iskwē & the KSO Concert Programme by Kamloops Symphony

iskwe & the KSO An evocative and intimate sharing invites you into an emotional and soulful experience with Cree artist iskwē.

F E AT U R I N G

BRADLEY THACHUK

Advisory: Concert will

Guest Conductor

include coarse language some may find offensive

iskwe Guest Artist

Sagebrush Theatre

APRIL 21 THURSDAY 7:30PM

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Words from the Music Director Dear music lovers, It is such a pleasure to welcome you to this exciting concert. Today, the Kamloops Symphony will have the honour of sharing the stage with Cree Métis artist iskwē. I recall being stunned when I first listened to iskwē’s music and immediately thought that inviting her to Kamloops to perform with our orchestra would be a phenomenal experience. Today is the day! Get ready to witness an artist with an incredible voice, a powerful stage presence, and the ability to raise awareness of major societal issues through the universal language of music. Under the dynamic baton of guest conductor Bradley Thachuk, in addition to iskwē’s repertoire, the KSO musicians will begin this performance with the vibrant work Pizzicato by Canadian composer Vivian Fung. We are also very grateful for the participation of Charli Fortier, River Prairie Chickan, Ashley Michel, and Aveah Michel who will open this concert with a Secwépemc Welcome Song. Thank you! Merci! Kukwstsétsemc! Finally, on behalf of the musicians, the board members and our team, we would also like to thank you, our audience, for your continuous support in helping to create such evocative and emotional musical moments. Wishing you all a great concert experience with iskwē! Music Director Kamloops Symphony

The Kamloops Symphony wishes to acknowledge that this concert is taking place on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory within the traditional lands of the Secwépemc Nation.

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Dina Gilbert

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Kamloops Symphony Society BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John McDonald | President Helen Newmarch | Secretary Tyler Klymchuk | Treasurer Kathy Collier Lucille Gnanasihamany Gabriele Klein Rod Michell Steve Powrie Simon Walter

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Music Director

Dina Gilbert

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MUSIC DIRECTOR Regularly invited to conduct in Canada and overseas, Dina Gilbert attracts critical acclaim for her energy, precision and versatility. Currently Music Director of the Kamloops Symphony and of the Orchestre symphonique de l’Estuaire (Québec), she is known for her contagious dynamism and her audacious programming. Dina Gilbert is regularly invited by leading Canadian orchestras including the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre métropolitain, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic and the Orchestre symphonique de Québec. Passionate about expanding classical audiences and with an innate curiosity towards non-classical musical genres, Dina has conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestre national de Lyon in several Hip-Hop Symphonic programmes collaborating with renowned Hip hop artists. She has also conducted the world premiere of the film The Red Violin with orchestra at the Festival de Lanaudière and has conducted the North American premiere of the film The Artist with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. As the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Arkea, a Montreal-based chamber orchestra, Dina premiered over thirty works from emerging young Canadian composers. Committed to music education, she has reached thousands of children’s in Canada with her interactive and participative Conducting 101 workshop. From 2013 to 2016, Dina Gilbert was assistant conductor of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Maestro Kent Nagano, also assisting guest conductors including Zubin Mehta, Sir Roger Norrington, Lawrence Foster and Giancarlo Guerrero. In April 2016, she received great acclaim for stepping in to replace Maestro Alain Altinoglu with the OSM in a program showcasing Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Dina Gilbert earned her doctorate from the Université de Montréal, where she studied with Jean-François Rivest and Paolo Bellomia. Awarded the Opus Prize of “Découverte de l’année” in 2017, Dina Gilbert was also named as one of the 50 personalities creating the extraordinary in Québec in 2018 by the Urbania Magazine.

Dina Gilbert

Orchestra FIRST VIOLIN Cvetozar Vutev

BASS Sheila Garrett++

Elyse Jacobson

FLUTE Jeff Pelletier++

—concertmaster° —concertmaster

Molly MacKinnon

— assistant concertmaster + Llowyn Ball Meredith Bates

SECOND VIOLIN Boris Ulanowicz* Narumi Higuchi Sandra Wilmot VIOLA Ashley Krocher* Jennifer Ho CELLO Martin Kratky* Doug Gorkoff

Chair Sponsors

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OBOE Marea Chernoff*

TIMPANI Martin Fisk++

CLARINET Sally Arai*

PERCUSSION Martin Fisk Gregory Samek

BASSOON Olivia Martin*

HARP Naomi Cloutier*

HORN Sam McNally* Dennis Colpitts Maddie Davis Heather Walker

°On Leave

Principal

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Acting Principal

Substitute Principal

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PROGRAMME PERFORMANCE SPONSOR

Guest Conductor: Singer:

Bradley Thachuk

PERFORMANCE SPONSOR

iskwē

Blessing & Secwépemc Welcome Song:

Charli Fortier, River Prairie Chicken, Ashley Michel, Aveah Michel Pizzicato for String Orchestra..... Vivian Fung Healers........................................... iskwē, Ryan Somerville and Ben McCarthy Little Star....................................... iskwē, M. Meister, A. Mak, M. Ancheta The Storm....................................... iskwē, Patrick Huward Breaking Down............................. iskwē, M. Meisters, A. Mak, M. Ancheta Starless Night................................. Misha Bauer, as performed by iskwē Soldier............................................ iskwē, M. Bandura, H. Wolf The Unforgotten............................ iskwē, M. Meisters, G. Geisbrecht, E. Robinson Night Danger................................. iskwē Sweet Tuesday................................ iskwē, Ryan Somerville Waiting for the Laughter.............. iskwē, akaMatisse Exhale............................................ iskwē, Damian Taylor, Ali Milner All arrangements of iskwē’s original music by Darren Fung

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GUEST ARTIST

iskwē iskwē | ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ (short for waseskwan iskwew, meaning “blue sky woman”) is, among many other things, an artist— a creator and communicator of music and of movement, of pictures, poetry and prose. And through it all, she’s a teller of stories that have impacted our past and will inform our future. The Stars is iskwē’s newest release (March 5, 2021). It is the inverse of her third album acākosīk starting with the title which is the English translation of the Cree word acākosīk. Where acākosīk is a blaze of sonic exploration, The Stars is an elegant and intimate sharing of the collection allowing iskwē’s songwriting voice and spirit to shine. The Stars features entirely new arrangements of the six songs with iskwē accompanied by a trio of piano (Michael Shand), cello (Mariel Gonzalez), and violin (Laura C Bates) recorded live-off-the-floor at Revolution Recording in Toronto and a dramatic orchestral reimagining of “Night Danger (Lovers Mix)” recorded with the FILMharmonic Orchestra (Prague). Where acākosīk demanded our attention, The Stars invites us into an emotional and soulful experience with iskwē.

acākosīk, (November 9, 2019), is a sonic exploration that not only blurs lines between sources and styles, but also between the actual and the ideal, the real and imagined. But by extension, it’s also the star around which immersive worlds of live performance, video, and visual art revolve. acākosīk has received critical praise: the video for “Little Star” garnered a JUNO Award for Music Video of the Year in 2020, the album was nominated for a JUNO Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year, and “Breaking Down” was nominated for a Prism Prize and the SOCAN Songwriting Prize. The songs on acākosīk and The Stars are meant to raise awareness of systemic abuses and societal opinions and the way we’ve been perceived and treated, but also to celebrate our culture and help bridge that gap—to help us find empathy and common ground and connect the way we’re supposed to as people, regardless of race or religion or background,” she shares. “A lot of these issues, while they stem from my experiences and those of my people, are really universally human issues.”

GUEST ARTIST

iskwē’s album The Fight Within (2017) was JUNO-nominated for Indigenous Music Album of the Year (2018) and garnered her a spot on the Polaris Long List. iskwē’s message is arguably most impactful when delivered from the stage, where it’s not uncommon for people to leave in entranced contemplation or even in tears. Music merges with dance, multimedia, and more in a completely engulfing and cathartic experience—one meant to bring people together and celebrate that which unites over that which divides. She has performed hundreds of shows in Canada and internationally,

including Canadian highlights at Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and a triumphant performance with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, in New York City at the Met and SummerStage in Central Park, and beyond for the King and Queen of Sweden, Reeperbahn in Germany, and Border Crossing’s Origins Festival in England. iskwē is an ambassador and program participant for the PRS Keychange initiative. iskwē is Cree Métis from Treaty One Territory. She was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She is an urban Indigenous two-spirited woman from the Red River Valley, the birthplace of the Métis Nation.

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GUEST CONDUCTOR

Bradley Thachuk Canadian conductor, Bradley Thachuk, is the Music Director of the Niagara Symphony Orchestra (NSO), entering his 9th season as their artistic leader and conductor in September 2019. Previously, he held the positions of Music Director of the Erie Chamber Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic (Indiana), Interim Music Director of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra (Canada), Conducting Assistant of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras (Ohio), Staff Conductor of the Opera Theatre of Lucca (Italy), and Music Director of the Brampton Symphony Orchestra (Canada). As an in demand guest conductor in North America and Europe, Mr. Thachuk’s recent and upcoming guest engagements include the English Symphony Orchestra (U.K.), Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal (Germany), the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the U.K. “Genesis Revisited” tour with legendary guitarist Steve Hackett, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Ocean City Pops, 13 Strings (Canada), the Reading Symphony Orchestra, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra (Canada), the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Tuscon

Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Pops, the Richmond Symphony, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic (Czech Republic). Additionally, he was appointed Festival Orchestra Conductor for the 2019 season of the Festival de Febero in Mexico. An advocate of contemporary music, he has led world, Canadian and U.S. premieres of works by John Estacio, Joseph Schwantner, Kevin Lau, Stewart Goodyear, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Roydon Tse, Robert A. Baker and Ronald Royer, amongst others. A versatile and diverse musician, Maestro Thachuk has also established himself globally as one of the handful of conductors who moves easily between the classical and rock worlds. He is a highly sought-after symphonic arranger, with numerous collaborations. Recent and upcoming projects include Steve Hackett of Genesis, the music of Leonard Cohen, a tribute to the Tragically Hip, Dave Mason of Fleetwood Mac and Traffic, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars franchise, Tony-Award winning Heather Headley, Sarah Slean, Chantal Kreviazuk, The Beach Boys, and Air Supply. A supporter of the next generation of orchestral musicians, Thachuk is also a lecturer in Orchestral Literature at the world-renowned Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, sharing his knowledge and passion for orchestral musician with post-grad students from around the world.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Vivian Fung (1975)

Pizzicato for String Orchestra Vivian Fung was born in Edmonton, studied at the Julliard School and now lives, composes, and teaches in California. She is a Juno Award winning composer, very prolific and increasingly well known. Her works include several concertos— among them are ones for harp, trumpet, piano, and two for violin. The most recent, in 2021, is a concerto for flute and orchestra co-commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Five string quartets as well as larger works for strings, and music for voice and for percussion are also part of her creative output. By her own admission she is especially fond of composing for strings. She is committed to music education and to the fostering of music performance in schools. However, as an artist of Asian heritage, she has found western attitudes to Asian musical culture and traditions still surprisingly isolating. She herself has travelled widely in order to explore the Asian musical heritage of her own family and has studied gamelan musical practice in Bali along with other non-western traditions, all of which, she says, have opened up for her a whole new way of learning and experiencing music as a means to self-discovery. One of her musical goals, then, is to find ways in which to blend the musical traditions of East and West rather than to rigidly maintain their distinctiveness. Pizzicato is the musical term to indicate that a string is to be plucked and not bowed. This brief Pizzicato for Strings is a stand-alone arrangement of the third movement of Fung’s First String Quartet and dates from 2001. She says she was intrigued by the range of sounds (including clock-like ones) that the act of plucking could produce, and also by the interlocking rhythmic patterns that could be generated by pizzicato. Her inspiration, she admits, came in part from Asian folk music and in part from the sound of Chinese plucked instruments the pipa and qin, as well as from the “energetic rhythms of Indonesian gamelan.” She also speaks of “a few surprises in the middle and towards the end of the work.” This highly original piece for strings, which has recently been listed as part of the recommended Grade 6 string repertoire in the US, and which has close links to non-western musical practice, embodies several of Vivian Fung’s characteristics as well as her goals as a composer.

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Enjoy an engaging, Magdalena How Soprano cross-cultural experience when we pair the music Philip Wing of Canadian composer Baritone Dinuk Wijeratne’s KSO with Chorus Tabla Concerto the immortal beauty of Beethoven.

F E AT U R I N G

Bradley Thachuk Guest Conductor

Gabriel Dionne Tabla

APRIL 23 SATURDAY 7:30PM

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