5TH ST. PETERSBURG
INTERNATIONAL
NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

5TH ST. PETERSBURG
INTERNATIONAL
NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

MONDAY / 21.0519:00Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall
Ensemble intercontemporain (France)
TUESDAY / 22.0511:00The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
Composer meet-and-greet: Franck Bedrossian (France)
16:00New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Media Centre
Ensemble Fractales (Belgium)
20:00St. Ann’s Church
Radical Muzak Septet
A collaborative project between Swiss and Russian musicians
WEDNESDAY / 23.0511:00The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
Composer meet-and-greet: Claude Ledoux (Belgium)
16:00Masterskaya M. K. Anikushina
3rd International Sergei Slonimsky Composition Competition
20:00Masterskaya M. K. Anikushina
NeoQuartet (Poland)
THURSDAY / 24.0511:00The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
Composer meet-and-greet: Arturo Corrales (Switzerland)
17:00New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Media Centre
The Gallery of Actual Music Ensemble (Russia)
19:30New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
Ensemble of Nomads (Switzerland)
FRIDAY / 25.0511:00The Centre for Art and Music of the Vladimir Mayakovsky Library
Symposium: Contemporary Composers. St. Petersburg
A project by Stravinsky.online
17:00New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Media Centre
Electric Primitivo (Switzerland)
19:30New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
Ensemble 2e2m (France)
Conductor: Pierre Roullier

What's happening?

St. Petersburg, Russia
White Nights
The six-day festival will coincide with the start of the famous White Nights season and will feature concerts performed by renowned performers of new music. The festival will feature an educational program, including masterclasses, presentations, a research conference, lectures and workshops with composers. It will also stage the finale of the 3rd International Sergei Slonimsky Composition Competition, with performances of the contest’s winning works by the “Gallery of Actual Music” ensemble.

Pre-Concert Talks

Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall
17:30
Artistic Director Mehdi Hosseini invites the community to join him prior to Monday evening concert for talks exploring the musical and socio-historical context that influenced the composers of this evening’s pieces. Pre-concert talks are a great way to get to know new music a little better, and receive some insight into the evening’s concert. These talks are free and open to the public.

Ensemble intercontemporain

Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall
19:00
The festival opening will take place on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall, where the legendary Ensemble intercontemporain, founded by French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, will perform.
The program: Pierre Boulez, Michael Jarrell, Dieter Ammann, Franck Bedrossian, Mehdi Hosseini and Dmitri Kourliandski.

Franck Bedrossian

Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
11:00
Franck Bedrossian teaches currently Music Composition at the University of California, Berkeley. He has recently been awarded as “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Ministry of Culture.
His works are published by Éditions Billaudot and Verlag Neue Musik. He studied composition with Allain Gaussin and entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (class of Gerard Grisey). He attended the Cursus in composition and computer music at IRCAM, studying with Philippe Leroux, Brian Ferneyhough, Tristan Murail and Philippe Manoury. Meanwhile, he completed his training with Helmut Lachenmann.

Ensemble Fractales

New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
16:00
Fractales is a young ensemble of international musicians based in Brussels. Founded in 2012 at the Brussels Royal Conservatory, the ensemble is born from the desire to promote new music. Fractales was awarded the “Just Composed!” interpretation prize by Vienna University of Music and Arts in 2014 for the best performance of a premiere from Sonja Mutić, and recently the prize of the jury and prize of the public at the Whilhelm Twee Chamber Music Competition.
Fractales is supported and recognized by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
The program: Claude Ledoux, Stefan Prins, Artur Zobnin, Jannik Giger, Alexander Khubeev and Michael Pelzel.

Radical Muzak Septet

St. Ann’s Church
20:00
Radical Muzak Septet is an expansion of the accordion and turntables duo Lanz & Kocher along with a collective of Russian musicians working within the medium of experimental and improvisatory music.
In the course of 5 days the musicians will share with each other the experience and acquired knowledge particular to their collective interaction, taking into account the features of each participant and his individual participant and their individual instruments the result of which will be a joint presentation of the project in the form of a concert.

Claude Ledoux

Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
11:00
Claude Ledoux is a Professor of Music Analysis at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (CNSMDP – France). Also he teaches music composition at Arts2, Conservatoire de Mons (Belgium). He was Artistic Director of the Studio of Electronic music at the Centre Henri Pousseur in Liège (2002-2005). Ledoux has been a visiting professor at the Sao Paulo University, the Campinas University and the Campos di Jordao Winter seminar in Brazil (2008-9), Shanghai Conservatory (2013-14) and the occasion of the Crossroad Days in Armenia (2017). Claude Ledoux is a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Composition Competition

Masterskaya M. K. Anikushina
16:00
Award ceremony and final concert
3rd International Sergei Slonimsky Composition Competition
The works of the winners will be performed by the Gallery of Actual Music Ensemble (GAMEnsemble): Eleni Ralli, Vladimir Ladomirov, Piyawat Louilarpprasert and Anselm Mcdonnell.

NeoQuartet

Masterskaya M. K. Anikushina
20:00
NeoQuartet is the Polish string quartet focused on performing contemporary classical music. Members of NeoQuartet are great enthusiasts of modern art, therefore, they very often combine contemporary classical music with visual arts, modern dance, and electronics. NeoQuartet is one of the most active European ensembles specializing in new music performance. NeoArte – association established by NeoQuartet regularly commissions works by Polish and foreign composers.
The program: David Philip Hefti, Nikolay Popov, Wojtek Blecharz and Bettina Skrzypczak.

Arturo Corrales

Saint Petersburg State Conservatory
11:00
Arturo Corrales completed his courses in Geneva and Lugano where he studied fundamental principles of musical composition with composers Eric Gaudibert, Nicolas Bolens, Michael Jarrell and Nadir Vassena; and electroacoustics with Rainer Boesch, Luis Naón and Eric Daubresse. Next to his activities of composer, interpreter and conductor, Arturo Corrales teaches the guitar and is a professor of composition and analysis in the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève; he has also acquired a doctorate in musicology from the University of Geneva, with a very honorable mention and unanimous praise from the jury.

GAMEnsemble

New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
17:00
The Gallery of Actual Music Ensemble (GAMEnsemble) was founded by composer Oleg Paiberdin in 2010 in Moscow. The basic mission of GAMEnsemble is performance of new music with accent on the works written for last 15-20 years by contemporary composers, initiation of interdisciplinary projects on crossing of musical and visual aspects in arts. Works of domestic and foreign musical avant-guard classics of the XX century are included in GAMEnsemble’s programs as well.
The program: Svetlana Lavrova, Rico Gubler, Oleg Gudachev, Andrey Besogonov, Gary Berger And Georgy Dorokhov.

Ensemble of Nomads

New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
19:30
E.o.N. is based in Switzerland and they join forces with many exceptional players for different repertoire demands. The ensemble has performed in many important music festivals such as: KlangBasel, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Platz für andere Musik, Lucerne Festival, and New Music Days Luzern.
The program: Emilio Guim, Gary Berger, Alexey Nadjarov and Michael Wertmüller.

Symposium

Vladimir Mayakovsky Public Library
11:00
The aim of the symposium Stravinsky.online is to both reflect the landscape of new music and its ideas, and to get a better handle on its current trends and tendencies. The project offers the opportunity to look at new music through the eyes of the music’s authors and to hold a discussion with them – not only about the internal musical structures and compositional tools of their works, but about the very process of composing itself. The sphere of topics discussed by the participants of the symposium will touch upon principles important for understanding aspects of new music.

Electric Primitivo

New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
17:00
Based in Switzerland, composers and performers Arturo Corrales (Geneva) and Emilio Guim (Zurich) met while working in different projects with Vortex Ensemble. Their affinity for contemporary music and their versatility for music styles both as composers and performers, led them to create this program involving electronics and multimedia. This new duo presents two new creations by the performers and a piece by Bernhard Lang that has very rarely being performed. Both Arturo and Emilio grew up listening to rock music among other styles. This program shows one fresh way in which contemporary music has expanded to incorporate rock in an organic way.

Ensemble 2e2m

New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
19:30
The concert is dedicated to the tragic period of European history between the two world wars, when the dialogue and cultural cross-pollination of French and Russian culture were as deeper than ever. The artists who emigrated to France continued to create in their second homeland, many of them joined the Resistance during the Second World War. The concert program includes the works of Nikolai Obukhov, Ivan Wyshnegradsky, Arthur Lourie who emigrated to France after the 1917 revolution, as well as the premieres of new works by Vladimir Rannev, Sergej Newski and Alexey Sysoev, based on the memoirs of the heroes of the Resistance of Vera Obolenskaya, Elizaveta Skobtsova and Boris Vildé.

MEHDI HOSSEINI

COMPOSER AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
OF THE ST. PETERSBURG INTERNATIONAL
NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

To make new music evaluated and understood, it is necessary to bring together various cultural aspects that take the audience into the zone of hearing, where they concentrate on their own thoughts and internal research. In this sense, the program of the fifth festival continues the journey started in the previous years in order to attract renowned performers of new music. We have made every effort to present premieres of works by different generations of composers, who are in constant search for unique ideas, and to show the features of their musical dialects as fully as possible.

Each concert of the festival program this year is presented as a stand-alone project, a part of the interactive exhibition of sound art which unfolds in time and consists of several phases. The musicians presenting this exhibition demonstrate how the engagement with sound is closely connected with the engagement with the various topics around us that we encounter and with which we communicate each day, either directly or indirectly.

MEHDI HOSSEINI

COMPOSER AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
OF THE ST. PETERSBURG INTERNATIONAL
NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

PARTICIPANTS

EDUCATION

SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

The conference is devoted to the issues of analysis in works and styles of contemporary music. The topic of the conference is “Sound Space in New Music”.

LECTURES

Each year the festival invites prominent people to drive debate on new music topics. Lectures are important event on the festival’s calendar, and encourages people to enter into dialogue – often about difficult subjects – in order to address the challenges we face today.

SYMPOSIUM

The project offers the opportunity to look at new music through the eyes of the music’s authors and to hold a discussion with them – not only about the internal musical structures and compositional tools of their works, but about the very process of composing itself.

READING SESSIONS

Open to young & emerging composers looking to develop and refine their composition work, the festival select composers to work with the festival’s resident ensembles.

MASTER CLASSES

Conduct workshops and master classes in collaboration with practicing composers, musicians and artists.

MEDIA

GENERAL PARTNERS

Pro Helvetia

Ambassade de France en Russie

SPONSORS & PARTNERS

GENERAL MEDIA PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNERS