Surround with Alia Musica

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Immerse yourself in the sound-world of a harp sextet. In Surround, a landmark piece from Pittsburgh new music composer Federico Garcia-De Castro, six harps encircle the audience creating a concert experience like no other.  

Surround employs familiar and innovative harp-playing techniques, and explores the spatial possibilities of surround sound, from all-encompassing textures to circular motion to spatial surprise.

Featuring PSO’s principal harpist Gretchen Van Hoesen, members of her graduate studio at Carnegie Mellon University, local harpists Natalie Severson and Nuiko Wadden (member of the New York-based International Contemporary Ensemble).

The performance is part of a collaboration with the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind Children, that includes workshops with the students in the creation and performance of spatial music, and is supported by Arlene Wolk and the Helen Jaffe Wolk Fund (Pittsburgh Foundation).

Federico Garcia-De Castro‘s music is regularly programmed in concerts and festivals around the world, and has been performed throughout the US and in ten countries from his native Colombia to as far away as Thailand and Australia. In 2019 he conducted the National Symphony of Panama in the premiere of his Concerto hfor Percussion. Based in Pittsburgh since 2001, he is cofounder and director of Alia Musica Pittsburgh, and in this capacity has produced and conducted thirteen seasons of music by living composers and modern classics, as well as three editions of the Pittsburgh Festival of New Music.