Santa Fe New Music Presents “The Music of Kaija Saariaho”

Concert of Chamber Music of the Santa Fe Opera’s 2008 Featured Living Composer
Concludes Santa Fe New Music’s 2007-2008 Season

WHEN: Saturday, April 19, 2008 • 7pm 

WHERE: Stieren Hall
TICKETS: $20 - $10 for full time students—Available at the door, online, or at Nicholas Potter Booksellers, 211 East Palace Avenue

Santa Fe New Music presents the final concert of its 2007-2008 season on April 19, with chamber music of celebrated Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. This is the fifth annual springtime collaboration between SFNM and the Santa Fe Opera, wherein the music of the Opera’s featured “living composer” is presented.

Born in Helsinki in 1952, Kaija Saariaho enjoys worldwide renown for her works, particularly in recent years, opera. Santa Fe audiences will recall the 2006 American debut of L’Amour de Loin, directed by Peter Sellars. This summer will feature the American premiere of Adriana Mater. Mixing gritty present-day reality and dreams, Adriana Mater, with an original libretto by Amin Maalouf, was directed by Peter Sellars and premiered at Paris’ Opéra Bastille in Paris in March 2006.

In the profusion of her large and small recent works, one notable feature is a close and productive association with individual artists including conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the flutist Camilla Hoitenga, the cellist Anssi Karttunen, the soprano Dawn Upshaw and, more recently, the pianist Emmanuel Ax. Further endearing Saariaho to contemporary music audiences is her choice of subject matter and texts, as well as the profusion of expression marks in her scores. Together they convey a musical sensitivity that is a fervid communication of ideas, images and emotions than a working-out of abstract processes.
                       
“SFNM’s spring concerts at Stieren Hall are a fantastic example of a successful collaboration between two performing arts organizations,” says SFNM’s Artistic Director, John Kennedy. "For opera lovers and new music aficionados alike, it is an opportunity to become acquainted with the breadth of a composer’s oeuvre and to become acquainted with the composer’s musical vocabulary. It’s also a testimonial to the vibrancy and relevance of the music of our time—from chamber works up to grand opera."

The program features chamber works and solo works with electronics. The version of Terrestre is a reworking of the second movement of the two-movement flute concerto dedicated to Camilla Hoitenga, Aile du Songe (Wing of Dream), commissioned by Santa Fean Eleanor Eisenmenger in honor of Saariaho’s 50th birthday.