Summers/Silvola & Bozzini Quartet

This exciting collaboration sees the Bozzini Quartet, one of the world’s leading new music string quartets, working with the renowned traditional duo Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola. The Bozzinis have since 1999 commissioned over 500 works from leading composers worldwide and recorded 40 albums. When Sarah-Jane played with them in 2017, a plan for a collaboration based on traditional music was born, and Summers & Silvola have now written a 40-minute work based on Scottish Highland traditions and Norwegian Hardanger-fiddle music, and Alissa Cheung from the quartet has arranged a variety of French-Canadian tunes. This idiosyncratic music places the melodic language and rhythmic drive of traditional music within the landscape of contemporary and classical chamber music, and the combined sound of these two strong and unique ensembles speaks strongly to the heart and the mind, encompassing both dancing and quiet contemplation in a cinematic and captivating soundscape. Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola have played together for 14 years, and their four albums each received Top Of The World from Songlines. “The Smoky Smirr o Rain” was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in 2021, and they won the NOPA Music Prize 2022. The BBC SSO commissioned Spirit Multitude (25min) from the duo, which they performed at Tectonics 2024. Sarah-Jane is a Highland tradition bearer who learned from the legendary Donald Riddell, and has a masters degree on Hardanger Fiddle from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she is currently working on a Ph.D. in Artistic Research.