BLINK for orchestra and multimedia will be part of the Knoxville Symphony 23-24 concert season. The piece will be performed at the Bijou Theatre on September 17th 2023 with Mtro. Aram Demirjian.
Program note BLINK celebrates the uniqueness of the synchronous fireflies, a singular species of fireflies that lives in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park whose individuals synchronize their flashing patterns. In the piece, the magic of the event is captured in the form of a journey that starts and ends in the National Park, going through imaginary worlds that exist inside of the smokies. The glide through surreal underwater worlds, giant caves and Daliesque cities ends where it started, in the park, with the synchronous fireflies in full splendor. BLINK was commissioned by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for the 2021 Young People’s Concert: “Nature at Night: A Smokies Symphony”.
Check the KSO 23-24 season here:
During his 2023 US visit Valentin Garvie will offer a concert of new music for trumpet and trumpet and electronics.
Valentin Garvie is an internationally renown trumpet soloist/composer who straddles the worlds of Classical, Contemporary Music and Jazz in a versatile and original way.
He studied Orchestral Conducting at Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires whilst studying trumpet with Rafael Morelli and composition with Marcelo Perticone. He then pursued a Postgraduate Performance Course in Trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music in London with teachers John Wallace and Howard Snell.
From 2002 to 2017 he held the trumpet position at the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, working and collaborating with the main composers and conductors of our times including Pierre Boulez, Beat Furrer, George Benjamin, Helmut Lachenmann, etc.
He has been invited by symphony orchestras such as Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester , the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. He has been a member of ensembles such as Worldbrass and Banda Antix and has performed Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Nr 2 with many chamber orchestras around Europe.
Valentin is also very active as a jazz soloist . He was a member of Hessischer Rundfunk Jazz Ensemble as a composer/instrumentalist and continues to play with many important figures of the german jazz scene. In 2015 he was awarded the Hessischer Jazz Preis.
In 2017 he relocated to Mar del Plata, Argentina where he continues to develop his career as a soloist, chamber musician, jazz soloist, composer and educator.
He was awarded the “Konex” prize for his role as an outstanding wind player of Argentina in the decade 2009-2019.
He is increasingly active as a composer and leader of collaborative projects. In May 2019 during a residency in Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires he lead a collaborative adapation of Bernd Alois Zimmerman ´s Trumpet Concerto and Alvin Curran ´s Fakebook. The last of which he has also coordinated as artistic director with the Ensemble Modern. He has performed with various symphony orchestras his composition “Cuatro piezas para trompeta y orquesta”. In 2020 he coordinated/lead a project based on the work of composer Gerardo Gandini in the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón. He has recently premiered his “Concierto” (versión para trompeta, saxo y gran órgano) at the main hall of Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires in march 2022.
About the piece: Contrafactum is based on a bicinia by Orlando de Lassus. Similar to a a jazz contrafact, Contrafactum evolves after a reestablished framework.
The composition is for two trumpets, the artists for the premiere will be Valentin Garvie and Arthur Zanin.
Cellist Ashlee Booth and violist Cameron Rehberg will premiere “Fuego y Duende” on February 26th @ 4PM at Acoustic Corner in NC.
About the piece:
Fuego y duende is a composition about the unrelenting search that fuels music in all its forms. At its root, the need for music comes from an inexplicable desire to find something indescribable. Music is a constant search. In García Lorca’s words “…there are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned…”
About the performers:
Ashlee Booth (b.1993, West Palm Beach, FL) is a native Floridian and freelance cellist currently residing in Asheville, North Carolina where she teaches orchestra in the Buncombe County Schools.
Ashlee is a classically trained cellist who specializes in contemporary music. Ashlee has performed with the local contemporary music organization nief-norf in their Knoxville Concert Series and at the Big Ears Festival. During the summer of 2018, Ashlee appeared as a Performance Fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and in residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute with “Two-Way Street” and composer, Sarah Hennies.
Ashlee was the winner of the 2017 Concerto Competition at the University of Tennessee and performed the first movement of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto with the UTSO. She has appeared in masterclasses for artists such as Joel Krosnick, Desmond Hoebig, Collin Carr, Amit Paled, and the Dali String Quartet.
Her musical career extends beyond the stage. She is a registered teacher with the Suzuki Associations of America and received Book 1 training with Dr. Melissa Kraut. Ashlee is passionate about sharing her love of music and encouraging creativity in young students through her teaching. She is currently the Strings Teacher in the 
Buncombe County Schools and is the cello instructor at Bill Jones Music School, where she teaches private lessons and leads a biweekly improvisatio
n group class. She has appeared as Guest Artist Faculty at the 2019 Tennessee Cello Workshop and at the Community Cello Works in Blacksb
urg, Virginia.
Ashlee strives to give her students a culturally responsible education. Her orchestra students are not only taught the fundamentals of musicality,
but a wide range of musical styles, perspectives, and with an emphasis on relating music to the world around them.
Ashlee received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University where she studied with Greg Sauer. In 2018 Ashlee completed her MM and her work as the Graduate Teaching Assistant for Dr. Wesley Baldwin at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorge Variego.
Hi Jorge, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I was born in Rosario, Argentina. My musical studies began at age 10 with the clarinet and some general ear training classes. This relentless relationship with music continues today and has taken me to many places, connected me with incredible people, and taken me through unique experiences.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
After finishing my undergraduate degree, I moved from Argentina to the US, back to Argentina, back to the US, Europe, and the US. Lots of twists and turns along the way. In that order! Wherever music took me.
In preparation to our show at Tybee Post, we will be presenting our new repertoire of our album Recompensa and some standards at the Bistro with the Variego3 project.
Jorge Variego (clarinets and compositions)
Jack Roben (guitar)
Rob Linton (bass)
Join Us!
We will be presenting the Variego3 upcoming album Recompensa at the Clarinetfest 2023 in Denver. Very exciting news, thrilled to play again with Jack Roben (guitar) and Rob Linton (bass).
The repertoire that we will play includes Malambo, Susurro de Paris, Reencuentro and other originals.
The Variego3, featuring Jorge Variego (clarinets and compositions), Jack Roben (guitar) and Rob Linton (double bass) will be presenting new works among some standards and will make its debut at the DistrictLive stage in Savannah, GA.
A
nd just like that, the Sewanee Summer Music Festival came to an end. What an intense four weeks! Composers thrived with 20 premieres, an orchestral reading session, a full week of scoring for media and much more. WOW, what a group of bright, curious creative artists, I can’t wait to know more about your upcoming endeavors. Endless thanks to John Kilkenny (and all the SSMF staff) for your constant support of new music, to the amazing Gene Moon and Mathew Ward for making the reading sessions possible, to Vinny Oppido for sharing your expertise with us, and to Aaron Hunt for helping co-pilot this project. Until the next time!
* some pics by Jennifer Szeto
