Salastina

Salastina is a visionary chamber ensemble and presenting organization based in Los Angeles. Winner of San Francisco Classical Voice’s Audience Choice Award for “Best Chamber Ensemble” and “Best Streaming Series,” Salastina is a 21st-century reimagining of the chamber music salon: a place where musicians and audience members gather to share in the beauty of the art form through performance and conversation, whether in-person for intimate, local audiences or online for tens of thousands around the world. Salastina presents up to 25 public performances per year, most live-streamed online. Integral to Salastina’s live concerts: context and storytelling, dynamically provided by Resident Host and Artistic Partner Brian Lauritzen (a popular KUSC DJ), and ample opportunities for audience members and musicians to engage in conversation. As one audience member put it: “Where else can audiences have a personal conversation with a 'famous musician' who might have been a role model and inspiration? People oftentimes can't even pay money to talk to their favorite performers backstage. Yet Salastina has created an arena where musicians and audiences can connect.” In keeping with Gustav Mahler’s definition of tradition as “not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire,” Salastina invests equally in the Classics and the generation of new music. Its tuition-free, highly competitive Sounds Promising Young Composers Program has provided dozens of composers from Italy to Singapore with mentorship and world-class audio-video recordings of their work. Armed with these recordings in their portfolio, alumni have secured professional commissions. Salastina has also given presentations on career development to students at USC’s Thornton School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In May 2020, Salastina partnered with Project: Music Heals Us and UCLA Medical Center to create Vital Sounds, a program bringing the healing power of music to patients in UCLA’s ICU.