The Best Kind of Souvenir

Alumnus Christopher Butterfield, said to have a “wondrous and peculiar” sound, marks retirement with a new album.

BY JOHN THRELFALL, BA ‘96

Forget the gold watch: noted composer and longtime School of Music professor Christopher Butterfield, BMus, ’75, is marking his retirement from the University of Victoria with the release of his latest album, Souvenir. Performed by longtime musical collaborators Aventa Ensemble, the 70-minute Souvenir (Redshift Records) features four newly recorded largechamber pieces.

“Each piece was originally commissioned by a different ensemble in the country over a 20-year span—it’s like I’m doing my own musicology here,” chuckles Butterfield. “These have only ever been played live, and there’s a very singular reason why we could record them at all: Bill Linwood’s Aventa Ensemble. They have the capability of playing what is some fairly gnarly music, because they’re extraordinary players and they can do anything… in terms of musicianship and virtuosity, I’ll put this record up against anything, anywhere.”

Butterfield is particularly proud of the fact that the four epic tracks on Souvenir—1995’s “Souvenir” (21 minutes), 2001’s “Port Bou” (19 minutes) plus 2012’s “Frame” and 2013’s “Parc” (both 14 minutes)—are entirely BC-made, from the producing, recording and engineering right down to the CD’s design and manufacturing. Even the performers are all BC-based, with the sole exception of vibraphone player Rick Sacks, who guests on “Parc”—and was also part of Butterfield’s early-’80s Toronto-based new wave band, Klo.

Souvenir’s promotional material notes that Butterfield “has long centred the wondrous and peculiar” in his diverse catalogue of work that “spans the accessible to the absurd.” Does he feel that’s an apt description?

“I don’t think I go out of my way to be ‘wonderous and peculiar,’ but if that’s the way the music sounds, that’s fine, I’m glad there’s a story there,” he says. “I am very interested in harmony: I like to set things up and see what happens. Quite often it’ll appear to be a bunch of noise and then you’ll hear something that sounds very familiar, like a little coincidence. All music is heard in context of itself, so if a harmonic line jumps out, you hear it in terms of what you just heard and that will colour what you’re about to hear next.”

While Butterfield has been teaching composition at UVic since 1992, he first circled the Ring Road to study under renowned composer Rudolf Komorous and has since helped launch the careers of a new generation of acclaimed composers like Anna Höstman, BMis ’01, MMus ’05, Cassandra Miller, BMus ’05, and Daniel Brandes, MMus ’10.

“We’ve had a remarkable 40-plus years of building a reputation for composers who are looked at as rather remarkable… and nobody’s quite sure why,” he says. “Is it something in the water? Is it island life? Victoria has an extremely rich musical and cultural environment, but we’re also sort of disconnected and have to make everything up ourselves.”

As he prepares to take his final bow in UVic’s storied Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, Butterfield says he has been constantly impressed by both his undergraduate and graduate student composers, and he’s certain future students will thrive under the guidance of award-winning (and 2023 Juno-nominated) composition professor Anthony Tan. T