If you haven’t yet discovered the weekly Happy Hours that Salastina holds, tonight you should join in as composer Tarik O’Regan joins for performance and conversation. Salastina’s Happy Hour takes place at 9:00 PM EDT/6:00 PM PDT, runs one hour and is free.
So maybe you are asking yourself who is Salastina and who is O’Regan. Allow me to answer those in order.
Salastina is a chamber music ensemble that puts an emphasis on contemporary classical music. They hold traditional salons (in the Covid-era they are online and presented as Happy Hours) in which they celebrate musicians and composers.
O’Regan is an award-winning British composer. Amongst his most recent works is The Phoenix, an opera about Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist who collaborated with Mozart on Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte. His opera was considered so important that a documentary was made on its creation and first production that starred Thomas Hampson as da Ponte.
His Celestial Map of the Sky is considered one of the best new compositions of the 2010s. The American premiere took place with Pacific Chorale in 2017 where he served as Composer in Residence for three years. The recording was O’Regan’s first orchestral album. I happen to personally love this record!
In Charlotte Gordon’s BBC review of his album Threshold of Night, she wrote of the composer, “O’Regan is a phenomenal choral composer with a language that, whilst thoroughly contemporary and unique, draws from past choral tradition. Perhaps this should be no great surprise given his years at Oxford and Cambridge universities where choral evensong is part of the fabric of life, but there are plenty of Oxbridge-based composers who have left these rich musical pickings untapped. O’Regan’s complex yet elemental-sounding music reaches for the divine with a maturity far beyond what one expects of a composer barely thirty years of age, and his settings work on several levels, translating more than just general mood.”
O’Regan’s compositions have been performed all over the world including Dutch National Ballet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Opera House, London.
Salastina’s Happy Hours are done via Zoom. You will need to register in advance to join.
This should be a fascinating conversation and whatever music is scheduled to be performed will certainly be interesting. Pour yourself a glass of wine or make a cocktail and enjoy Salastina’s Happy Hour No. 29. (There are more scheduled and you can find details on those on their website).
Photo: Tarik O’Regan (Photo ©Marion Ettlinger/Courtesy of tarikoregan.com)