Description of Festival

To increase the artistic exchange between the North European and American new music communities, the Seattle Chamber Players presents a collaborative festival with noted musicians from countries that surround the Baltic Sea. As part of our concert season in a festival format (three concerts in three days), the ensemble will be giving programs of music by living composers from Baltic countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Artistic Advisor to the Seattle Chamber Players and curator of Icebreaker II is musicologist and music producer Dr. Elena Dubinets, who has co-organized several highly-acclaimed contemporary music festivals and conferences in different countries, including the Seattle Chamber Players Icebreaker: New Voices from Russia festival of contemporary Russian music in 2002.

The project has two key components. First, the Seattle Chamber Players will perform music of contemporary composers from all nine countries of the Baltic Sea region; and second, the festival will involve an educational component: a musicological symposium on Baltic music of today. Each of the Baltic Sea countries will send its representatives to the festival. Leading musicologists from these countries will give one-hour presentations about the contemporary music scenes of their countries, and the composers will present their own music in additional one-hour seminars.

Along with the Seattle Chamber Players, whose members belong to the Seattle Symphony and the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts, several soloists will participate in the festival. SCP’s favorite Russian-German pianist Ivan Sokolov, with whom the SCP collaborated at the Icebreaker I and the Shostakovich Uncovered festivals, returns to Seattle for the third time in three years. New York pianist, Marian Lee participated in the ensemble’s extremely successful tour to Russia and Estonia in November 2003. And we will be joined by the unique violinist/violist Karen Bentley Pollick, international guitar soloist Michael Partington, and one of Seattle’s leading choirs, Seattle Pro Musica, under the direction of Karen P.Thomas. Other participating musicians include Valerie Muzzolini, Principal Harp of the Seattle Symphony, Seth Krimsky, Principal Bassoon of the Seattle Symphony, and Jeannie Wells Yablonsky, Seattle Symphony violinist.