FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jordan Nobles Phone: (604) 724-0501 Email: redshiftsociety@gmail.com www.redshiftmusic.org www.arkoramusic.com
Redshift Records New Release:
Arkora
Songs from the Rainshadow's Edge March 24, 2015 On March 24th, 2015 Redshift Records releases Arkora: Songs from the Rainshadow’s Edge (Redshift Records TK 444). Described as a “a dark and interior vision” (The Georgia Straight), this five-part work by composer Benton Roark is a lush and hauntingly poetic journey across the threshold of psychic rupture and back again. To celebrate the release, Arkora, a new chamber vocal collective, offers a performance of the work on March 24 at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, presented by Ear Heart Music. A multimedia event, this evening also features the premiere of a film by Austin-based artist-filmmaker Jeanne Stern created to complement the piece. Commissioned by Redshift and premiered in Vancouver, BC in 2012, Songs from the Rainshadow's Edge is a delicate and evocative melding of poetry and instrumental timbre that creates a shimmering world of questions and bittersweet nostalgia. Exploring the psychological phenomenon of depersonalization, the poetic impetus stems from the rainshadow (the elusive shadow of sun on the rainy Northwest coast) as a metaphor for relativism in perception of self and the world. With sung poetry by the composer punctuated by spoken passages on the subject by authors such as Huxley, Carroll, Amiel, and Segal, the arc of the music and text leads the listener through diverse perspectives on the subject from existentialist, Buddhist, and Jungian philosophies. About Benton Roark Toronto-based composer Benton Roark’s music has been stylistically described as “ardent and soaring” (The National Post), “emotionally rich” (NOW Magazine), and “floor-stomping” (The Georgia Straight). His work has been commissioned at home and abroad by companies and ensembles such as Tapestry Opera, the Bozzini Quartet, retheatre, the Victoria Guitar Trio, and the Erasmus Foundation. Roark has also enjoyed critical acclaim as a performer of his own music as a bandleader and solo artist (“a crafty folk experimentalist,” Creative Loafing). Over the past few years Roark has worked increasingly in the experimental music theatre realm with projects such as Shadow Catch (“an evocative score,” The Bulletin), Songs from the Rainshadow’s Edge (“a dream-like state,” Musetta Stone), and Tap:Ex Revolutions (“a fluid, riveting experience,” Schmopera). Current projects include work with Toronto’s Tapestry Opera, Vancouver’s Fugue Theatre, and Chicago’s Striding Lion Performance Group. Roark’s work can be heard on a number of recordings, including the Bozzini Quartet’s À chacun sa miniature, Mark Takeshi McGregor’s Sins and Fantasies, and three records of original work with his band Rollaway (“dirty-southern-gothic-rock-country-folk,” Discorder Magazine). Hailing originally from Atlanta, Roark holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory and the University of British Columbia, and he has been a resident artist at the Banff Centre, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau where he was co-recipient of the Tournon Branley Prize for collaborative work in architecture and music. A tireless arts advocate, Roark has held directorships with non-profits such as Vancouver Pro Musica and Redshift Music Society, and he is currently Co-Artistic Director of Arkora Music. (www.bentonroark.com)
About Arkora Arkora is a new music collective dedicated to contemporary vocal chamber music in its many forms. The concept for the group was born in 2012 in Vancouver, British Columbia at the premiere of Songs from the Rainshadow's Edge, a production involving co-founders Kathleen Allan and Benton Roark that came to symbolize the collective's multi-faceted vision. At once hybrid and interdisciplinary, this vision was refined over the following years into a mission of collaboration, commissioning, recording, and innovation in concert production that led to the group's official debut at Newfoundland's Sound Symposium XVII in 2014. Their inaugural season has continued with a performance at Roulette in Brooklyn (presented by Ear Heart Music), the release of Roark’s Songs from the Rainshadow’s Edge on Redshift Records, and cross-disciplinary collaborations with artists such as Austin-based film-maker Jeanne Stern. As an ensemble, Arkora is made up of a rotating cast of affiliate artists fluent in genres as diverse as early music, indie rock, contemporary chamber, and black box opera based in locales throughout North America such as Toronto, New Haven, Vancouver, St. John's, New York, and Montreal. Next season, the collective looks forward to collaborating with Vancouver's Fugue Theatre in the premiere of the darkly comic music theatre work, Off Leash. (www.arkoramusic.com) About Redshift Records In 2007, Redshift Records, the recording division of the non-profit music society Redshift Music, released their first CD, Tiresias: Delicate Fires. Since then the label, which focuses on the exceptional new music of our time, has grown exponentially with over twenty releases and ten in the current season alone. Comprised of work by some of the most exciting and important artists working today, releases on the Redshift label have been reviewed in publications such as WholeNote, MusicWorks, and Classics Today and have garnered prestigious honours such as Classical Recording of the Year from Spotify and the Western Canadian Music Awards. (www.redshiftmusic.org) ###