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To mark the U.S. launch of the international arts publication Music & Literature Magazine, Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho presents a concert with musical guests devoted to exploring and celebrating her marvelous and expansive career. The evening also honors the volume’s other featured artists – Chinese writer Can Xue and Norwegian author Stig Sæterbakken.
Acclaimed flutist and longtime collaborator Camilla Hoitenga, violinist Aliisa Barrière, and other musical guests join Saariaho to perform the composer’s Laconisme de l’aile for solo flute (1982), Nocturne for solo violin (1994), and other chamber music, including a world premiere. Readings and presentations by Taylor Davis-Van Atta, publisher of Music & Literature Magazine, and several prestigious writers accompany the musical performances.
Co-presented by Music & Literature Magazine and in collaboration with the Consulate General of Finland in New York and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, New York.
About Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952, Helsinki) is today one of the world’s most significant contemporary composers. She studied at the Sibelius Academy with pioneering modernist Paavo Heininen and, with Magnus Lindberg and others, Saariaho founded the progressive “Ears Open” group. She continued her studies in Freiburg, with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber, at the Darmstadt summer courses, and, from 1982, at the IRCAM research institute in Paris. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics.
Saariaho has written for many of the world’s finest musicians, including the Kronos Quartet; violinist Gidon Kremer; cellist Anssi Karttunen; and soprano Dawn Upshaw. Her work has also been commissioned by world-renowned ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Orchestre de Paris; the Berlin Philharmonic; and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
She has also received several internationally distinguished awards, including the Grawemeyer Prize (2003); the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition (2007); the Wihuri Sibelius Prize (2009); and the Léonie Sonning Music Prize (2011). In 2013 Saariaho was awarded the Polar Music Prize. In 2015 she will be the judge of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award.
Saariaho has primarily lived in Paris since 1982..
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Photo Courtesy of ensemble mise-en
THU – 11-20-2014 – 8:00 PM
$25 ($20 ASF Members)