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi. Mediterranean Voices is an interesting project that the Neue Vocalsolisten have put together featuring 12 different composers with ties to the Mediterranean region. During the SALT New Music and Symposium the Neue Vocalsolisten performed music for voices from Samir Odeh Tamimi and a Canadian premiere of a work by Syrian composer Zaid Jabri, also composed for the Mediterranean Voices Project.

 Watch a video interview with Zaid Jabri here.

SALT New Music Festival and Symposium Schedule of Events:

 

Thursday, July 23, 2015

 

11:00 AM: Opening of Festival – Arrival of Participants and Welcoming Lunch – School of Music Lobby

1:00 PM: Composers Reading, Neue Vocalsolisten, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria School of Music

4:00 PM: Lecture: Samir Odeh-Tamimi, MacLaurin A 166, University of Victoria School of Music

5:00 PM: Lecture: Sylvie Lacroix, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

6:00 PM: Dinner

8:00 PM Concert: Tsilumos Ensemble – Open Space, 510 Fort Street

Works by Annesley Black (Canada), Justin Christensen (Canada), Charles-Antoine Fréchette (Canada), Marcílio Onofre (Brazil), Felipe Ribeiro (Brazil), Scott Rubin (USA).

Friday, July 24, 2015

10:00 AM: Lecture: Annesley Black, MacLaurin A 166, University of Victoria School of Music

11:00 AM: Lecture: Kirk McNally, MacLaurin A 166, University of Victoria School of Music

12:00 PM: Composers’ Reading Session: Cathy Lewis, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria School of Music

1:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 PM: Lecture: Charles Antoine Fréchette, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

3:00 PM: Vocal Workshop: Neue Vocalsolisten, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria School of Music

5:00 PM: Private composition lessons (room: to be announced)

6:00 PM: Dinner

8:00 PM: Concert: Sylvie Lacroix: Open Space, 510 Fort St.

Compositions by Sylvie Lacroix (France/Austria), 
Stephen Ferguson (UK/Austria), 
Dániel Péter Biró (Canada), 
Wolfgang Suppan (Austria), 
Tanja Brüggemann (Austria), Samir Odeh Tamimi (Israel/Germany)

 

Saturday, July 25, 2015

 

9:00 AM: Masterclass: Samir Odeh-Tamimi and Dániel Péter Biró, MacLaurin A 166, University of Victoria School of Music

1:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 PM: Composers’ Reading session: Sylvie Lacroix, B037, University of Victoria School of Music

4:00 PM: Break

5:00 PM: Composers’ Reading session: Tsilumos, B037, University of Victoria School of Music

6:00 PM: Dinner

7:30 PM: Pre-concert talk with Prof. Lincoln Shlensky, Samir Odeh Tamimi and Dániel Péter Biró

8:00 PM: Concert Neue Vocalsolisten, Open Space, 510 Fort Street, University of Victoria School of Music compositions by Giacinto Scelsi (Italy), György Kurtág (Hungary), Georg Friedrich Haas (Austria), Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes (Estonia), Samir Odeh-Tamimi (Israel/Germany), Zaid Jabri (Syria)

Sunday, July 26, 2015

9:00 AM: Composition Masterclass: Annesley Black, MacLaurin A 166, University of Victoria School of Music

12:00 PM: Lecture: Joanna Hood, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

1:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 PM: Lecture by Dániel Péter Biró, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

3:00 PM: Private composition lessons (room to be announced)

4:00 PM: Conducting Masterclass: Ajtony Csaba, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

6:00 PM: Dinner

8:00 PM: Concert: Cathy Lewis: Open Space, 510 For Street. Works by Hildegaard von Bingen (Rheinland-Palatinate), Linda Catlin Smith (Canada), Barbara Monk Feldman (Canada), Morton Feldman (USA), Luciano Berio (Italy), John Cage (USA), John Oswald (Canada), Rodney Sharman(Canada), Rimsky-Korsakov (Russia) and Daniel Scheidt (Canada)

Monday, July 27, 2015

 

10:00 AM: Vocal Workshop: Cathy Lewis, B037, University of Victoria School of Music

12:00 PM: Lecture: Marie Chantal Leclair, MacLaurin A 169, University of Victoria School of Music

1:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 PM: Private composition lessons (room to be announced)

5:00 PM: Open Rehearsal: Uvic Alumni Ensemble, Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria

6:00 PM: Dinner

8:00 PM: Concert: UVic Alumni Ensemble and special guest Andrew D’Antonio (piano). Phillip T. Young Recital Hall. Works by Georg Friedrich Haas (Austria), Gerard Grisey (France), Robert Hansler (USA)

The schedule for private lessons during the symposium will be sent to participants individually.

Special thanks to Tom Lee Music for providing the piano for Open Space’s programming.

 

Musician Biographies

Tsilumos is a new music ensemble based in Victoria, BC Canada. Since 2011, the ensemble has been performing 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. In 2011, the ensemble in cooperation with Open Space, an artist-run cultural center in Victoria, created the Salt Festival for New Music.

 

The Neue Vocalsolisten established as an ensemble specializing in the interpretation of contemporary vocal music in 1984. Founded under the artistic management of Musik der Jahrhunderte, the vocal chamber ensemble has been artistically independent since the year 2000. Each of the seven concert and opera soloists, with a collective range reaching from coloratura soprano over countertenor to “basso profondo”, shapes the work on chamber music and the co-operation with the composers and other interpreters through his/her distinguished artistic creativity. According to the musical requirements a pool of specialist singers complements the basic team. The ensemble’s chief interest lies on research: exploring new sounds, new vocal techniques and new forms of articulation, whereby great emphasis is placed on establishing a dialogue with composers. Each year, the ensemble premiers about twenty new works. Central to the group’s artistic concept are the areas of music theater and the interdisciplinary work with electronics, video, visual arts and literature, as well as the juxtaposition of contrasting elements found in ancient and contemporary music.

 

Sylvie Lacroix is an accomplished flute soloist and chamber musician with a special emphasis on contemporary and new music. The freelance flutist lives in Vienna, Austria and works regularly with composers side-by-side, searching for new sounds and expressions all the way through until their first performances. This interest in working with living composers has accompanied Sylvie Lacroix since the beginnings of her career. A founding member of Klangforum Wien, she remained an active member until 1997. Presently a member of the Trio AMOS (with accordionist Krassimir Sterev and cellist Michael Moser) as well as the Viennese soloist ensemble PHACE, she has performed the newest solo literature for flute from Salvatore Sciarrino to K.K.Hübler, Chaya Czernowin, Bernhard Lang and numerous young composers and is often a guest performer at various festivals throughout the world.

 

Cathy Lewis is an ambassador and active exponent of the professional new music and art scene in Canada since 1974, versatile and experimental soprano/voice artist Catherine Fern Lewis graduated from the University of Victoria, B.C. where she specialized in contemporary music. Lewis spent a further three years in Europe, predominantly in Paris, studying French song with the noted Peirre Bernac, Madame Chereau and Winifred Radford. Lewis is frequently heard in traditional repertoire as well as contemporary. She has performed with such groups as the Steve Reich Ensemble, Toronto-based Arraymusic, Vancouver New Music and held invitations to such festivals and conferences as the International Voice Festival in Montreal, Tuning of the World Conference in Banff, the Parry Sound Festival, Sound Symposium in St. John’s Newfoundland and Voice ++ in Victoria, B.C. Catherine has premiered numerous works by Canadian composers, including Murray Adaskin, MIchael Baker, Christopher Butterfield, Kirk Elliott, Nicholas Fairbank, Susan Frykberg, Anna Hostman, Kathy Kennedy, Rudolph Komorous, John Oliver, Tina Pearson, Sylvia Rickard, Robert Rosen, Rodney Sharman, Linda C. Smith, Jeremy Owen Turner, Owen Underhill, John Weinsweig and collaborated with many of the nation’s prominent artists, choreographers, composers and conductors.