T i m e l e s s L i g h t s

Orest Smovszh (UK/US), violin
Livia Schweizer,(IT/CH/FIN), flute

Concert at 7 PM, Tickets 5 €.


The Ukranian (based in the US) violinist Orest Smovszh and the Italian, Helsinki-based flutist Livia Schweizer met in Los Angeles during spring 2019. Both musicians have in common a strong interested especially towards contemporary and early music. For this concert during the darkness of January and the beautiful stillness of the winter, Livia and Orest designed a concert with a selection of solo pieces for flute and violin composed around the theme of Time and Light.
The concert will include a variety of different pieces written during the 20th and 21st century, that will lead the listener in a journey that will go from the light of the Aurora in Ysaye sonata's no.5 for violin solo, to the morning light of Santa Cecilia in Rome with “Sabina” for violin of Andrew Normal, until the constellation of Freeman etude n°26 of John Cage. Time will move in circles with patterns that are changing shape in the intense piece for solo flute “Tempus Loquendi” of B.Alois Zimmerman, the silence and soft sounds from Pisaro's “Within (1)” will build a glacial and still landscape for some new Ukranian music with its roots in folk music, and more..

In the program:

▪ Giacinto Scelsi, Pwyll for solo flute
▪ Ysaye, Sonata n°5 for solo violin
▪ Vyshynsky, Music in Pizzicato Motion, violin solo
▪ Michael Pisaro, Within (1), flute solo
▪ Cage, Freeman Etude no. 26, violin solo
▪ Toru Takemitsu, Itinerant, flute solo
▪ Norman, Sabina, for violin solo
▪ B.Alois Zimmermann, Tempus Loquendi for solo flute
▪ Bezborodko, Folia Ruthenica, for violin solo

concert will include about 65 minutes of music, and the performers will present and speak about each piece.

• Ukrainian-born violinist Orest Smovzh is currently based in the United States. 

For the last few years, he works under mentorship of Midori, and recently received most memorable coachings from pianist Ferenc Rados, baritone Thomas Hampson and lute player Nigel North. Orest collaborated in chamber performances with the members of Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, Suntory Hall Chamber Music Academy, pianists Thomas Hoppe, Albert Tiu, Fazıl Say, cellist Michael Kannen, violinist Vadim Gluzman, also working on a diverse chamber repertoire with Leon Fleisher, Gyorgy Takacs-Nagy, Bernard Lanskey, Members of Tokyo String Quartet, Shlomo Mintz and Jeffrey Kahane. As a soloist he took part in historically informed performances with Masaaki Suzuki in Singapore and USC Baroque Sinfonia in Los Angeles, as well as participated in several outreach projects in Mexico, USA and Japan. 

Orest commissioned and premiered around 40 works from the leading composers of Ukraine, as well as Singapore and USA. Apart from performing, he is a co-founder of Dzenzelivka Classical Week - first Ukrainian chamber music festival in a village, where he was the Artistic Director for 8 years; Collegium Musicum Lviv - one of the most vibrant concert organizations of Ukraine; Melaka Classics – innovative classical music project in Malaysia. 

Winner of 2015 Tadeusz Wroński Violin Solo Competition and the finalist of 2018 George Enescu Violin Competition, Orest has performed on instruments by Guarneri del Gesù, Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, and others, loaned by late Mr Rin Kei Mei and private collections. He appeared as a soloist with George Enescu Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Yamagata Symphony Orchestra, Uzbekistan National Symphony Orchestra, Lublin Philharmonic Orchestra, Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra, Ukrainian Festival Orchestra, in such iconic halls as Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Hitashi Systems Hall in Sendai among others. 

Orest holds degrees from Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore, and USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he studied with Yaroslava Rivnyak, Dmytro Tkachenko, Qian Zhou, and participated in masterclasses by Vadym Repin, Ilya Gringolts, Ivry Gitlis, Pierre Amoyal, Nam Yun Kim, Pinchas Zukerman, Petru Munteanu, Kszysztof Węgrzyn, and David Takeno. He is currently on scholarship at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. 

Orest’s artistic geography includes numerous countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia

• Italian-Swiss flutist Livia Schweizer began to study flute at the age of 8 in Livorno (Italy), after graduating from the Istituto Musicale P.Mascagni with the highest grade in 2014, she began her studies in Sibelius Academy in the class of Mikael Helasvuo, further developing her versatile playing.
Ever since moving to Helsinki, she has participated in several contemporary music projects; with Nyky-ensemble she took part in festivals such Flow festivaland Helsingin juhlaviikot, therefore she played in several concerts with the contemporary ensemble UMUU-ensemble.
In 2017 she had the chance to join the Glomus Camp in Natal (Brazil) where she could meet many different artists and musicians from all over the world, and since then she realized that using music to create and communicate with artists and musicians coming from different backgrounds and cultures, is one of her
priorities. Indeed in the last few years she developed a very strong interest towards improvisation and she has been leading different kind of projects in Helsinki with the aim to explore the field of multidisciplinary arts, collaborating often with composers, dancers and theater artists.
In 2018, Livia had her apprenticeship with the Finnish National Opera. She is now a member of of the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra and she has often performed with the Helsinki Sinfonietta, playing under the baton of conductors such as Christoph Alststaedt, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Leif Segerstam.
In 2019 she has been studying for the spring semester in Los Angeles as an
exchange student at the University Of Southern California, in Jim Walker class.

At the moment Livia is ending her studies at Sibelius Academy in the flute class of Mikael Helasvuo and Hanna Kinnunen, and studying baroque flute as a side instrument.