Sounds of the Silk Road

Drogheda Arts Festival, Fri 041-9833946 Music in Drumcliffe, St Columba’s Church, Drumcliffe, Co Sligo, Sat-Mon 01-5059582

You can always expect the unexpected from the Louth Contemporary Music Society. LCMSs contribution to this year's Drogheda Arts Festival is titled Sounds of the Silk Road, and includes works by Dmitry Yanov-Yanovsky (including Morning, a new work commissioned from the Uzbekistani composer), and a piece for the weird and wonderful 1920s' electronic instrument, the theremin, Iraida Yusupova's Kitezh 19. The concert will also feature pieces by Ken Ueno, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh. It was the LCMD who brought Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov to Ireland for the first time for a portrait concert in 2009. One of the performers on that occasion was the Dublin-resident Russian pianist Elisaveta Blumina (pictured), and Silvestrov subsequently dedicated a piece to her. She'll be playing that Waltz at this weekend's Music in Drumcliffe Festival in Co Sligo. Blumina will also be performing works by Swiss composer Daniel Schnyder (who features both as composer, and as a performer - he's a saxophonist), and in pieces by Weinberg, Gavrilin and Tchaikovsky.

The festival also includes performances by singer/actress Salome Kammer of sound poems by Dadaist Hugo Ball and Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III and songs by Kurt Weill and Erik Satie. Offerings from the festival’s anchor ensemble, the Vogler String Quartet, include works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schulhoff, and Haydn.