Mensch, Musik! #5 Border Issues – an Exploration

Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski was awarded the title of “Principal Guest Conductor” in January 2022 by The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the first conductor to hold this position in the orchestra’s 42-year history. In May 2022, Peltokoski was named Music and Artistic Director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra. He starts his term in the 22/23 season. He will also be Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra beginning with the 23/24 concert season.In August 2022 at the age of 22, he completed his first Wagner Ring cycle at the Eurajoki Bel Canto Festival.

Last season he made highly successful debuts with the hr- Sinfonieorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. In the summer of 2022 he appeared at Rheingau Musik Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn and Musikfest Bremen. In the 22/23 season Tarmo Peltokoski will conduct with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, RSB Berlin, the Hallé, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Göteborgs Symfoniker, San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse. He will return to Eurajoki Bel Canto Festival to conduct Tristan und Isolde. He has and will work with soloists such as Yuja Wang, Asmik Grigorian, Matthias Goerne, Jan Lisiecki, Julia Fischer, Golda Schultz, Martin Fröst and Sol Gabetta.

Tarmo Peltokoski began his studies with professor emeritus Jorma Panula at the age of 14 and studied with Sakari Oramo at the Sibelius Academy. He has also been taught by Hannu Lintu, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Since 2007, tauchgold (Heike Tauch and Florian Goldberg) have been realising pieces at the interface between radio and stage. Their work includes social satires, historical dramas and philosophical themes. However, specially composed music always plays a central role. In 2019, their stage work “The Glassing Sea. A Narratorio for Strings and Voices”, which was created with a composition by Cathy Milliken based on the radio piece “Metamorphosen”, premiered in Munich in 2019. For “Geborgte Landschaft. A Narratorio for Piano Trio and Voices”, the composer Dai Fujikura wrote the music (2022). The English stage version “BORROWED LANDSCAPE” premiered in New York in 2023 and will tour the US from 2024. Since 2022, tauchgold have been realising the RSB series “Mensch, Musik!” as an author-director team.

Samaquias Lorta is an interdisciplinary artist working on mental health and ecological thinking. In his work, he often draws on how the use of technology and DIY performance techniques can provide insightful insights or solutions. Although he often devises visual components, the central aspect of his practice is sound performance and design. He uses sound to explore both fine details and larger contexts, seamlessly telling stories through audio.
Samaquias Lorta uses various immersive technologies to create interactive live performances. He uses motion detection tools to create audio assets through the movement of performers. His binaural work for the Soundwalk at Berlin’s Herzberg Museum takes the audience through the history and narratives of a historic hospital.
For Lorta, “immersive” is synonymous with “contemporary”. By using modern tools, he aims to demystify accessible technologies while challenging our understanding of tradition. His practice produces audio assets, sonic branding and interactive compositions for various creative productions including animation, NFT collections, spoken word, theatre/dance, soundwalks and film.
Samaquias Lorta never misses an opportunity to network creatively. This has resulted in numerous co-productions with support from Amplify Berlin, Eufonia Festival, Catalyst Institute, HZT Berlin and others.
His educational background includes cello performance and music composition at Boise State University. In 2020, he completed his Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Music Production and Performance at Catalyst Institute. His education has strengthened the ideas of storytelling and creative design that inform his current explorations.

Doron Sadja is an American artist, composer, educator and instrument designer whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. “Difficult, powerful, intense and delicate – all at the same time” Sadja stages epic performance works that immerse the audience into a futuristic landscape of pure sound and light.

Unafraid to remind his audience of their raw emotion, Sadja melds pristine electronic tones with romantic synthesisers and dark noises to construct hyper-emotive sonic architecture. Although each of Sadja’s works are striking in their singular and focused approach, his output is diverse: spanning everything from immersive multichannel sound pieces to 360-degree projection pieces, from string orchestra works to custom built motorised speaker systems that can precisely track sound around a room.

Doron is a tutor at Catalyst Institute for Art and Technology in Berlin where he teaches Creative Technologies in their Masters Degree programme, and Electronic Music Performance and Composition in their Bachelors Degree programme. He runs the Sound Portraits lecture listening series, an online radio show which examines the life and work of different iconic electronic music composers each month.

Doron currently runs Faded Instruments, a VST/AU design company that creates experimental instruments and effects. He runs the Dissolving Sounds blog on sound and light art. He also co-founded Shinkoyo Records and the West Nile performing arts venue in Brooklyn, and has curated various new music/sound festivals around NYC, including the multichannel SOUNDCORRIDORS Festival, Easy Not Easy, John Cage Musicircus, and more.

Doron has published music on 12k, ATAK, and Shinkoyo records, and has performed/exhibited at PS1 MoMa, Miami MOCA, Atonal Festival, D Museum, Hamburger Bahnhof, Norberg Festival, Cleveland Museum of Art, STEIM, EMS Stockholm, STUK, Center for Contemporary Art Amsterdam, Issue Project Room, and Roulette amongst others.

Doron is currently based in Berlin and Los Angeles.