Announcing our 2023/2024 Season
5 Main Series programs in West LA and Pasadena; 4 conversational Happy Hours; 2 Sounds Delicious Dinner Concerts; and our first-of-its-kind retreat in SoCal Wine Country. Tickets are on sale now!
At every one of our events, you can expect:
World-class musical performance
Ample opportunities to interact personally with the musicians performing
Complimentary wine to grease your conversational wheels
For the music to be expertly set in context for you, priming you to absorb its meaning and beauty to the fullest
A friendly, unpretentious good time among fellow music nerds – newbies and the cognoscenti alike
Tickets to our Main Series are $40. Tickets to Happy Hour – “the best deal in town for Classical Music lovers” – are only $20. Student tickets to all in-person concerts are $10.
*indicates livestream online. Livestreams are always free for active Salastina Members, who may watch on-demand, anytime. Non-Member tickets are $10 and allow viewing for 3 days from the date of each concert.
Happy Hour No. 118: Shostakovich's BFF, in Macro and Miniature: the Flute works of Weinberg
September 16, 2023 @ 11 AM PT* - Barrett Hall at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
Salastina’s Resident Flutist Benjamin Smolen guides us through the flute works of Shostakovich’s BFF, Mieczysław Weinberg, a composer with whom he became enamored while studying in Moscow. Mimosa and pastry reception to follow.
Main Series No. 1: The Shostakovich Cycle Continues
September 29, 2023 @ 8 PM - The Edye at the Broad Stage, Santa Monica
September 30, 2023 @ 8 PM* - Barrett Hall at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
Our multi-year cycle of the complete works of Dmitri Shostakovich – otherwise known as the BFF of Mieczysław Weinberg – continues with his first and ninth string quartets and his Sonata for Viola and Piano. Wine and munchies reception to follow.
Happy Hour No. 119: Jean Rondeau, Harpsichordist
November 4, 2023 @ 11 AM* - The Edye at the Broad Stage, Santa Monica
Paris-based rockstar of the harpsichord Jean Rondeau performs a full recital of works by Fux, Haydn, Clementi, Beethoven, and Mozart. The event includes conversation with the artist and a mimosa and pastry reception.
Salastina x The California Festival: Encounters With Beauty, feat. Leela Dance Collective
One Night Only!
November 10, 2023 @ 8 PM* - The Edye at the Broad Stage, Santa Monica
Salastina’s contribution to the statewide California Festival of contemporary classical music is in partnership with Leela Dance Collective and Hindustani Classical vocalist Saili Oak. Encounters With Beauty is a world-premiere piece of choreography set to music by our dear friends and LA-based composers Derrick Skye and Reena Esmail. Wine reception, replete with Indian munchies, to follow.
Main Series No. 2: Handel’s Messiah
One Performance Only!
December 2, 2023 @ 2:30 PM* - Doheny Mansion at Mount Saint Mary’s University
In partnership with Da Camera Music Society
All the glory of Handel’s timeless Messiah, but make it chamber music. This chestnut gets the one-on-a-part treatment – and the nimbleness and luminosity that affords. Salastina loyalists will enjoy the return of last season’s most popular Happy Hour guest, the effervescent Belgian soprano Laurence Servaes. Mulled wine reception to follow.
Sounds Delicious: A Gilded Christmas Brunch
December 3, 2023 @ 11 AM - Doheny Mansion at Mount Saint Mary’s University
In partnership with Da Camera Music Society
As the holiday season approaches, immerse yourself in a late-19th-century musical, culinary, and generally Christmas-y explosion. Enjoy a 5-course gourmet holiday brunch prepared by Master Chef alum Becky Brown. Travel back in time in the stunning period venue; built in 1899, the Doheny Mansion’s Pompeian Room is replete with actual gilded details, colored marble floors, and a golden, ombre glass dome that is simply resplendent at mid-day. And naturally, it’ll be appropriately decked out for Christmas complete with a festive a capella group of carolers.
Happy Hour No. 120: The Sacred Veil with Eric Whitacre
January 27, 2024 @ 11 AM PT* - Mountain View Mausoleum, Altadena
A contemplative Happy Hour exploring the porous boundary between mortality and the beyond. Musical selections include the slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 132, Juhi Bansal’s Cathedral of Light, Olivier Messiaen’s Louange from The Quartet for the End of Time, and the world-premiere instrumental-only chamber arrangement of Eric Whitacre’s profoundly moving choral work, You Feel Like Home: Suite from The Sacred Veil. The setting – a marble sanctuary suffused with the rainbow light of hundreds of stained glass windows – sets the scene. Mimosa and pastry reception to follow.
A Salastina.calm Valentine’s Day
February 14, 2024 @ 8 PM* - Serra on Vine, Hollywood
Slow your heartbeat and set it aflutter with a selection of soul-soothing and soul-stirring Romantic fare. Featuring world-premiere arrangements by Salastina’s Resident Violist, Meredith Crawford.
Main Series No. 3: Brahms’ Piano Quintet Sounds Genius
March 8, 2024 @ 8 PM - The Edye at the Broad Stage, Santa Monica
March 9, 2024 @ 8 PM* - Barrett Hall at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
What happens when a symphonist writes for 5 instruments? In this case, a masterpiece for the ages. Brian Lauritzen dissects what makes Brahms’ Piano Quintet such a perfect piece of music before a full performance of the work. Mimosa and pastry reception to follow.
Happy Hour No. 121: Sounds Mysterious with Brian Lauritzen
April 14, 2024 @ 10 AM* - Barrett Hall at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
Sounds Mysterious is a game in which Brian assigns us a piece of music that none of us recognize. He even redacts the composer’s name. We rehearse it, perform it, and attempt to guess the composer along with you. The delight of surprise and interactive “whodunnit” musical game make for an engaging spin on the live concert experience. Mimosa and pastry reception to follow.
Main Series No. 4: Bach’s Chaconne Sounds Promising
May 10, 2024 @ 8 PM - Lounge at the Ebell of Los Angeles
May 11, 2024 @ 8 PM* - Community Room at the South Pasadena Library
Each year, Salastina selects up to 10 young composers worldwide to take part in its Sounds Promising Young Composers Program. The program is zero-cost for all participants, and has resulted in “life-changing” (their words, not ours!) professional development – and even high-profile commissions. Last year, we pledged to commission one participant from each year’s cohort. This concert includes world premieres by 2021 Sounds Promising Young Composer Kian Ravaei and a 2023 participant to be determined. Each composer will pen a piece for our entire ensemble – piano, string quartet, and flute – taking inspiration from Bach’s Chaconne. Resident Pianist HyeJin Kim opens the program with Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of the same work. Wine and munchies reception to follow.
Main Series No. 5: The Pummel of Hummel
June 14, 2024 @ 8 PM - The Edye at the Broad Stage, Santa Monica
June 15, 2024 @ 8 PM* - Barrett Hall at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music
June 16, 2024 @ 3 PM - Weinstein Performance Space at Chamber Music | OC in Lake Forest
If you love dead, white, male German composers as much as we do – and are not (yet!) familiar with the greatness of Johann Nepomuk Hummel – this concert exploring the arbitrariness of fame is for you. In 1819, Hummel organized a concert for the world-premiere performance of one of his works; for the occasion, Schubert wrote the Trout Quintet for the same combination of instruments. Guess which piece is all anyone remembers? Salastina recreates this concert – so that you can be the judge of whether or not posterity was fair to jettison a composer with a name as awesome as “Nepomuk.” Wine and munchies reception to follow.
Salastina in SoCal Wine Country
June 21 through 23, 2024
Music, wine, food, wine, company, wine, a beautiful natural setting, wine, refined interiors in which to enjoy it all… And also wine. Savor worlds Old and New at this first-of-its-kind weekend away. We are hard at work planning a musical and epicurean feast for your senses. Stay tuned for more details!