Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival - Canterbury

Sounds New is now firmly established as a central part of the UK’s contemporary music calendar.  It all began in 1997, when a group of Kentish friends met and decided it was time to seriously promote the music of our own time in a place where cultural heritage was key to its very being.  Twelve years on, Sounds New 2009 celebrates the music of Poland and adopts the theme Polish Connections.  This is the first major celebration of Polish contemporary music to have taken place in the UK in recent years.  With significant financial support from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute, it has been possible to create a programme that celebrates the extraordinary impact that Polish music of the last forty or so years has made on contemporary music as a whole. 

World-renowned composer Krzysztof Penderecki will be the festival's featured composer and will come to Canterbury for the UK premieres of his recent Sextet and brand new String Quartet No. 3.  To add to the special nature of the event, the great composer will also conduct a team of star soloists, the Warsaw Boys Choir, Camerata Silesia, Polish Radio Choir Katowice and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in his monumental work St. Luke Passion, the first UK performance in nearly thirty years.  Written to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of Munster Cathedral, St. Luke Passion's premiere in 1966 coincided with the thousandth anniversary of Christianity’s introduction into Poland. Few people could have predicted the immense impact the work had on its audience, the extraordinary critical acclaim it received and the palpable influence it has continued to have on subsequent composers all over the world.  The model was Bach’s Passions, and Penderecki also used psalms and hymns to further increase the spiritual and emotive depth.  However, unlike Bach, Penderecki employed vast forces, creating a sound world of immeasurable emotive power.

The festival will run from 23rd April until the 3rd March at various venues in Canterbury and will feature performances of John Casken’s Chansons de Verlaine, Ligeit’s Chamber Concerto and Henze’s Ragtimes and Habaneras.  For more information about Sounds New 2009 CLICK HERE or visit www.soundsnew.org.uk

• Krzysztof Penderecki – Profile
• Sounds New Festival