Salastina is celebrating the return to live performances this month, but the Los Angeles chamber group isn’t saying goodbye to its online innovations either. Since April 2020, the ensemble has been hosting a series of Virtual Happy Hours to runaway success — more than 6,000 new audience members and counting.
So the musicians have planned a season that’s the best of both worlds, a mix of in-person concerts and online offerings. “The 2021–2022 season reflects what so many of us are experiencing,” says Salastina Co-Artistic and Executive Director Maia Jasper White — “craving the familiar while embracing the new.” The Happy Hours are staying on the schedule, and they’ll work in tandem with the group’s main series of concerts around the L.A. area.
The season kicks off with a weekend of performances, Sept. 24–26, that nods to the online setup of the past year and a half. Salastina plays the music of four guest composers who dropped into the group’s virtual series — Michi and Paul Wiancko, Kenji Bunch, and Judd Greenstein — along with a chamber classic, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. These in-person performances will be at courtyard venues, a mixed indoor-outdoor approach Salastina is taking for all of its concerts this season.
The ensemble stages a couple more programs in the fall, including another installment in its signature Sounds Mysterious series (Nov. 19–21). Artistic Partner and KUSC host Brian Lauritzen assigns the musicians a piece they’ve never played before, and audience and performers work together to guess the composer.
Salastina picks up the programming in the spring with another round of new music (April 22–24, 2021) that features two world premieres, from composers Derrick Skye and Richard Einhorn. The season ends with a foray into chamber opera, librettist Vid Guerrerio’s adaptation of a Mozart favorite, OC fan tutte — performances in May and June.
Find the complete season schedule, along with ticket and subscription options, on Salastina’s website, or call 323-332-6874.
