Besides being a festival of contemporary composition the likes of which isn't often seen this side of the Atlantic, the Czech Republic's biennial Ostrava Days plays host to a two-week institute for composers and performers, where students get the opportunity to workshop with and have their works reviewed by some of the the major figures invited to the nine days of concerts, which follow on the heels of the institute. But once the festival proper is underway, such hierarchies evaporate, as students perform with and have their work presented alongside the headliners.
Jacek Sotomski was one such student given star treatment. His beautiful to me, ah--centered around Milan Osadský's accordion, flanked by two dozen strings--was played on opening night, along with works by Cage, Stockhausen, Phill Niblock and festival founder and director Petr Kotik. Osadský and accordion climbed, with what seemed like a struggle, a series of ascending lines, while the strings choked and clucked in support of the staccato static that would echo them. The electronic noise was beguilingly out of place, emanating from a laptop at the center of the audience.
Hasty assumptions shouldn't be made about what constitutes a "student" at the institute. While many of the residents are young artists at the beginning of their careers, there are also working composers and performers who return every other year for the classroom and concert experiences. The Czech musicians Ian Mikyska and Lucie Vítková, Iranian Idin Samimi Mofakham, Vancouver-based Rita Ueda and Americans James Ilgenfritz and Ben Richter (the latter currently living in Berlin) were all repeat enrollees in the 2015 intensive.
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