CREATIVE ACTIVITY

Salve Musica to make you feel warm and delighted!

Salve Musica
Festival of Christmas Music
Klaipėda Concert Hall
8–31 December 2011 / Programme /

The first snowflakes will soon bring fresh colour to the autumnal landscape of the seacoast. In some weeks snow will cover sidewalks leading to the Klaipėda Concert Hall where the first chords of the Salve Musica festival will soon be heard, evoking the sense of blissful peace and thoughts about the true values in life. Let the timeless classics fill us with light, joy and hope! We invite you to celebrate the Christmas season with music!

Once the season of peace and introspection comes, the opening concert of the festival entitled “Peaceful Sounds of Advent” offers a true salve to your hearts. At this concert the prima donna of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, Sigutė Stonytė, will share the stage with the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra under Mindaugas Bačkus. Her appearance promises an inspiring encounter with distinguished artistic personality both for the orchestra and the public. The singer seems to be equally excited: “Every time I sing in my native city, I feel thrilled. Klaipėda is the city of my youth where I started singing and where many of my old friends still live. I love this city very much and the public here seems to be exceptional, highly sympathetic…”

Clarinet Factory (Czech Clarinet Quartet) is renowned for continually crossing the borders across genres and generations and involving in active communication with its audiences. The programme to be performed at the festival is comprised of music previously recorded in their albums – from that by the Baroque composers to the arrangements and improvisations by the ensemble members. Classical works are perfectly combined with birdsongs and sound meditations. Their colourful and invigorating performances bear various influences such as jazz, ethnic music by various African peoples and contemporary electronica.
The appearance of the Czech Clarinet Quartet in Klaipėda is part of the international project CZECK DREAMS, which explains the inclusion of the Czech national classic – the echoes of the symphonic poem Vltava by Bedřich Smetana – into the programme. The Smetanas’s most famous tune from the Vltava, symbolising the Czech national identity, can be heard even on the plain landing in the Czech Republic. Let’s dream of the distant travels to the sounds of Romantic music!

“In Lithuania, the Estonian hand bell ensemble Arsis gave several concerts that have created something of a Christmas miracle. World’s popular classics, folk tunes, fragments from the well-known operas were played on hand bells alone, unaccompanied by any other instrument,” wrote the Lietuvos rytas daily several years ago.
A frequent guest in Vilnius during the Christmas season, the ensemble has toured the length and breadth of the world. A household name in Estonia, it often represents the country at various international events. It performs both works composed especially for hand bell ensemble and arrangements of popular classical pieces. During performances more than 50 bells of different sizes – from the smallest, held in hands, to the largest, put on the ground – are set out on the stage. Collectively, their weight amounts to a net tone.
In Klaipėda, the Arsis will perform well-known Christmas carols, endowing us with the presentiment of the coming season. Arsis not only performs music in a quite peculiar way, but also creates very special atmosphere. Come and see for yourself!

Girls and boys like music and perform it right on the stage of the Klaipėda Concert Hall. During the Christmas season this is the place where the most incredible things come true. This is what the musical performance for the whole family Sophie Makes Music is all about. It was inspired by the story, written by Geoffroy de Pennart, about the cow called Sophie who lives in a little village. Musically gifted and crazy about singing Sophie used to treat her friends and family to her little concerts. But deep down she harboured a dream to sing with an orchestra some day.
How did she succeed in searching for an orchestra? What adventures and challenges did she experience in the big city? How are weight, height, colour, horns and elegance related to music? What song did the cow sing with the Friends of Music Orchestra she had formed?
We invite you to meet cow Sophie and make music together!

The tango opera María de Buenos Aires by Ástor Piazzolla tells an emotional and dramatic life story of a young Argentinean woman. Born in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires she heads to the nightclubs in downtown. Having reached the height of her glory in the cabarets, she is exhausted and dies. But the spirit of tango remains alive: defiant and free, poignant and sore, it kindles our passionate feelings to this very day.
Evelina Sašenko will appear in the title role. She is renowned as the prize winner of many competitions, participant and initiator of various music projects. As the participant of Eurovision Song Contest in Düsseldorf last year, Evelina was exposed to the public attention all across Europe and won accolades from the critics and audiences alike.
“I am María from Buenos Aires; can’t you see who I am?” she will sing and make us believe in her.

For years the soundscape of Klaipėda has been unthinkable without the sounds of ship sirens and Klaipėda carillon. During Christmas and on the New Year’s Eve the sounds of carillon will soar above the city and give blessings to all its people.
Let the ringing of bells make you think of the sound of hope and the harmony of peace!

The year 2011 will soon become history. Listening to the sounds of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, we will immerse in our thoughts about the things that made this year important, and about our dearest people. While the spellbinding voice of Asmik Grigorian will transport us to the realms of sublime beauty and make us feel the fragility of here and now on this calm evening of the passing year. The long-awaited appearance of the opera soloist who is currently pursuing a successful international career at the Klaipėda Concert Hall with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under Robertas Šervenikas – what a wonderful New Year’s gift for the music lovers of our harbour city!

The special programme of the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra and Cappella’A vocal group will celebrate the New Year to the driving rhythms of jazz music. In an inspiring performance, the two collectives from Klaipėda will measure their ideas and enthusiasm. For this concert the Cappella’A opted for compositions that have brought them success at international competitions, as well as their most beautiful songs.
The Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra will try to keep up with the singers by pleasing the audience with exhilarating jazzy rhythms and tunes. Especially for this programme, Rimantas Giedraitis is making the arrangements that will reveal the subtlest colours of the ensemble’s voices and string orchestra, accompanied by the masterly runs of Saulius Šiaučiulis on the piano, groovy riffs of Eugenijus Jonavičius on the guitar, and infectious rhythms of Dainius Kažukauskas on the drums.

Let the sparkling sounds fill up the glasses! Let the music make you fell warm and mellow!

KСH information
Compiled by Loreta Narvilaitė