Acqua Alta

Serikon (website) is in many ways a unique ensemble, with the concept to play renaissance music on period instruments and contemporary music, written for these instruments. Or, as Daniel Stighäll, artistic leader of the group expresses himself; to paint motives from our time using renaissance colors.

Acqua Alta means “high water” and with this production, Daniel Stighäll raises his view to get a larger perspective over the condition of our planet. Our focus is at Venice, a city flooded more and more frequently and with higher water levels from the rising sea. Serikon brings us to a point in time when Venice was the cultural center of the world.

We meet the grandiose music by Andrea & Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo and Adrian Willaert, but also the subtle early baroque by Giovanni Rovetta, Barbara Strozzi and Dario Castello. The new motives are presented by the Swedish composer Jan Sandström and the Brittish composer Alexander Campkin. Sandström’s piece is based on a personal description of Venice by the American poet Meena Alexander and Campkin’s piece on his own translation of an excerpt from Tao Te Ching, which becomes a comment on overindulgence and greed.

On this production, Daniel has gathered some of the best renaissance musicians in the world, conducted by Erik Westberg and guiding us through the most beautiful alleys of the renaissance and playing music to us that we have never heard before.