WNMF2023 PROGRAM

WELCOME TO WNMF 2023

By its very nature as a celebration of contemporary art music, the Winnipeg New Music Festival has always provided us an opportunity to explore historicity both retrospectively and prospectively – the past and the future intermingling and reflecting off each other from a variety of artistic perspectives.

This theme lies at the heart of this year’s programming. The opening program – the WNMF Launchpad – highlights the new, presenting a tasting menu of some of Canada’s most promising young musical talents in a series of world premieres of works by nine composers, featuring four generations of conductors leading our Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

As the festival unfolds over the ensuing week, we will be treated to music that sees its creators engaging with their personal, cultural, and ancestral histories. Emerging from this thematic thread, we also find a fascination with science and technology –humanity’s explorative spirit manifested in its examinations of the natural world and its physical mechanisms.

This brings us to a novel venue for two of our concerts: the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, where art and science will meet while we are seated amidst the artifacts of our civilization’s technological endeavors.

We are thrilled to welcome this year’s distinguished guest composer, Kalevi Aho, among whose works we will hear the Winnipeg Fanfare, composed for the occasion as a gift to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for its 75th anniversary. We will be treated to world and national premieres by numerous Canadian and international composers, including Kelly-Marie Murphy and Kati Agócs. We are proud to be joined by exciting and fascinating guest artists, among them Kinan Azmeh and his CityBand, maverick bassoonist Bram Van Sambeek, the SHHH!! Ensemble, pianists Jenny Lin and Nicolas Namoradze, and the formidable Sandra Laronde and Red Sky Performance.

With continued reverence for our own artistic history, we also pay solemn tribute to departed friends, presenting works by Bramwell Tovey, who brought WNMF to life in the first place and has figured prominently in the lives of multiple generations of Canadian musicians, and the great Giya Kancheli. Looking at the turmoils of the present moment, Victoria Poleva contributes a fierce statement of solidarity for the people of Ukraine, standing strong in the face of unimaginable adversity.

We are proud to share all this with you as we come together, once again, for our annual celebration of art and music at WNMF 2023!

DANIEL RAISKIN

WSO Music Director

WNMF Co-Curator

HARALABOS [HARRY] STAFYLAKIS

WSO Composer-in-Residence

WNMF Co-Curator

FIRST VIOLINS

SHOWCASE LAUNCHPAD

THU JAN 26 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

WORKS

Isaac Zee On the Day of Judgement – World Premiere

Darren Xu To Liberate – World Premiere

Jessica MacIsaac Thirteen – World Premiere

Nolan Hildebrand ArtDiesSoundsRepeat – World Premiere

Rebecca Adams Lion’s Den – World Premiere

INTERMISSION

Gregory Parth Teutoburg – World Premiere

Eliazer Kramer Fantasy for Orchestra – World Premiere

Liam Ritz Kaleidoscope – World Premiere

Thomas Joiner Dawn – World Premiere

ARTISTS

Daniel Raiskin, conductor

Julian Pellicano, conductor

Jaelem Bhate, RBC Guest Conductor

Dmitri Zrajevski, RBC Guest Conductor

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

For more information about the WSO Composes Institute and the Canadian Music Centre, Prairie Region Emerging Composers Competition, see page 31. PRE-CONCERT PANEL

FROM THE STAGE @ 6:45 | CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

Eliot Britton, Jocelyn Morlock and Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, mentor composers

Thomas Joiner, Isaac Zee and Gregory Parth, CMC competition winners

Daniel Raiskin and Julian Pellicano, conductors

POST-CONCERT Q&A

WNMF LOUNGE (PIANO NOBILE) AFTER THE CONCERT

Rebecca Adams, Nolan Hildebrand, Eliazer Kramer, Jessica MacIsaac, Liam Ritz and Darren Xu, composers

Jaelem Bhate and Dmitri Zrajevski, conductors

Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, mentor composer and host

ISAAC ZEE

ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT (2019) – WORLD PREMIERE

On The Day of Judgement was written at a time of uncertainty, where my home town was rife with unrest: students armed with nothing but umbrellas were out on the streets in protest, friends I used to go to school with were brutalised and jailed by the ones that were supposed to protect them, some never to be heard from again. In music, I hope to capture and share my feeling of helpless frustration that words fail to communicate.

The piece begins with a thin and uneasy melody that slowly devolves into a murmuring sonic concoction, from which emerges a giant, marching off to its destination with unrelenting conviction.

Since I wrote this piece, many world-changing disasters have occurred. It is my wish to have this piece be dedicated to those who yearn for the day of judgement, for at least one person out there shares their desire..

– ISAAC ZEE

DARREN XU TO LIBERATE – WORLD PREMIERE

This piece came about during the early stages of the pandemic where the world had tuned in to more unfortunate events around us, and because of isolation, the sensation of chaos was further augmented. To Liberate portrays the fragmented state of mind that I was in, where anything could send out a distress signal and draw me away from the present moment, be it the daily news on TV, an Instagram post about wildfires, a YouTube video of social unrest, or simply a glance of an object in my room that brings out unpleasant memories.

– DARREN XU

JESSICA M acISAAC

THIRTEEN – WORLD PREMIERE

Thirteen reflects on memories and inspirations from my past. When writing this piece, I hit a point creatively and personally where I was feeling lost. I turned to music from my teenage years that kept me going through tough times. Modifying rhythmic motifs and lyrics to create a personal narrative, I wanted this orchestral piece to evoke feelings of sadness and loss mixed with hope for the future.

– JESSICA MACISAAC

NOLAN HILDEBRAND

ARTDIESSOUNDSREPEAT - WORLD PREMIERE

All sounds can be measured by their sound envelope or the way the sound changes over time. The envelope consists of four main parts: the attack, the decay, the sustain, and the release (ADSR). The sound envelope was my main inspiration for this work.

The composition process began with taking a recording of a snare drum hit and time stretching it out over two minutes. This process was repeated with each snare hit being half the length of the last (two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15 second etc.) until it is reduced to its original, unstretched form. Time stretching the snare drum created interesting timbral changes and broken melodies, which were then mapped and orchestrated to the acoustic instruments. In the work, the orchestra is treated like one giant sound that realizes the four parts of the sound envelope. As each sound envelope iteration gets shorter, the individual instruments become part of a larger whole. A single monolithic, intense, and brutal super instrument.

– NOLAN HILDEBRAND

REBECCA ADAMS

LION’S DEN – WORLD PREMIERE

Lion’s Den was written in early 2019 to be workshopped with Symphony Nova Scotia throughout the 2019-2020 academic year.

The concept for Lion’s Den is based loosely off of the biblical story of “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.” It was also inspired by my own experiences of having a close family member struggle with illness, whilst living in different provinces. The piece features an underlying drone, and is based off of one simple motivic gesture. The motivic gesture is frequently heard in one voice, to reflect the feeling of being left alone. The piece concludes much along these lines as well, with an unaccompanied clarinet solo slowly fading to silence.

– REBECCA ADAMS

GREGORY PARTH

TEUTOBURG – WORLD PREMIERE

I have always been drawn to programmatic music. By looking to an extramusical source of creativity, a composer can give coherence to music that might otherwise sound chaotic and abstract. In this instance, I wished to challenge myself and depict the events of a historic battle through music. I chose the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (9 AD) as my inspiration. In this battle, the Roman army, led by Varus, was ambushed by Germanic warriors while travelling through Teutoburg Forest. A subsequent series of calamitous

attacks decimated the Roman army. Many Roman officers, including Varus, took their own life. Some believe the remaining Roman soldiers were taken by Germanic forces for human sacrifice. The massacre marked the end of Roman expansion into Germania and changed the course of history.

Teutoburg depicts these events through sound. The piece germinates from an ominous layer of tension and culminates on a forceful note of defeat. The music is a gruesome exploration of noise and represents notable events of the battle through provocative musical gestures. Consequently, the piece embodies an excessive, uninhibited, in-your-face presence that reflects compositional trends from the latter half of the 20th century.

– GREGORY PARTH

ELIAZER KRAMER

FANTASY FOR ORCHESTRA – WORLD PREMIERE

Fantasy for Orchestra is a continuously unraveling piece that explores textures and emotions ranging from calm and simple to rageful and chaotic. I wrote Fantasy for Orchestra during the first year of my doctorate at the University of Montreal; the version being performed at the Winnipeg New Music Festival is actually the first half of the longer one-movement work.

The piece begins unassumingly, with an introduction that outlines its main theme. After a short outburst, a section entitled “Awakening” follows in which the entire orchestra enters progressively, leading to a chaotic texture that culminates in a huge crescendo. A more militant section ensues, which ends in a tumultuous exclamation. Depleted, the piece then recedes to a more tranquil and introspective state.

One of the joys of writing for orchestra is the endless amount of colours it offers the composer. Indeed, Fantasy for Orchestra’s rhapsodic and evolving nature is the result of composing for a medium with such a wide range of expression. The symphonic orchestra allows composers to explore intensities and articulate in ways that are simply unavailable to other ensembles: Fantasy for Orchestra is my attempt at communicating in ways that are new and meaningful to me.

– ELIAZER KRAMER

LIAM RITZ

KALEIDOSCOPE – WORLD PREMIERE

The term “kaleidoscope” derives from three Greek words: kalos (beauty; beautiful), eidos (form; shape), and skopeō (to examine). It quite literally translates to “examining beautiful shapes and forms.”

The term was invented as a name for the 19th-century optical instrument that transforms the world into luminous and symmetrical geometric images through the magic of light and mirrors. This idea of a constantly transforming and rotating image forms the basis of this piece – I wanted to explore how the manipulation of musical “shapes” and “colour” can produce an ever-changing landscape that seamlessly spins, collides, and morphs within itself.

There is a specific moment, when looking through a kaleidoscope, where elements of the image will briefly shift and connect with other parts during its rotation. This idea became a focal point of the piece. There is a feeling of moving in and out of focus, with gestures pulling apart and the snapping back together again.

The entire piece flows through these various ‘rotations’, allowing me to not only play with how different musical elements interact and connect, but also the rate at which these ‘rotations’ occur. At some points, this creates a sense of stasis between ‘rotations’ where musical ideas feel suspended and crystalline. At others points, the ‘rotations’ will occur more quickly, creating a sense of momentum as musical images spin and fluctuate dramatically between one another.

– LIAM RITZ

THOMAS JOINER

DAWN (2021) – WORLD

PREMIERE

Joiner’s piece Dawn, composed for the Canadian Music Centre Prairie Region’s Emerging Composers Competition, is about finding hope and happiness in the darkness of the pandemic.

WORKS

Kalevi

INTERMISSION

ARTISTS

Daniel Raiskin, conductor

Jenny

Nelson

Sandra

Red Sky Performance, Theodore Bison, Cante Bison, Ian Akiwenzie and John Hupfield, dancers Carla Ritchie, stage manager

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

PRE-CONCERT PANEL

FROM THE STAGE @ 6:45 | CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Eliot Britton, composer

Jenny Lin, pianist

Daniel Raiskin and Harry Stafylakis, hosts

POST-CONCERT Q&A

WNMF LOUNGE (PIANO NOBILE) AFTER THE CONCERT

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Eliot Britton, composer

Jenny Lin, pianist

Nelson Tagoona, throat-boxer

Daniel Raiskin and Harry Stafylakis, hosts

KALEVI AHO

WINNIPEG FANFARE (2022) – WORLD PREMIERE

I composed Winnipeg Fanfare in September 2022 as the opening work for the Winnipeg New Music Festival 2023. The work was commissioned by the Winnipeg Orchestra, and conductor Daniel Raiskin suggested that its duration should not be more than about three minutes, in which case it would serve as an effective opening number for the festival. Although the work is short, I wanted to make it one that sounds big and shows in a many-sided way the possibilities of the orchestra.

— KALEVI AHO

MISSY MAZZOLI

SINFONIA (FOR ORBITING SPHERES)(2013/2021)

Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit. The word “sinfonia” refers to Baroque works for chamber orchestra but also to the old Italian term for a hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument with constant, wheezing drones that are cranked out under melodies played on an attached keyboard. It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble turns into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space. Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

— MISSY MAZZOLI

ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

HARALABOS [HARRY] STAFYLAKIS

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1: MYTHOS (2023)

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), Research/Creation Grant, in partnership with the University of Ottawa. Premiere by Jenny Lin and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Raiskin conducting, on January 28, 2023 at Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.”

― GEORGE LUCAS

“The Greeks created gods that were in their image; warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate, but vengeful.”

― STEPHEN FRY, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

Though I grew up from an early age with the piano and its repertoire as an integral part of my daily life, I did not truly fall in love with the instrument until I discovered the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff as a teenager. His piano concerti, especially, moved me deeply; they began to reveal to me how the grandeur of Classical-Romantic musical idioms could be harnessed in a more modern context. Years later, when I first began transitioning out of metal songwriting into classical composition, one of my first attempts (ambitiously and wildly naively) was in the form of a piano concerto. Though I did not at the time have the tools necessary to succeed in such a massive endeavor, the attempt itself was invaluable to the development of my compositional voice. (Some small elements from that piece of juvenilia have wormed their way into this new opus…)

Piano Concerto No. 1: Mythos came into existence some 15 years later, following my collaboration with pianist Jenny Lin on my series of piano etudes. Born of my love for two of my favorite instruments – the piano and the symphony orchestra (yes, I consider it an instrument) – this concerto serves as a semi-biographical archive of my personal musical history.

Each of the four movements is modelled – loosely and idiosyncratically – on a traditional form and its archetypal function within a multi-movement work: prologue (prelude), sonata, scherzo, fantasy. Together they trace a dramatic-narrative arc that, I hope, conveys the sense of mythological grandeur that I feel when I consider the vaunted history of the piano concerto as one of our most important and celebrated orchestral genres. The work is dedicated to Jenny Lin and Maestro Daniel Raiskin, without whom such a massive project would not have been possible.

BRAMWELL TOVEY SKY CHASE (2017)

Sky Chase was written for Maestro Roger Cole and the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra and gifted to them in celebration of the sesquicentennial of Canada. This work was inspired by the Coquihalla Highway, one of the most dramatic features of the journey across the Rockies between Banff in Alberta and Vancouver on the west coast. This is the road that links British Columbia to the rest of Canada.

At the outset the music is fast and driven, with woodwinds and wood block providing the motor for the rest of the orchestra. As the music becomes calmer the pulse remains the same but the orchestra seems to take flight, as if gliding like a bird. There is a brief interlude of repose to admire the view, before the chase resumes and reaches its inevitable climax.

SANDRA LARONDE & ELIOT BRITTON ADIZOKAN SUITE (2018)

In Anishinaabemowin, Adizokan means “a spiritual being that carries wisdom and knowledge. For Indigenous peoples, it is not necessarily ‘the human’ who possesses wisdom. For Indigenous Peoples, human life is limited and we can experience only a tiny slice of the spiritual experience. There is so much more knowledge and wisdom that does not necessarily live inhuman form, but resides in animals, rocks, trees, water, and the stars. We respect all life forms and all lifeforms have a spirit. It is a world view that is critical for a profound renewal of transformation in this era of great upheaval. Adizokan is a celebration of connected threads of information that weave across the universe, linking the biological, technological and cosmological forces though human experience. From the quiet sense of infinity that comes from a star filled sky, to the sense of wonder that results from looking at one’s own DNA sequence on a cellphone. All of these experiences bind across time. Our universe is pulsing with densely packed and expansive seas of information, flowing with messages, stories, meaning, and ways of knowing whether it be human, hoofed or winged.

Adizokan is divided into seven sections as there are seven layers of the universe for Indigenous peoples. In this music composition, these seven layers trace Indigenous experience of information beginning with our evocative “Origins” and the intensely primal “Fundamental Forces,” and culminating in the epic energy of “Future Skies.” These movements are interspersed with electroacoustic / throat-boxing interludes featuring Nelson Tagoona’s unique integration of throat singing and beat-boxing. Each section relies on computer assisted compositional techniques to seek out, shape and emphasize threads of connection between orchestral, vocal, Indigenous and throat-boxing sound worlds.

WNMF 2 MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS

SUN JAN 29 | 7:30 PM ROYAL AVIATION MUSEUM OF WESTERN CANADA

WORKS

Brian Eno Music for Airports: 1/1

Cliff Burton (Metallica), arr. van Sambeek {Anesthesia}–Pulling Teeth

Julia Wolfe Guard my tongue

Brian Eno Music for Airports: 2/1

Amy Brandon Erratics

Michael Oesterle Parlour Games

1. tool 2. triplicate 3. gait 4. lone 5. run

Kalevi Aho Solo V

Brian Eno Music for Airports: 1/2

Caroline Shaw Fly Away I

Kinan Azmeh November 22nd

Brian Eno Music for Airports: 2/2

(NO INTERMISSION)

ARTISTS

Bram van Sambeek, bassoon

Polycoro Chamber Choir • Scott Reimer, conductor

Merina Dobson-Perry, Chloe Thiessen, Katy Harmer, Sarah Hall, James Magnus-Johnston, Nolan Kehler, Paul Bruch-Wiens and Jereme Wall, singers

Yuri Hooker, cello

Meredith Johnson, double bass

POST-CONCERT Q&A

FLIGHT LOUNGE AFTER THE CONCERT

BRIAN ENO MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS (1978)

Ambient Music – The concept of music designed specifically as a background feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the term Muzak. The connotations that this term carries are those particularly associated with the kind of material that Muzak Inc. produces – familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner. Understandably, this has led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to dismiss entirely the concept of environmental music as an idea worthy of attention.

Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music.

An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.

Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

— BRIAN ENO

WNMF

Amy Brandon, composer Yuri Hooker, cello Meredith Johnson, double bass Scott Reimer, choir conductor Bram van Sambeek, bassoonist Daniel Raiskin and Harry Stafylakis, hosts

WNMF

ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL

CONCERT HALL

CLIFF BURTON / METALLICA (ARR. BRAM VAN SAMBEEK) (ANESTHESIA)–PULLING TEETH

Cliff Burton’s pioneering way of playing the bass guitar was discovered by Metallica’s founding members Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield when they heard an early version of what would become Pulling Teeth for bass guitar and drums (here on bassoon and drums). Ulrich and Hetfield were attracted by the virtuosity of what they first thought was an electric guitar, and immediately invited Burton to join the band. This mixing-up of instruments is a nice example of what an ‘oscillating revenge of a background instrument’ can sound like. (It also reminds me of some musicians who praised the virtuosity of ‘the violinist’ in our recording of the piece Harlem Nocturne, when it was in fact Rick Stotijn on the bass imitating the skills of electric guitarist Danny Gatton.)

Behind all the distortion and scratching that is inherent to both the agonizing sounds of a dentist’s drill and the thrash metal of those days, it’s clear that Burton’s solo is heavily influenced by classical music – in fact, Burton took inspiration from Bach and taught some music theory to the other band members, and I must admit to having taken an evil pleasure in fooling audiences by suggesting that I’ve started on Bach’s Second Cello Suite while in fact playing the beginning of Pulling Teeth

— BRAM VAN SAMBEEK

JULIA WOLF GUARD MY TONGUE (2009)

Guard my tongue by Julia Wolfe sets the following text, derived from Psalm 34: Guard my tongue from speaking evil, and my lips from speaking deceit.

AMY BRANDON ERRATICS

I have set a number of David Martin’s poems for vocal ensembles, with the first being “gouging at a forest sea” in 2017, which is drawn from his poem “Tar Swan.” I had been eager to set more David’s work because of the incredibly vivid imagery it conjures, and his ability to draw intertwining lines of narrative when remaining surreal and densely structured. His poem “Erratics”, like “Tar Swan”, embodies an unusual world. The poem cryptically looks at the movement of glacial erratics, which are rocks or boulders carried by glacial ice, sometimes hundreds of kilometres from where they originated. These boulders take their name from errare, the Latin word for “to wander.”

ANCESTRAL TALES

With Erratics, I focused more on the sonic properties of David’s word choices, as well as the cyclical and surreal nature of the storytelling, in particular the way the individual words twist and turn in upon themselves. As with much of David’s work, the text is heavily mystical and metaphoric in nature. The text explores themes of migration, travel and abandonment (in keeping with the subject matter of glacially deposited rocks), keeping at its centre a rich but oblique description of the Albertan landscape. The way I set the text also references the themes of travel over vast distances, in particular the use of repetitive inhalation and exhalation breath patterns (which offers contrasting timbres) as a way to apply pulse to the work. To me, these inhalation and exhalation patterns are reminiscent of laboured breathing after running a long distance, with a certain tenseness, anxiety and adrenaline inherent in the sound of this deliberate breathing. Other inhuman vocal sounds are layered over top including an open-mouthed breathing sound and a ‘sss’ whistle through the teeth. With these sounds I also wanted to add tension, but also reference the ‘open plains’ of Alberta, coated with glacial ice, upon which the erratic boulders are carried. I also wanted these ‘cold and icy sounds’ to carry the sung words as if the text were ‘erratics’ themselves, moving the imagery along from one passage to another.

— AMY BRANDON

Erratics

Text – David Martin

I awoke, beached in a field, tattooed in petroglyphs, and tended by children within earshot of calving glaciers.

The sun sets a headstone behind me on a frayed nap of fescue. Sparrows mock: I’ve been shanghaied by frozen tides. They trick up skeins from my sopping dressings, but the moon can wax my wounds.

Drawing back the blackouts, I rewatch my family fleeing, their tears melting a retreat from the moraine’s tide-line to shrivel in the crevasses. I huddle in a pallid plot, slabs shorn by wind swords. A capsized osprey breaks its back across my brow.

When they realize my stone arrows will end the war, ice waves will lift my bulk like a seed and carry me back to the carcass I was pried from.

ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

MICHAEL OESTERLE PARLOUR GAMES (2021)

Traditionally, parlour games involve logic or word-play. They can involve skill in drawing or the dramatic arts, and while some of these games are more physical, they wouldn’t be considered a sport or exercise. Most do not require any equipment beyond what would be available in a typical parlour. The twelve pieces of Parlour Games for cello and double bass are written to resemble games for the two instrumentalists and the listener. Although they offer a wide range of characters, moods, tempi, and expressions, they all share the idea of game-play. In these pieces the listener may hear familiar musical formats such as nursery rhymes, lullabies, rondos, arias, counting songs, etc. The twelve pieces can be arranged like a deck of cards, shuffled and reordered to suit a particular occasion. Alternatively, they can be presented as a smaller combination of pieces. The title of each work may be a clue in presenting the pieces in a particular order, or in combinations of subsets.

I would like to thank Meredith Johnson who initiated this commission and assembled a group of musician friends to fund this project. My idea was to write a variety of short pieces, like a box of chocolates, where everyone involved might find the particular piece that appeals to them.

– MICHAEL OESTERLE

KALEVI AHO SOLO V FOR BASSOON (1999)

With the bassoon (as with the oboe), Aho set himself the goal of composing various works over the years, with the aim of enlarging contemporary repertoire and providing players with good, demanding works for different occasions.

In 1999 the Sinfonia Lahti Chamber Ensemble gave some concerts in Germany that included exclusively music by Aho. To give the programme more variety, Aho composed Solo V for the orchestra’s solo bassoonist Harri Ahmas and Solo VI for double bass for the double bass player Eero Munter. Both works were premièred on 13th November 1999 at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.

Solo V is a dramatic work – one that is to be played especially loudly so that the colourful over tone spectrum is audible. Note repetitions amplify the low notes, giving the impression of latent chords. In addition, Aho uses so-called multiphonics and motifs based on micro-intervals.

ANCESTRAL TALES

KINAN AZMEH

NOVEMBER 22ND

November 22nd is a meditative work that tries to depict that ambiguous feeling one encounters by feeling at home somewhere far from one’s original home. I wrote this piece in the US inspired by the sonic memory of a marketplace that used to exist behind my parents’ apartment back in Damascus, it seemed to have a slow and steady pulse to it similar to the rhythm of life which keeps moving regardless of our emotions about it.

Over the years the piece has enjoyed several lives, as lead sheet, as the middle movement of my Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra and as other versions created by colleagues. The work simply tries to blur the lines between the composed and the improvised, which comes from my belief that some of the best written music is one that sounds spontaneous and improvised, and some of the best improvisations are the ones that sound structured as if composed. This work is meant to give great room for the soloist to become a composer on the spot and to play freely within the larger structure of the work.

— KINAN AZMEH

WNMF 3 KINAN AZMEH’S CITYBAND

TUE

JAN 31 | 7:30 PM

ROYAL AVIATION MUSEUM OF WESTERN CANADA

WORKS

Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand will be performing original works; the selections will be announced from the stage.

(NO INTERMISSION)

ARTISTS

Kinan Azmeh, clarinet

Kyle Sanna, guitar

Josh Myers, bass

John Hadfield, drums and percussion

PRESENTING PATRONS

POST-CONCERT Q&A

WNMF

LOUNGE AFTER

KINAN AZMEH’S CITYBAND

Formed in 2006 in New York City, the Kinan Azmeh CityBand immediately gained recognition for their virtuosic and high energy performance, receiving praise from critics and audiences alike.

With this New York ensemble, Azmeh strives to reach a balance between classical music, jazz, and the music of his homeland, Syria. Azmeh’s expressive clarinet meets Kyle Sanna’s rustic guitar, soaring at times over the dynamic and volatile backdrop of John Hadfield’s percussion and Josh Myers’ double bass. Each band member has come from varied backgrounds to add their personal flair to this ensemble, resulting in a thoroughly exciting and rewarding listening experience.

The quartet has toured the US, France, England, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Betty & Kevin McGarry

FLIGHT

THE CONCERT CityBand: Kinan Azmeh, Kyle Sanna, Joshua Myers, John Hadfield Daniel Raiskin and Harry Stafylakis, hosts

WNMF 4 DIALOGUES

WED FEB 1 | 7:30 PM CENTENNIAL CONCERT

HALL

WORKS

Kelly-Marie Murphy Machines, Mannequins, and Monsters – World Premiere

1. Study for Man and Machine, 1921

2. Articulating Mannequin, 1931

3. Humanly Impossible, 1932

Kalevi Aho Double Concerto for Two Bassoons and Orchestra – North American Premiere

1. (without title)

2. Adagio

3. Allegro

INTERMISSION

Kati Agócs Transluminescence – Concerto for Piano – World Premiere

1. With great space

2. Intimate; pellucid

3. Elegant and energetic (perpetual motion)

Kinan Azmeh Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra

1. Love on 139th Street in D

2. November 22nd

3. Wedding

ARTISTS

Daniel Raiskin, conductor

Bram van Sambeek , bassoon

Kathryn Brooks, bassoon

Nicolas Namoradze, piano

SHHH!! Ensemble • Edana Higham, piano and Zac Pulak , percussion

Kinan Azmeh, clarinet

John Hadfield, percussion

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

PRE-CONCERT PANEL

FROM THE STAGE @ 6:45 | CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

Kati Agócs, composer

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Kelly-Marie Murphy, composer

Kinan Azmeh, clarinetist-composer

Edana Higham (SHHH!! Ensemble), pianist

Nicolas Namoradze, pianist

Zak Pulak, (SHHH!! Ensemble), percussionist

Bram van Sambeek, bassoonist

Harry Stafylakis, host

POST-CONCERT Q&A

WNMF LOUNGE (PIANO NOBILE)

AFTER THE CONCERT

Kinan Azmeh, clarinetist-composer

Kati Agócs, composer

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Edana Higham, (SHHH!! Ensemble), pianist

Kelly-Marie Murphy, composer

Nicolas Namoradze, pianist

Zak Pulak, (SHHH!! Ensemble), percussionist

Bram van Sambeek, bassoonist

Daniel Raiskin, conductor and host

KELLY-MARIE MURPHY

MACHINES, MANNEQUINS, AND MONSTERS (2022) – WORLD PREMIERE

Machines, Mannequins, and Monsters is a double concerto for piano and percussion, and was written for Edana Higham and Zac Pulak. It is in three attacca movements. The title comes from an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which explores how artists interpreted the fast-paced technological changes in the first few decades of the 20th century through the three motifs in the title. It was a juxtaposition of good and bad, real and surreal.

The first movement opens quietly and tentatively balancing low rumbles with metallic sounds. It explores colour and gesture. The movement ends with a very mechanical, clock-like section, with fragments of melody overlapped. The second movement is a cadenza for the soloists. It is eerie and unsettling. In it, the percussionist is asked

ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

to create sounds and resonance inside the piano. The last movement is loud, fast, rhythmic, and powerful. It expends all its energy and ends quietly yet unsettled, returning in a way to the mood of the first movement.

KALEVI AHO

DOUBLE CONCERTO FOR TWO BASSOONS AND ORCHESTRA (2016) –NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

The Double Concerto for Two Bassoons was composed in 2016 on the initiative of bassoon virtuoso Bram van Sambeek. Bram had previously performed and recorded my Bassoon Concerto (2004) and performed much of my bassoon chamber music as well. In Bram’s opinion, the big problem for bassoonists has been that the instrument is only quite rarely qualified as a soloist in orchestral concerts, and if this happens, then usually the orchestra’s own solo bassoonist is asked to play Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, which not even belongs to Mozart’s most significant concerto production. Bram suggested that if I compose a double concerto for two bassoons, then he, or some other bassoonist, could perform it with the orchestra’s solo bassoonist. It would also be the first-ever double concerto for two bassoons and a normal-sized symphony orchestra – the few previous double bassoon concertos are old music, short in duration and written for a small orchestra.

The work has three movements, and both solo bassoons are quite equal in it, one is not more dominant than the other. I have tried to compose the concerto so that it would bring out the best of the bassoon and also show the virtuoso potential of the instrument.

The work was commissioned jointly by three orchestras, by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica de Galicia and the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra. The premiere took place in Warsaw on 18 January 2019, with Bram van Sambeek and Leszek Wachnik as soloists, and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Niklas Willén.

— KALEVI AHO

KATI AGÓCS

TRANSLUMINESCENCE CONCERTO FOR PIANO (2022) – WORLD PREMIERE

My piano concerto was written in memory of one of my oldest friends, Bruce McKinnon. The word Transluminescence means “that which allows light to shine through.” The concerto is structured in three movements that flow together without pause, creating an immersive form about twenty minutes in duration. Cyclic in nature, the opening chord progression is picked up and varied throughout all three movements:

The first movement is ceremonial, with a dialogue between soloist and orchestra that intensifies as it unfolds; the second movement is meditative, reaching into pellucid and fragile areas of both vulnerability and strength; and the third movement is a perpetual motion refrain which builds to an apotheosis. The piece ends with the pianist playing a transfigured version of the opening chords, with the soloist deciding when (and how) the piece should end.

Transluminescence was commissioned by the Esther Honens Piano Competition for the 2018 Honens Prize Laureate, Nicolas Namoradze.

— KATI AGÓCS

KINAN AZMEH SUITE FOR IMPROVISOR AND ORCHESTRA (2007)

I have always loved to compose, always loved to play as soloist with orchestra and I have always loved to improvise, so I decided to write a piece that would allow me to do it all at once!

The three movements: “Love on 139th Street in D”, “November 22nd” and “Wedding” were originally written in 2005 for my project, Hewar, an ensemble made of clarinet, oud and voice, and what began simply as three lead-sheets ended up becoming a full orchestral work and my most performed work. The suite tries to blur the lines between the composed and the improvised, which comes from my belief that some of the best written music is one that sounds spontaneous and improvised, and some of the best improvisations are the ones that sound structured as if composed. This work is meant to both turn an orchestra into a band and to give a great room for the soloist to become a composer on the spot and to play freely within the larger structure of the work.

“Love on 139th Street in D” is inspired by New York City’s neighborhood of Harlem where I lived for few years, a simple homage to its cultural mix and a dedication to my downstairs neighbor who blasted reggaetone all day long!

“November 22nd” is a meditative work that tries to depict that ambiguous feeling one encounters by feeling at home somewhere far from one’s original home. I wrote this piece in the US inspired by the sonic memory of a marketplace that used to exist behind my parents’ apartment back in Damascus, it seemed to have a slow and steady pulse to it similar to the rhythm of life which keeps moving regardless of our emotions about it.

“Wedding” is made of two contrasting sections, a relatively calm one followed by a fast and energetic dance. It tries to capture the general mood found in a Syrian village wedding party usually held in the public square for everyone to attend. These parties are always exciting and never predictable.

— KINAN AZMEH

IN PRAISE OF SYMPHONIC DANCES

THE SYMPHONIC DANCES ARE ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECES… A SAMPLE CARD OF AHO’S GREAT GENIUS… EVOCATIVE AND MAGNIFICENT. – SVENSKA DAGBLADET, 2 APRIL 2004 …THE SYMPHONIC DANCES ARE SIMPLY PHENOMENAL. …THE WORK HAS FOUR MOVEMENTS, GLITTERINGLY SCORED FOR LARGE ORCHESTRA, AND IT CULMINATES IN AN “ALL STOPS OUT” DANCE OF THE WINDS AND FIRES THAT GOES FAR TOWARD ESTABLISHING AHO’S CLAIM TO BE CONSIDERED ONE OF THE GREATEST CURRENTLY ACTIVE WRITERS FOR ORCHESTRA. IF YOU LIKE BIG, COLORFUL, LATE-ROMANTIC MUSIC WITH REAL RHYTHM AND DRIVE, THEN YOU WILL FIND THIS DISC TOTALLY THRILLING… IF THERE’S ANY JUSTICE IN THE UNIVERSE, THIS WORK WILL BE PERFORMED EVERYWHERE. – CLASSICS TODAY, MARCH 2004 …AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT. A MAGICAL FUSION OF KLAMI’S OWN LANGUAGE, COLOURED AND REFRACTED THROUGH AHO’S COMPOSITIONAL MIND. …AHO IS A BORN COLOURIST AND ORCHESTRAL PAINTER WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO WRITE WITH ASTONISHING FACILITY. – MUSICWEB, AUGUST 2004

WNMF 5 SYMPHONIC MOTION

FRI FEB 3 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

WORKS

Zhou Long The Rhyme of Taigu Giya Kancheli Nu.Mu.Zu. – Canadian Premiere

INTERMISSION

Victoria Vita Poleva Nova – Canadian Premiere

Kalevi Aho Symphonic Dances – Canadian Premiere

Return of the Flames and Dance

Grotesque Dance

Dance of the Winds and Fires

ARTISTS

Daniel Raiskin, conductor Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

PRE-CONCERT PANEL

FROM THE STAGE @ 6:45 | CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Edward Jurkowski, scholar

Daniel Raiskin and Harry Stafylakis, hosts

POST-CONCERT Q&A

WNMF LOUNGE (PIANO NOBILE) AFTER THE CONCERT

Kalevi Aho, distinguished guest composer

Daniel Raiskin, conductor and host

Harry Stafylakis, host

ZHOU LONG

THE RHYME OF TAIGU (2003)

The Rhyme of Taigu is a lively and powerful work for full orchestra. The piece explores the energy and spirit behind Japanese Taiko, or “fat drum” (Taigu in Chinese). As a result, the percussion plays a key role, providing an aggressive drive throughout the whole work and often in competition with the brass, particularly in the thrilling climax.

GIYA KANCHELI

NU.MU.ZU. (2015) – CANADIAN

PREMIERE

Kancheli includes a bass guitar in the orchestra and gives prominent roles to harp and, especially, piano. The first of many allusions to the musical past occurs at the outset of the piece. Here the piano plays the theme of Bach’s Fugue in E minor in Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier, only slowly and blurred, as though heard in a dream. The orchestra answers with a harmonically distant minor chord and a four-note motif from the oboe, echoed by English horn. Following some consideration of these ideas, the tempo accelerates and we hear another musical anachronism: a merry, dance-like melodic fragment that we might identify as a Beethoven rondo.

Soon the piano introduces a figure in skipping rhythms; this, too, will prove a recurring motif. We also encounter hints of Medieval harmonies, a waltz-like melody and other references to the history of Western music. But as the piece progresses, contrasting material intrudes: grinding dissonances that repeatedly crescendo to thundering exclamations, then give way to ethereal quiet. This gesture — passages of power and momentum juxtaposed against others of delicacy and stillness — is a signature characteristic of Kancheli’s music. The last of them produces a huge explosion of sound and a moment of tense silence. Then, quietly and in exquisitely slow motion, we hear a remembrance of the Bach fugue theme that opened the work.

VICTORIA VITA POLEVA

NOVA

(2022) – CANADIAN PREMIERE

This work is directly related to the terrible war in Ukraine. I think Nova is martial music; not military, not militant, but martial… That huge spiritual impulse that we all feel now has changed us. There are no more good hard-working Ukrainians, there is a new powerful whole, a new spiritual body of Ukraine, which is all of us. And our Nenka-Ukraine is like this today, with the heroic calls of trembita, the howling of air raids and the drumming of machine-guns.

ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL

Why does the English theme appear in the middle? So my auditory intuition worked, but not only. If we recall the story of King George the Sixth, who supported the spirit of the British during the Second World War, then here we can draw a parallel with the actions of the Ukrainian president, who became the true leader of his country during the war. It is about a person who overcomes his uncertainty and transforms into the spiritual leader of an entire nation. And, of course, Jeremiah Clarke “Trumpet Voluntary” is the ideal image of a royal victory, regardless of nationality.

— VICTORIA POLEVA

KALEVI AHO SYMPHONIC DANCES (2001) – CANADIAN PREMIERE

Of all the works by Aho, this has won most international acclaim. The recording of it has received a number of press awards and it has been praised as one of Aho’s most magnificent scores. The idea for it came from the Finnish National Opera, which commissioned Aho to complete Uuno Klami’s ballet Whirls by adding a third act. Although it does retain some of Klami’s motives, it is for the most part entirely Aho’s own composition. It is a highly enjoyable proof of his talent in painting lush, lavish, late-Romantic colours.

The “Prelude” is distinguished by its numerous quotations from the first two acts. The “Return of the Flames and Dance” proceeds with breathtaking energy and culminates in a wild dance. Central to the third act is the smith Ilmarinen, a character from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In “Grotesque Dance”, he enters a magical forest, amidst an awakening of different forest animals and spirits. In the “Dance of the Winds and Fires”, he builds a fire that creates the Sampo (a mythical object from the Kalevala). The four winds stoke the fire and lead to the brilliant build-up of the north wind. The character of the music changes abruptly in the coda, where Aho represents the idea of the Sampo as a symbol of youth and love with a heavenly, slow chorale-like passage for the violas and cellos.

The Symphonic Dances were commissioned by the Finnish National Opera and premiered on 6 December 2001 by Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

WNMF IN THE COMMUNITY

RE-SOUND is a community series of four events and concerts presented in collaboration with the Winnipeg New Music Festival. All events are offered to the public free of charge and feature students, faculty and alumni from the University of Manitoba.

RE-SOUND: SEEN AND UNSEEN

MON JAN 30 | 7:00 pm

WAG, Muriel Richardson Hall and Eckhardt Hall

This program features two elements: a celebration of percussion works featuring video and electronics performed by Dr. Ben Reimer and Victoria Sparks; and a performance of the Winnipeg Chamber Winds Collective under the direction of Dr. Jacquie Dawson.

Dr. Ben Reimer, composer Victoria Sparks, percussionist Monica Huisman, soprano Winnipeg Chamber Winds Collective

Gordon Fitzell: Mandala – World Premiere

Peter Meechan: Dreams Unseen – World Premiere

Nicole Lizée: The Filthy Fifteen

Nicole Lizée: Television

Örjan Sandred: Mimétisme – Canadian Premiere

THE EXPERIMENTAL IMPROV ENSEMBLE (XIE) & THE UM PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE

WED FEB 1 | 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm @ Desautels Faculty of Music

WED FEB 1 | 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm @ Nonsuch Brew Co. | 125 Pacific Avenue

The students from the eXperimental Improv Ensemble (XIE) and the Percussion Ensemble perform on campus at the University of Manitoba as well as Downtown at Nonsuch Brewing Co. These performances feature unique sound worlds and explorations, including live improvisation and world premieres by student composers.

ALL THE KING’S MEN: A CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN EVENSONG

SUN FEB 5| 7:00 pm

St. John’s College Chapel, University of Manitoba

Andrew Balfour’s newest choral work Bizaan (be still, quiet, reflective) reimagines the ancient evening hymn Te lucis ante terminum (Before the ending of the day) from a uniquely Canadian perspective, with text drawn from both Latin and Ojibway. All The King’s Men, Winnipeg’s male-voice liturgical choir, commissioned this work for choir by Canadian composers, including Mel Braun, Lawrence Ritchey, Michael Capon, and Simon Lenassi. Founded in 1997, All The King’s Men is under the director Charles Horton, Desautels Faculty of Music Senior Scholar.

WNMF COMPOSERS INSTITUTE

Writing for orchestra is one of the great accomplishments of a composer’s creative life. There are, however, few opportunities for Canadians in the early stages of their careers to engage with the medium in a practical, hands-on environment. The symphony orchestra presents many challenges, including effectively balancing the orchestra’s many instruments and communicating clearly with the conductor, musicians, and audience.

The WNMF Composers Institute provides a unique professional training opportunity for young composers, who will be immersed in the orchestral world through mentorship by some of Canada’s leading orchestral composers and through close integration with the renowned Winnipeg New Music Festival.

Emerging composers from across Canada were selected to participate in the 2023 WNMF Composers Institute. These composers, from across the nation, will have their orchestral works premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as part of WNMF 2023.

In collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre, the winner of the CMC Prairie Region Emerging Composer Competition will also participate in the WNMF Composers Institute and will have their work performed. The participants will experience the week-long Winnipeg New Music Festival from behind the scenes, attending rehearsals and concerts. In addition, professional development workshops

will be held throughout the festival, led by WSO’s Composer-in-Residence Harry Stafylakis and the 2023 Composers Institute mentor composers, Kelly-Marie Murphy and Eliot Britton. Panels, workshops, lessons, and masterclasses will also feature several of WNMF’s guest composers visiting from throughout Canada and abroad.

The composers selected to have their pieces premiered at the 2023 Winnipeg New Music Festival and to participate in the 2023 WNMF Composers Institute and are:

Rebecca Adams – Lion’s Den

Nolan Hildebrand – ArtDiesSoundsRepeat

Eliazer Kramer – Fantasy for Orchestra

Jessica MacIsaac – Thirteen Liam Ritz – Kaleidoscope

Darren Xu – To Liberate

Also participating in the 2023 Composers Institute are the winners of the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) Prairie Region and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 2021 and 2022 Emerging Composer Competition.

Gregory Parth – Teutoburg (2023 Winner)

Thomas Joiner – Dawn (2022 Winner)

Isaac Zee – Day of Judgement (2021 Winner)

The Canadian Music Centre, Prairie Region Emerging Composers Competition is an annual competition for emerging composers with a connection to Canada’s Prairie Region with a cash prize of $1,000 and performance by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra during the Winnipeg New Music Festival. 2023 marks the 20th annual edition of the Competition.

SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS

PREMIER PATRON MICHAEL NESBITT

PRESENTING PATRONS

Betty & Kevin McGarry / Sandi & Ron Mielitz / Jens Wrogemann

SPONSORS, FUNDERS & PARTNERS

FRIENDS OF THE WNMF

Linda Anderson

Kevin Burns

Timothy & Barbara Burt

Marlene Crielaard

Lisa Desilets

Herbert Enns

Kathleen Estey

Dr. Leeann Fishback

Tom Flight

Douglas Gerlach & Kathy Mulder

Marilyn & Helios Hernandez

Elmer & Hilda Hildebrand

Richard & Karen Howell

Shari Johnston

Jo Kellendonk

Dr. Christel Kemke

Tusia Kozub

Dr. Thomas G. Kucera

Ron Lambert

Lin Li

Ian Marshall

Frank & Terry Martin

Greg Mason & Rita Gunn

Connie Matthes

Sheila Miller

Suzanne & Bill Newman

Aldyn Overend

Mario Paskvalin

Gabriel Préfontaine

Manfred Proch

Pat & Bill Reid

Bill Runnalls, In Memory of Olga Runnalls

Barbara Scheuneman

Robert Shaw

Pietra Shirley

Pam Simmons

Muriel Smith

Arni Thorsteinson & Susan Glass

Stephanie M. Van Nest, In Memory of Blair Simpson

Snjolaug Whiteway

Karin Woods

Anne Yankiwski

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

DANIEL RAISKIN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, CONDUCTOR

Known for cultivating a broad repertoire and looking beyond the mainstream for his strikingly conceived programmes, Daniel Raiskin has been the music director for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since the 2018/19 season.

The son of a prominent musicologist, Daniel Raiskin grew up in St. Petersburg. He attended the celebrated conservatory in his native city and continued his studies in Amsterdam and Freiburg. First focusing on viola, he was inspired to take up the baton by an encounter with the distinguished teacher Lev Savich. In addition, he also took classes with Maestri such as Mariss Jansons, Neeme Järvi, Milan Horvat, Woldemar Nelson and Jorma Panula.

Along with the WSO, Daniel was appointed Chief Conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra in 2020-21, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016-17.

Some recent and upcoming guest engagements include the Warsaw and Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestras, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, Russian National Orchestra, Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orchestra (Hague Philharmonic, NL), Naples

Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Raiskin was Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife (season 2016-18), Chief Conductor of both the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz (2005-2016) and of the Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra in Lódz (2008-2015).

His regular guest appearances include the Athens State, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Iceland Symphony, Japan Century Symphony, Malmö Symfoni Orkester, Mariinsky Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Belgique, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Osaka Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest, San Antonio Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Symphony, Stavanger Symphony, Swedish Chamber and the Tonkünstler orchestras.

His appearances in opera productions include Carmen, Shostakovich’s The Nose and Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Daniel Raiskin is also relentlessly committed to sharing his knowledge and passion with young musicians around the world. He devotes his time regularly to working with youth orchestras in Canada, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Russia and South Africa.

Among the major soloists with whom he has appeared are Emanuel Ax, Renée Fleming, Nelson Freire, Martin Fröst, Alban Gerhardt, Vadim Gluzman, Natalia Gutman, Kari Kriikku, Simone Lamsma, Lang Lang, Francois Leleux, Jan Lisiecki, Alexei Lubimov, Tatjana Masurenko, Albrecht Mayer, Daniel Müller-Schott, Olli Mustonen, Steven Osborne, Julian Rachlin, Benjamin Schmid, Julian Steckel, Anna Vinnitskaya and Alexei Volodin.

Recent recordings include Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 with the label AVI, both to great critical acclaim. His recording with cello concertos by Korngold, Bloch and Goldschmidt with Julian Steckel and the label AVI received an Echo Klassik Award in 2012. Other recent recording projects include a Louis Glass symphony cycle and a concerto cycle with the entire concertos and rhapsodies by Aram Khachaturian, both with the label CPO, Lutosłlawski’s vocal-instrumental works with the label Dux and a recording of Alexander Tansman’s Isaie le Prophèteand Psaumes with the label World Premiere Recordings.

[HARRY]

yet rhythmic” (NY Times), with a “terrible luminosity” and “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), his concert music is “an amalgamation of the classical music tradition and the soul and grime of heavy metal” (I Care If You Listen). With an intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music, Stafylakis has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a propulsive vitality that “favors doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms” (The New Yorker).

Since 2016, Stafylakis is the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s Composer-InResidence and Co-Curator of the WSO’s Winnipeg New Music Festival. His works have been performed by orchestras including the Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Regina, Québec, Victoria, PEI, Spokane, Stamford, Longueuil, FSU, and Greek Youth Symphony Orchestras, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestre Classique de Montréal, and Israel Chamber Orchestra.

New York Citybased composer Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis hails from Montreal, Canada. “Dreamy

He has collaborated with artists and ensembles including Animals As Leaders, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Roomful of Teeth, JACK Quartet, Bent Knee, Decoda Ensemble, ShoutHouse, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Contemporaneous, Vicky Chow, Hard Rubber Orchestra, Alexandre Da Costa, and Philippe Sly, among others.

His works have been featured at venues and festivals around the world, including Carnegie Hall and the NY Philharmonic

Biennial. In 2018–19 he collaborated with progressive metal pioneers Animals As Leaders on the symphonic adaptation of their music for metal band & orchestra, and in 2020–21 collaborated with Courtney Swain and members of Bent Knee and ShoutHouse on the prog metal and chamber music fusion dontwaitforme.

Recent recordings featuring his music include albums by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra & Miguel Harth-Bedoya (Naxos), Jenny Lin (Sono Luminus), the Cicchillitti-Cowan Duo (Analekta), Patrick Kearney (Contrastes), and the Hard Rubber Orchestra (Redshift).

His music has been recognized with the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Leonard Bernstein Award, SOCAN’s Classical Composer of the Year Award, four SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers, and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, FACTOR, SSHRC, and New Music USA. He serves on the board of directors of GroundSwell (Winnipeg), is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and a founding member of the NYC composer collective ICEBERG New Music.

Stafylakis holds degrees from McGill University and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He lectures at the City College of New York (CUNY) and Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), and is a guest lecturer at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY.

His research examines the conception of rhythm and meter in progressive metal. hstafylakis.com

KALEVI AHO

DISTINGUISHED GUEST COMPOSER

Kalevi Aho, one of Finland’s leading composers of today, was born in Forssa in southern Finland. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki under Einojuhani Rautavaara and in West Berlin in Boris Blacher’s composition class. In the years 1974-1988 he was a lecturer in musicology at Helsinki University; from 1988 until 1993 he was professor of composition at the Sibelius Academy and since the autumn of 1993, he has been a freelance composer.

In the works which marked his breakthrough (the First Symphony, 1969, and Third String Quartet, 1971), Aho continues in the tradition of Shostakovich; even in these pieces, however, he arrived at a very original formal/dramatic decision. Thus, in the four-movement First Symphony, we are gradually drawn ever further away from the “existing reality” of the beginning, ultimately reaching the third movement’s strange, pseudo-baroque style, and finally, in the last movement, we can meet the problems of the “true reality” head on. The structural starting-point for the single-movement Second Symphony

(1970/95) is a triple fugue. In the four-movement Third Symphony (1971-73) the dramatic tension is different; it is a conflict between an individual (a solo violin) and the sound blocks of the orchestra; there is a similar conflict in the pessimistic Cello Concerto (1983-84). The culmination of Aho’s first period (approx. 1969-74) is the threemovement Fourth Symphony (1972-73) with widely varied emotional contrasts.

The Fifth Symphony (1975-76) marks a turning point in Aho’s output. From a structural point of view this massive work is extremely complicated; in this multilayered symphony, instead of polyphony between various individual instrumental voices, we hear a polyphony of different, independent musical strands. The virtuoso and colourful Sixth Symphony (1979-80) concludes a sequential line of development in Aho’s symphonic work; after this, the composer concentrated for a while on concertos and operas. Aho’s first opera, Avain (The Key, 1978, with a libretto by Juha Mannerkorpi) tells of the paranoid alienation of an inhabitant of a big modern city in the estranging social climate of today. In 1982 and 1984 The Key was also performed by the Hamburg State Opera. In the years 1985-87 Aho wrote his sharply satirical second opera Hyönteiselämää (Insect Life), which combines elements both of comedy and of tragedy (the libretto, by the composer himself, is based on a play of the same name by Josef and Karel Capek) and contains numerous stylistic parodies as well as pointed social

criticism. The work was premiered with great success by the Finnish National Opera on 27 September 1996. Drawing on material from the Insect Life, Aho composed his Seventh Symphony in 1988: a six-movement, cheerful work, the “Insect Symphony” has been described as a post-modern, tragicomic anti-symphony. Two years later Aho composed Pergamon for four narrators, four orchestral groups and organ; the text, which is in four languages, is based on Peter Weiss’s novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands. In the intense Chamber Symphony No. 2 for strings (1991-92) we hear, in a sense, the music of the composer’s inner voices.

In 1992 the Lahti Symphony Orchestra appointed Aho as its composer in residence, and he has written all of his more recent orchestral works for these musicians. The bright, single-movement Symphony No. 8 (1993) for organ and orchestra is Aho’s most expansive instrumental work; this musically wide-ranging piece is one of the fundamental cornerstones of Aho’s entire output. The lighter Symphony No. 9 (1993-94) is also a concertante symphony: in this work, which contains many different time strata, the solo instrument is the trombone. The large-scale, dramatic Tenth Symphony (1996) is like a tribute to the great Romantic tradition of symphonic music, and is quite different from the Eleventh Symphony for six percussionists and orchestra (1997-98), which is dominated by strong, hypnotic rhythms and by subtle tonal colours.

The song cycle Kiinalaisia lauluja (Chinese Songs, 1997) for soprano and orchestra is a setting of ancient Chinese love poetry. Soloistic virtuosity is a hallmark of Aho’s large-scale, symphonic concertos for violin (1981), cello (1983-84) and piano (1989), of his three chamber symphonies (in the last of these the solo instrument is the alto saxophone) and of many chamber pieces (e.g. the Oboe Quintet, Bassoon Quintet, Oboe Sonata, Quintet for Alto Saxophone, Bassoon, Viola, Cello and Double Bass, Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet, Epilogue for trombone and organ, Seven Inventions and Postlude for oboe and cello and Quintet for Flute, Violin, Two Violas and Cello). Aho’s other operas include the one-act Salaisuuksien kirja (The Book of Secrets, 1998) to a libretto by Paavo Rintala and the two-act Ennen kuin me kaikki olemme hukkuneet (Before We All Have Drowned, 1995/1999), the libretto of which is based on a radio play by Juha Mannerkorpi. In 2013 Aho wrote his fifth opera Frida y Diego to the libretto by Maritza Núñez. The opera was commissioned by the Sibelius Academy and premiered on 17 October 2014 in Helsinki. It tells, in Spanish, about turning points in the lives of Frida Kahlo, her husband Diego Rivera, and Lev Trotsky, an exile in Mexico. In the opera the atmosphere varies from dreamy to wild carnival moods and there is also some heated argument and sharp political parody.

Kalevi Aho has composed 17 symphonies in all. They include Symphony No. 12, “Luosto” (2002-03), designed for outdoor purposes, Symphony No. 13 subtitled “Symphonic Characterizations” (2003), Symphony No. 14 “Rituals” for darabuka, djembe, gongs and chamber orchestra (2007), Symphony No. 15 (2009-10) commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and the Lahti Symphony, and Symphony No. 16 commissioned by YLE and premiered by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2015.

Symphony No. 17 was premiered in 2019 by the Sinfonia Lahti, under the direction of the Aho expert Osmo Vänskä. Subtitled Symphonic Frescoes, with its 63 minutes, it is s Aho´s longest, and the movements – From the Depth, Scherzo macabre and Distant Songs – can also be performed separately as independent tone poems. Among Aho’s many orchestral works are Minea (2008, commissined by the Minnesota Orchestra) and Gejia –Chinese Images for Orchestra (2012, commissioned by the National Centre of Performing Arts in Beijing, China).

During the 90s Aho concentrated primarily on opera, symphonies, chamber music as well as instrumental solo pieces, and his concerto production was not resumed until the beginning of the new millennium with the elegiac and cantabile Tuba Concerto (2000-01). It was also at this time that the absolutely unique idea of composing a series of concertos for every instrument in the symphony orchestra was born – a project that is nearly completed. In 2002

followed one of the key works in Aho’s production, the lyrical and melodious Flute Concerto written for Sharon Bezaly; it one of his most often performed works. After that followed concertos for double bass, clarinet, bassoon, viola, trumpet, trombone and French horn.

Kalevi Aho has also composed concertos for such solo instruments as the tuba, the contrabassoon, the soprano saxophone, the tenor saxophone, the timpani, the accordeon and the harp. His most performed concerto is Sieidi (Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, 2010) commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Luosto Classic Festival and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and performed by Colin Currie and Martin Grubinger. The Theremin Concerto Eight Seasons (2011) was commissioned by the Lapland Chamber Orchestra and premiered in 2012 by Carolina Eyck. The recording of Aho’s theremin and horn concertos won the prestigious ECHO Classic Award in 2015 for the best concerto disc of the year. Aho’s oeuvre also includes two double concertos: for two cellos (commissioned by the BBC and premiered in Manchester in 2004) and for French horn and harp (commissioned by the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in 2015).

Aho has also completed J. S. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV which exists in versions for string orchestra, organ or saxophone quartet. The Symphonic Dances (Hommage à Uuno Klami) was composed in 2001 as the third

act of Uuno Klami’s ballet Pyörteitä (Whirls) and the recording by BIS has scored great international success. Among Kalevi Aho’s numerous arrangements are Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death for bass and orchestra and the first act of Klami’s ballet Whirls. In 1995 Aho composed the lost second violin parts of all six string quartets by the first Finnish composer of importance, Erik Tulindberg (1761-1814), and in 1997 he completed Sibelius’s complete Karelia score in preparation both for performance and for recording (BIS-CD-915). Foremost among Aho’s many writings are the treatises Finnish Music and the Kalevala and Einojuhani Rautavaara as a Symphonist, the collection of essays The Tasks of an Artist in a Post-Modern Society, Art and Reality as well as the books Music of Finland (in collaboration with E. Salmenhaara, P. Jalkanen and K. Virtamo) and Uuno Klami – Life and Works (in collaboration with Marjo Valkonen, 2000).

REBECCA ADAMS COMPOSER

Rebecca Adams is a Canadian composertrombonist from Springvale, Prince Edward Island, currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She completed her Bachelor of Music with a Concentration in Composition at Dalhousie University in April 2020, and a Graduate Certificate

in Music Scoring for Screen and Stage at Sheridan College in August 2021. During her time at Dalhousie, Rebecca studied composition under Jérôme Blais, and, while studying at Sheridan, was mentored by Felipe Téllez and Virginia Kilbertus. Rebecca has a passion for storytelling and loves writing music about people: Personal identity, human struggles, conflicts and emotions, and mental health are all topics that are explored in her catalogue of work.

Above all else, she strives to write pieces that evoke a strong emotional response in the listener: This potential of music, to capture and communicate the innermost thoughts and experiences of people so accurately, is what drew her so strongly to the field. Rebecca has been playing the trombone for ten years and has performed with the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra, the Dalhousie Wind Ensemble, the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra, the Halifax Queer Ensemble, the UPEI Wind Symphony, and the UPEI Jazz Band. In 2018, she performed as a soloist for the Dalhousie Wind Ensemble in Berlioz’s Grand Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphal. She studied trombone under Gregory Irvine and Eric Mathis and has had opportunities to participate in masterclasses with renowned musicians, including Alain Trudel. It was only partway through her BMus degree that Rebecca discovered her true niche was composition. After only four months of composition experience, she applied to Dalhousie’s distinguished Composition Program and was

subsequently accepted. Since then, Rebecca has had pieces performed by ensembles such as the Maritime Brass Quintet and the Dalhousie Wind Ensemble and has had the opportunity to workshop music with Symphony Nova Scotia and the Verona Quartet.

In the past, she has received several prestigious awards, including the Patricia Wiegers Norman Memorial Music Scholarship and the James A. Faraday Memorial Award. Rebecca has also composed original music for several short films and video games. These include the animated short “Dançarina,” by Monica Santos, and the documentaries “Dancing in the Cold,” directed by Dmitrijus Monastyrecki, and “Romario,” directed by James Cooper. She was also a composer and sound designer for the indie video games Summit, by Unavailable Games, and Uprooted, directed and produced by Alexandre Bujold. rebeccalynnadams.com

KATI AGÓCS COMPOSER

Hailed as “a composer of imposing artistic gifts” (Gramophone Magazine) and “one of the brightest stars in her generation of composers” (Audiophile Audition), Kati Agócs (KAH-tee AH-goach) writes “sublime music of fluidity and austere

beauty” (The Boston Globe), that is “simmering…lucid…and demands to be heard” (The New York Times). A recent Guggenheim Fellow, she is also a winner of the prestigious Arts and Letters Award, the lifetime achievement award in music composition from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a two-time nominee for Classical Composition of the Year in the Juno Awards, the Canadian Grammy Awards.

As part of its Composer Portraits series, Miller Theatre in New York recently presented a Kati Agócs portrait featuring Third Sound ensemble and vocalist Lucy Dhegrae. The concert included the world premiere of Voices of the Immaculate, a cantata co-commissioned by Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In The New York Times, Zachary Woolfe wrote: “For once, singing of complete and utter clarity…a simmering new cantata, conceived with transparency as a first principle…entirely, word for word, lucid… her text demands to be heard, and is.” Other upcoming and recent premieres include a Piano Concerto for Nicolas Namoradze, commissioned by the Esther Honens International Piano Competition, and a Horn Concerto for James Sommerville, co-commissioned by a consortium of five orchestras in the U.S and Canada.

Other recent works include Morning Star, a motet commissioned by Emmanuel Music in Boston in celebration of their Fiftieth Anniversary; Imprimatur (String

Quartet #2), commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association, Krannert Center/University of Illinois, and the Aspen Music Festival and School to open the Aspen Music Festival; Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University for the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble; and The Debrecen Passion, a work for chorus and orchestra with texts by Szilárd Borbély, commissioned by The Jebediah Foundation for Lorelei Ensemble and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The Boston Globe named The Debrecen Passion, on which Kati Agócs also performed as a soprano soloist, one of its Top Ten Classical Albums of 2016. Her music has been commissioned and performed by many other premier ensembles and organizations including the the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna, Lontano, Albany Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Claremont Trio, Hub New Music, Jupiter String Quartet, Continuum, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal, New Juilliard Ensemble, and the multiple Grammyaward winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, who toured the U.S. with Immutable Dreams. She has collaborated with vocalist Lucy Dhegrae, cellist Paul Katz, harpist Bridget Kibbey, violinist Jennifer Koh, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, hornist James Sommerville,

and pianist Fredrik Ullén in the creation of new works. Residencies include the Charles Ives Music Festival, Chelsea Music Festival, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Oberlin University, National Youth Orchestra of Canada (for which she was Composer-in-Residence for their Fiftieth Anniversary) and a curatorial residency with Metropolis Ensemble in the Bowery on New York’s Lower East Side.

Awards and honours include the Guggenheim Fellowship; the Arts and Letters Award, Charles Ives Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a recording grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music; Composer fellowships from the Massachusetts Arts Council and the New York Foundation for the Arts; The Boston Foundation’s inaugural Brother Thomas Fellowship; the ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center; a Fulbright Fellowship to the Liszt Academy in Budapest; a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education; residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo; and commissioning grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Born in Canada of Hungarian and American parents, Kati Agócs earned doctoral and Masters degrees from the Juilliard School, studying with Milton Babbitt, and has served on the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory in Boston since 2008. She maintains a work studio in Flatrock, Newfoundland. She is an alumna of the

Aspen Music School, Tanglewood Music Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, and Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific (United World Colleges), where she represented the province of Ontario. She studied voice with Adele Addison in New York and with Adrienne Csengery in Budapest. Kati Agócs is a citizen of the United States, Canada, and Hungary (European Union). Her works are published by Kati Agócs Music and distributed internationally by Theodore Front Musical Literature.

KINAN AZMEH COMPOSER, CLARINETIST

Hailed as “intensely soulful” and a “virtuoso” by The New York Times, Winner of OpusKlassik award in 2019 clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh has gained international recognition for what the New Yorker has called “Spellbinding!” for his distinctive voice across diverse musical genres.

Originally from Damascus, Syria, Kinan Azmeh brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer and improviser. Notable appearances include the Opera Bastille, Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall, Moscow; Carnegie Hall and the UN General Assembly, New York; the Royal Albert Hall, London; Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; Der Philharmonie, Berlin; the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Washington DC; the Mozarteum,

Salzburg, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie; and in his native Syria at the opening concert of the Damascus Opera House. He has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Dusseldorf Symphony, the WestEastern Divan Orchestra, the Qatar Philharmonic and the Syrian Symphony Orchestra among others, and has shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, Marcel Khalife, John McLaughlin, Francois Rabbath Aynur and Jivan Gasparian.

Kinan’s compositions include several works for solo, chamber, and orchestral music, as well as music for film, live illustration, and electronics. His resent works were commissioned by The New York Philharmonic, The Seattle Symphony, The Knights Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orhcetsra, Elbphilharmonie, Apple Hill string quartet, Quatuor Voce, Brooklyn Rider, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Aizuri Quartet and Bob Wilson.

An advocate for new music, several concertos were dedicated to him by composers such as Kareem Roustom, Dia Succari, Dinuk Wijeratne, Zaid Jabri, Saad Haddad and Guss Janssen, in addition to a large number of chamber music works.

In addition to his own Arab-Jazz Quartet CityBand and his Hewar trio, he has also been playing with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2012, whose 2017 Grammy Awardwinning album “Sing Me Home” features Kinan as a clarinetist and composer.

Kinan Azmeh is a graduate of New York’s Juilliard School as a student of Charles Neidich, and of both the Damascus High institute of Music where he studied with Shukry Sahwki, Nicolay Viovanof and Anatoly Moratof, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering. Kinan earned his doctorate degree in music from the City University of New York in 2013.

His first opera “Songs for Days to Come” which is fully sung in Arabic, was recently premiered in Osnabruck, Germany in June 2022 to a great acclaim and he has recently been appointed to the National Council for the Arts on a nomination by President Joe Biden.

www.kinanazmeh.com

JAELEM BHATE RBC GUEST CONDUCTOR

Jaelem Bhate is a conductor, composer, and bandleader from Vancouver, B.C. whose musical diversity has come to define his career.

Alongside serving as Artistic Director and Music Director for some of the most innovative and forward-thinking ensembles in Canada, Jaelem has steadily added to the repertoire in both the classical and jazz genres. He currently sits on the board of Orchestras Canada, a national association representing the interests of large ensembles across the country.

Jaelem was named to the CBC’s 2019 30 under 30 hot classical musicians.

As a conductor, Jaelem has worked professionally as a guest with the Vancouver and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Vancouver Philharmonic. He is the current music director of the Vancouver Brass Collective, as well as the artistic director of Symphony 21, and ensemble which he founded. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jaelem spearheaded the creation of a digital season, garnering wide spread recognition and praise for having steered such a young organization through difficult circumstances. Symphony 21’s Fall season featured, in large part, works by underrepresented and unknown composers over two series: ‘Canadian Creators’ and ‘Beyond Backstage’, while its Summer season sees performances paired with local businesses. He is currently a finalist for the position of Artistic Director with the Guelph Symphony. Under his direction, Symphony 21 has gained a reputation for programming that in unique and groundbreaking. In December 2021, he produced a production of The Nutcracker with the orchestra sharing the stage with a full jazz band performing the Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements of the same music. In response to the invasion of Ukraine, Jaelem pulled together a 60-person orchestra on a week’s notice, and brought together community partners who donated their resources in full in support of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Jaelem completed his Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting at UBC in 2019 under the guidance of Dr. Jonathan Girard. He previously received his undergraduate degree in percussion performance at UBC where he graduated first in his class and received the prestigious Wesbrook Award for academic achievement and leadership. He has pursued training as a conductor, in addition to his Master Degree, with some of the most prestigious pedagogues in the world, and has participated in a number of high-profile positions and programs. In 2021, he will be attending the Cabrillo Festival in California (virtually in 2021), where he will study with Christian Macelaru, Yannick Nézét-Seguin, and Marin Alsop. He was the sole apprentice conductor of the highly competitive 2018 National Academy Orchestra of Canada under Maestro Boris Brott, and was a conducting fellow at the 2019 Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina where he worked closely with Maestro Gerard Schwarz. Other programs include the New York Conducting Institute in Manhattan studying with Paul Nadler of the MET Opera company, and the University of Oregon conducting masterclass with Maestro Neil Varon of the Eastman School, and Dr. David Jacobs. He was also assistant conductor at the Pacific Regional International Summer Music Academy with Maestro Arthur Arnold of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival, the Canadian Music

Center New Music series and the 2019 Pacific Rim International Music Festival.

As a composer, Jaelem has been praised for possessing “a personal and highly effective voice” (Canadian Music Center) and has been described as “...a rising star”. (The Midwest Record). He founded and directs the Jaelem Bhate Jazz Orchestra, a 17-piece jazz orchestra that exclusively performs his compositions and was recently interviewed by CBC Radio 1 for his ensemble’s premiere of his original suite for Jazz Orchestra ‘The Nameless’ featuring the poetry of underrepresented, disadvantaged and discriminated against communities. He recently released his debut album for jazz orchestra ‘on the edge’, featuring a who’s who of Vancouver jazz instrumentalists, and has been hailed for its “polished and confident arrangements” (All About Jazz, 2019). ‘On the Edge’ won the 2020 Julian Award for excellence in Jazz, presented by Patrick Julian and The Jazz Spectrum. His works have been performed on recital programs throughout Canada and the US, and his music was featured as part of the 2019 and 2018 Jean Coulthard Readings, presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, as well as by the Victoria Symphony in their 2019 Hugh Davidson sessions. His music was accepted by the International Society of Jazz arrangers and composers as part of their call for scores, to presented at their 2019 conference in Colorado.

Other notable performances and commissions include a premiere as part of the Sonic Boom Festival hosted by Vancouver Pro-Musica, 2 works for the Brazzjazz ensemble, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the 2018 PRISMA festival, and an upcoming project with the Canadian National Jazz Orchestra. His most recent commercial release was a suite of arrangements of Georges Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ for jazz orchestra. He also has recent credits as chief arranger of the Michael Kim Big Band, writing custom arrangements featuring all-star guests. Jaelem has studied composition Fred Stride and GRAMMY-award winning Darcy James Argue. Jaelem’s work has been funded by FACTOR Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.

As a community leader and programmer, Jaelem created the BRASS-embly symposium as part of his role as Music Director of the Vancouver Brass Collective, aimed at encouraging youth in BC to become further involved in the brass and music community. He also serves as Music director for the Brock House Orchestra, serving a dedicated group of seniors, improving their quality of life through shared music making. He has been involved with youth teaching at the St. James Music Academy on the downtown East side of Vancouver, as well as the UBC Summer Music institute.

AMY BRANDON

COMPOSER

Composer and guitarist Amy Brandon’s pieces have been described as ‘... mesmerizing’ (Musicworks Magazine), “Otherworldly and meditative ... [a] clashing of bleakness with beauty ...” (Minor Seventh) and ‘… an intricate dance of ancient and futuristic sounds’ (Miles Okazaki).

Her 2020-21 events included a cello concerto for Jeff Zeigler with Symphony Nova Scotia, as well as chamber works for KIRKOS Ensemble (Ireland), Exponential Ensemble (NYC) and guitarist Libby Myers, and installations and performances at Winnipeg New Music Festival. the Canadian New Music Network, Women from Space and Sound Symposium. She has received Canadian and international composition awards and honourable mentions from the Leo Brouwer Guitar Composition Competition (Grand Prize 2019), Central European String Quartet (Most Innovative 2018), and ArtsNS (Emerging Artist Award 2019). In 2020, she will also be composer-in-residence at the Hamilton Guitar Festival, a special guest at the Buffalo Guitar Festival and will conduct the Upstream Improvising Ensemble for their 30th Anniversary concert.

Her works have been performed by Ekmeles, Pro Coro, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Symphony

Nova Scotia, Yumi Suehiro, Chartreuse Trio, Zeehelden Quartet, Emma Rush, Dale Sorensen, and Sara Schabas, at venues including Chorus Festival (London, UK), National Sawdust (NYC), Trinity College (Dublin). Cerisy Castle (France), 21C Festival Toronto, and the MISE_EN Festival. Her 2016 solo guitar and electronics album Scavenger was nominated for regional awards including Music Nova Scotia and ECMAs in 2017/18. She has performed in Canada, the USA, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, the UK and at several festivals including the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, the Guitar Now Festival, Halifax Jazz Festival Spring Series, New Music Edmonton, Something Else!, the International Society for Improvised Music, BeAST FeAST, centre d’experimentation musicale and the Open Waters Experimental Music Festival. She has been a resident at the Banff Centre, the Atlantic Centre for the Arts, PIVOT and a composer participant in Interplay with the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

In addition to performance and composition, she writes and presents academic work concerning music cognition, virtual reality, improvisation and the guitar. Holding degrees in jazz guitar performance and composition, Amy is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD in music cognition at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has presented her work at conferences in Australia, USA, Switzerland, Hungary, the UK and at

Berklee College of Music, Boston and is the founder and organizer of the new music festival and academic conference, The 21st Century Guitar.

ELIOT BRITTON COMPOSER

Eliot Britton integrates electronic, audiovisual and instrumental music through an energetic and colourful personal language. His creative output reflects an eclectic musical experience, from gramophones to videogames, drum machines to orchestras. Rhythmic gadgetry, artistry and the colours of technology permeate his works. By drawing on these sound worlds and others, Britton’s compositions tap newly available resources of the 21st century. As a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation, Britton is passionate about Canadian musical culture, seeking new and engaging aesthetic directions that use technology to enhance expression.

Eliot Britton completed his Undergraduate Studies with Michael Matthews at the University of Manitoba and continued on to a MMus and PhD in music research and composition at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Sean Ferguson. Here, Britton has worked as a course lecturer, researcher and composer in residence for numerous

ensembles. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, and research grants including SSHRC Bombardier graduate scholarships, Hugh Le Caine and Serge Garant awards and most recently a Canadian Foundation for Innovation award and a DORA for best composition and sound design.

Currently Britton is cross-appointed between Music Technology & Digital Media and Composition at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. There he is building a media research-creation facility (Centre BPMC) and renovating the historical UofT Electronic Music Studios (EMS). As co-director of Manitoba’s Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival and an independent music producer Britton continues to produce events and music in a variety of contexts. His recently completed projects include “Adizokan” a 50-minute collaboration for Orchestra, dance video and electronics for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Red Sky Performance. ebritton.com

KATHRYN BROOKS BASSOONIST

Kathryn is Principal Bassoon of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, a position she has held since 2018. Prior to playing principal, she was

Second Bassoon of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since 2013.

Kathryn was a bassoonist with the elite training orchestra, New World Symphony in Miami for two seasons before winning her job with the WSO. Ms. Brooks was fortunate to receive a full scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music in their prestigious Orchestral Performance Program. She holds a Master’s and Bachelor’s of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

During her studies Kathryn attended many music festivals some of which include: Tanglewood Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, The Aspen Music Festival and National Repertory Orchestra.

When she’s not playing her bassoon, Kathryn enjoys hiking, working out, skiing, eating amazing food and spending quality time with her husband, Mike, their infant daughter, Lillia, and all of their cats and dogs!

CLIFF BURTON (METALLICA)

COMPOSER

Clifford Lee Burton was an American musician who was the bassist for the thrash metal band Metallica from 1982 until his death in 1986. He performed on Kill ‘Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1984), and Master Of Puppets (1986). Regarded as a prominent musical influence, he placed ninth in a 2011 reader poll by Rolling Stone, recognizing the greatest bassists of all time. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Metallica in 2009. (Wikipedia)

BRIAN ENO COMPOSER

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop, and electronica. A self-described “nonmusician”, Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music’s most influential and innovative figures.

Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesiser player in 1971. After recording two albums with Roxy Music, he departed in 1973 to record a number of solo albums, coining the term “ambient music” to describe his work on releases such as Another Green World (1975), Discreet Music (1975), and Music for Airports (1978). He also collaborated with artists such as Robert Fripp, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie on his “Berlin Trilogy”, and David Byrne, and produced albums by artists including John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads and Devo, and the no wave compilation No New York (1978).

Eno has continued to record solo albums and work with artists including U2, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Coldplay, James Blake, and Damon Albarn. Dating back to his time as a student, he has also worked in media including sound installations and his mid-70s co-development of Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring cryptic aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, Eno’s installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. In 2019, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music. Eno is frequently referred to as one of popular music’s most influential artists. Producer and film composer Jon Brion has said: “I think he’s the most influential artist since the Beatles.” Critic Jason Ankeny at AllMusic argues that Eno “forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence.” Eno has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production; his distinctive style informed a number of projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” (helping to popularize minimalism) and the albums he produced for Talking Heads

(incorporating, on Eno’s advice, African music and polyrhythms), Devo, and other groups. Eno’s first collaboration with David Byrne, 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, pioneered sampling techniques that would prove to be influential in hip-hop, and broke ground by incorporating world music into popular Western music forms. Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies have been used by many bands, and Eno’s production style has proven influential in several general respects: “his recording techniques have helped change the way that modern musicians; – particularly electronic musicians; – view the studio. No longer is it just a passive medium through which they communicate their ideas but itself a new instrument with seemingly endless possibilities.”

Whilst inspired by the ideas of minimalist composers including John Cage, Terry Riley and Erik Satie, Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work and defined the term. The Ambient Music Guide states that he has brought from “relative obscurity into the popular consciousness” fundamental ideas about ambient music, including “the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation.” His groundbreaking work in electronic music has been said to have brought widespread attention to and innovations in the role of electronic technology in recording. Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright said he “often eulogised” Eno’s abilities.

Eno’s “unconventional studio predilections”, in common with those of Peter Gabriel, were an influence on the recording of “In the Air Tonight”, the single which launched the solo career of Eno’s former drummer Phil Collins. Collins said he “learned a lot” from working with Eno. Both Half Man Half Biscuit (in the song “Eno Collaboration” on the EP of the same name) and MGMT have written songs about Eno. LCD Soundsystem has frequently cited Eno as a key influence. The Icelandic singer Björk also credited Eno as a major influence. Mora sti Fotia (Babies on Fire), one of the most influential Greek rock bands, was named after Eno’s song “Baby’s on Fire”.

In 2011, Belgian academics from the Royal Museum for Central Africa named a species of Afrotropical spider Pseudocorinna brianeno in his honour.

JOHN HADFIELD DRUMMER & PERCUSSIONIST

As a composer and percussionist, John Hadfield’s dedication to music has taken him from his native Missouri to concert halls and clubs across the world. He has released three albums of his own compositions — John Hadfield’s Paris Quartet, The Eye of Gordon and Displaced and has composed for many projects, including Heard By Others, a duo project with Lenny Pickett, Believers a trio with Brad Shepik and Sam Minaie, and For James a duo with Ron Blake. Hadfield also composed and performed in Apologue 2047, a multimedia

performance art piece directed by Zhang Yimou which explored themes of the relationships of humans and technology.

John’s ability to cross genres has allowed him to perform with the Saturday Night Live Band, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and the Silk Road Ensemble. He has collaborated on more than 100 recordings, including the GRAMMY award winner Yo-Yo Ma and Friends, Songs of Joy and Peace.

NOLAN HILDEBRAND COMPOSER

Nolan Hildebrand is a composer, improviser, researcher, and sound artist currently based in Toronto, Canada. His musical journey which began with playing drums to his favorite metal and math-rock albums has grown to encompass composition in classical ensembles and electroacoustic music, and performance in an experimental solo noise project dubbed BLACK GALAXIE. Nolan’s music often explores aspects of improvisation/ interpretation, kinetic energy, noise, and density.

As a performer, Nolan has played at the Cluster Music Festival and the Winnipeg New Music Festival Pop Up Concerts with the University of Manitoba’s Xperimental Improv Ensemble, and NUMUS’ 2021-22 season (Waterloo, Ontario), ExitPoints

#26 (online electroacoustic concerts), and the 4th Edmonton NoiseFest (virtual) as BLACK GALAXIE. Nolan has had opportunities to work with a wide range of world-renowned artists including the ECM+ Ensemble, XelmYa Ensemble, Luca Cori, Jonny Axelsson, Nick Photinos, Aiyun Huang, Dejana Sekluic, and Nina C. Young. Nolan has been the recipient of numerous academic grants and national awards including the 2019 SOCAN Awards for Young Composers, runner up in the 2019 TORQ Percussion Composition Competition, the 2021 New Media Press Solo Percussion Composition Competition, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), and the Masters SSHRC award. His latest projects include a work for TORQ Percussion and an electroacoustic work for the University of Toronto’s TaPIR Lab. Nolan has presented his music and research at the National Student Electronic Music Event (Ithica, New York), the CUNY Conference for Graduate Students in Music (NYC, New York), the University of Toronto’s Dialogues Performance Symposium, the Anestis Logothetis Centenary Symposium (Athens, Greece), the CeReNeM Composers’ Colloquia (Huddersfield, UK), and the Korean Electro Acoustic Music Society.

Nolan is currently pursuing a DMA at the University of Toronto with a focus on graphic notation and electroacoustic music. nolanahildebrand.wixsite.com

YURI HOOKER CELLIST

Principal cellist of the WSO, Yuri Hooker is well-known for his passionate and soulful interpretations of a wide range of repertoire. His frequent solo appearances have met with critical and audience acclaim: his 2007 Rococo Variations with the WSO was lauded as one of the best classical performances of the decade by the Winnipeg Free Press, and in 2011 The Strad magazine spoke of his performance of Britten as being among the “outstanding performances” of the inaugural International Cello Festival of Canada. An avid chamber musician, Yuri also appears regularly with the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society and Groundswell.

As well as performing, Yuri is an inspiring and dedicated teacher whose students are regularly recognized locally and nationally with awards and scholarships. As well as maintaining a private teaching studio, he served as the Sessional Instructor of Cello at the University of Manitoba from 2004-2008, and in the summer of 2011, he launched the Rosamunde Summer Music Academy for young string players.

Yuri holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University, which he followed with graduate studies under Janos Starker at Indiana University.

MEREDITH JOHNSON DOUBLE BASSIST

Described as “a superbly gifted musician” (Winnipeg Free Press), double bassist Meredith Johnson enjoys a varied and active career of performance and teaching. Since 2004, Meredith has held the position of Principal Bass with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work with the WSO, Meredith has performed across the United States, Canada and Europe with numerous festival and professional orchestras. In 2012, he was invited to be an inaugural member of the prestigious All Star Orchestra, an ensemble which, since its inception, has garnered many educational and artistic accolades, including six Emmy Awards.

In addition to his full-time orchestral schedule, Meredith is an enthusiastic and dedicated chamber musician. Praised for his playing of “resonant, lyrical beauty,” he has been part of many critically acclaimed chamber performances and has had the privilege of collaborating with some of the finest chamber musicians in Canada and the US, including: Martin Beaver, James Campbell, Jonathan Crow, Dave Harding, Paul Marleyn, Martin Roscoe, James Sommerville and Axel Strauss. Meredith was the Principal Bassist of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra from 2004 to 2013

and was part of numerous tours and recordings with that ensemble. He frequently appears with many of Manitoba’s other premier ensembles, including Agassiz Chamber Music, Camerata Nova, GroundSwell, the Virtuosi Concert Series and the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society. He has performed numerous recitals in Winnipeg, working primarily with pianist Madeline Hildebrand. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as well as with the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.

Teaching is an ever-increasing focus of Meredith’s time and energy. In addition to a select private studio and his instruction at the University of Manitoba, Meredith maintains a professional association with Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Increasing demand as a clinician has led to masterclasses at several universities across Canada and the United States. He is also the founder of Bassitoba; an intensive three-day training and performing symposium that takes place annually in Winnipeg at the University of Manitoba.

Meredith has a wide variety of musical interests. He has been involved in numerous recording projects and performances in a variety of musical genres. He has recorded with the Nashville-based old-time band, The Bashful Mountain Broadcasters as well as Winnipeg-based Heavy Bell, on their debut album, By Grand Central Station. As a guest curator for Winnipeg

new music collective GroundSwell, he organized a concert, Les Citations, that included several Canadian premieres and was featured nationally on CBC Radio’s The Signal. In 2017, he was a member of the consortium of bassists that commissioned Sueños, a multimovement work for bass and piano by Argentine composer, Andres Martin. Currently, he is spearheading a new commission project to get new chamber and solo works written for the double bass by eminent Canadian composers.

His double bass training began in Nashville, TN, serendipitously studying with Edgar Meyer, while pursuing a degree in English literature at Vanderbilt University. Upon graduation, he decided to continue his bass studies at Boston University with Boston Symphony Orchestra bassists Ed Barker and Todd Seeber, earning his master’s degree in Performance in 1996. From 1999 to 2002 Meredith held a fellowship at the New World Symphony, and upon the completion of his tenure there, he moved to Philadelphia to continue his studies with Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Bassist Hal Robinson.

His hobbies include riding bikes, cooking and tennis, and he lives in Winnipeg with his wife, violinist Susan McCallum, their three children, and the faithful family dog, Lucy.

THOMAS JOINER COMPOSER

Thomas Joiner hated music as a kid. He refused to listen regardless of genre, artist, or song and during a short period of time studying piano he refused to practise. This attitude persisted until he was 13 when he began studying composition with local Calgary composer Scott Ross-Molyneux. His new teacher had an infectious love of music that inspired Joiner and taught him to appreciate the beautiful intricacies of the vast musical repertoire we are fortunate to have access to today.

His primary instruments are trumpet and piano, which he began around the same time he began composition lessons. In addition, he has also studied voice, violin, and drums.

His first experience having a work of his performed was in 2018 when a classmate played his work Piano Sonata No. 0. Since then, he has composed music for his school’s plays, a piece produced in collaboration with a painter, a flute quartet for students at his school, and Dec 23, 2020 for Calgary’s Timepoint Ensemble. A key experience for Joiner’s view of music was spending time playing for his grandpa in a seniors’ home. The residents were sickly and dejected, but his music inspired and entertained. This experience taught him that music

has the power to create happiness and hope, even in the darkest times. His newest piece Dawn, composed for the Canadian Music Centre Prairie Region’s Emerging Composers Competition, is about finding hope and happiness in the darkness of the pandemic.

Thomas Joiner is currently 18 years old, is in Grade Twelve, and attends Central Memorial High School in Calgary.

GIYA KANCHELI COMPOSER

Music, like life itself, is inconceivable without romanticism. Romanticism is a high dream of the past, present, and future–a force of invincible beauty which towers above, and conquers, the forces of ignorance, bigotry, violence, and evil.

– GIYA KANCHELI

Born in Tbilisi on 10 August 1935, Giya Kancheli was one of Georgia’s most distinguished composers and a leading figure in the world of contemporary music. Kancheli’s scores, deeply spiritual in nature, are filled with haunting aural images, varied colors and textures, sharp contrasts and shattering climaxes. His music draws inspiration from Georgian folklore and sings with a heartfelt, yet refined emotion; it is conceived dramaturgically with a strong linear flow and an expansive sense of

musical time. A man of uncompromising artistic integrity, Kancheli was described by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin as, “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist — a restrained Vesuvius.”

Best-known as a composer of symphonies and other large-scale works, Kancheli wrote seven symphonies and a “liturgy” for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind. His Fourth Symphony (In Memoria di Michelangelo) received its American premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yury Temirkanov conducting, in January 1978, shortly before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet artists. The advent of glasnost brought growing exposure for and recognition of Kancheli’s distinctive musical voice, leading to prestigious commissions and increasingly frequent performances in Europe and America. His passionate champions have included Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstislav Rostropovich and the Kronos Quartet. World premieres of specially commissioned works took place in Seattle (Piano Quartet in L’istesso Tempo by the Bridge Ensemble, 1998) and New York ( And Farewell Goes Out Sighing… for violin, countertenor and orchestra by the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, 1999). North American premieres of major scores by Kancheli were presented by the Philadelphia and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and at the Vancouver International New Music Festival. In May 2002, he returned to America for the eagerly awaited premiere performances of Don’t Grieve, a commission by the San Francisco

Symphony for baritone and orchestra, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky as soloist and Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. Kancheli’s compositional style owes much to his work in the theatre. For two decades he served as Music Director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi. His opera, Music for the Living, which has won considerable praise in the former Soviet Union and Western Europe following its June 1984 premiere, was written in collaboration with the Rustaveli’s director Robert Sturua. In December 1999, the original collaborators restaged the opera for the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar. Among Kancheli’s other scores are Diplipito for cello, counter-tenor and chamber orchestra, Time… and Again for violin and piano (1997), Rokwa for large symphony orchestra (1999) and Styx for viola, mixed chorus and orchestra (1999). After electrifying performances of Mourned by the Wind at the Brooklyn Philharmonic in the fall of 1993, critics raved: “superb,” “there is no denying the powerful sincerity of this music and its riveting hold on the imagination — a grip that doesn’t relent until the consoling conclusion in which the individual and his turbulent, unpredictable universe arrive at a reconciliation.”

Recordings of his music are available on the Nonesuch, Sony and ECM New Series labels.

Dislocated by political and social turbulence in his homeland, Kancheli had resided in Antwerp. He died in his home city of Tblisi in October 2019. He was 84.

KINAN AZMEH’S CITYBAND MUSICIANS

Formed in 2006 in New York City, the Kinan Azmeh CityBand immediately gained recognition for their virtuosic and high energy performance, receiving praise from critics and audiences alike.

With this New York ensemble, Azmeh strives to reach a balance between classical music, jazz, and the music of his homeland, Syria. Azmeh’s expressive clarinet meets Kyle Sanna’s rustic guitar, soaring at times over the dynamic and volatile backdrop of John Hadfield’s percussion and Josh Myers’ double bass. Each band member has come from varied backgrounds to add their personal flair to this ensemble, resulting in a thoroughly exciting and rewarding listening experience.

The quartet has toured the US, France, England, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey.

ELIAZER

KRAMER COMPOSER

Eliazer Kramer is a pianist and composer from Montreal. He began bachelor studies in piano performance at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal and completed them at the Musikhögskolan in Piteå, Sweden. Following this, he obtained a master’s in piano interpretation from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and then spent one year of supplementary studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. In 2015, Eliazer obtained his Diplôme d’études professionnelles approfondies in piano performance from the University of Montreal under the guidance of Paul Stewart, and in 2017, he completed his master’s in composition under the tutelage of François-Hugues Leclair and Denis Gougeon. Eliazer regularly collaborates on music for film and video games; in 2016, he composed the music for the viral animation video, Le clitoris. In 2017, Eliazer was named one of three winners of the Concours de l’OUM, the University of Montreal’s orchestral composition competition. In 2018, Eliazer completed his Diplôme d’études professionnelles approfondies in composition with Denis Gougeon. In 2019, he was chosen to participate in the Orchestre de la Francophonie’s “Contemporary Orchestral Composition Workshop.”

In 2020, he became a student member of the Analysis, Creation, and Teaching Orchestration (ACTOR) project and was selected to compose a piece for one of their “Composer-performer Research ensembles” (CORE).

Eliazer is currently pursuing his doctorate in composition at the University of Montreal under François-Xavier Dupas and Caroline Traube. He is researching the effects that virtual orchestration can have on live orchestration. Eliazer’s works have been performed in Canada, the USA, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Cyprus, Turkey, and Finland. eliazerkramer.wixsite.com

SANDRA LARONDE CHOREOGRAPHER

A highly accomplished arts leader, creator, innovator, and influential speaker, Sandra Laronde (Misko Kizhigoo Migizii Kwe) which means “Red Sky Eagle Woman” in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibway) language, M.S.C., O.M.C., B.A. (Hon), Hon. LL.D. has over 30 years of experience in arts and culture. She is from the Teme-Augama-Anishinaabe (People of the Deep Water) in Temagami, northern Ontario and is based in Toronto.

Sandra plays a pivotal role in the ongoing Indigenous cultural resurgence in Canada. For three decades, she has created an

extraordinary body of work with collaborators that has led to powerful arts experiences elevating the ecology of arts and culture in this country while strengthening an international presence.

A champion of Canada, Sandra is active in cultural diplomacy through the arts, forging stronger ties by representing the nation at numerous high-profile international events and platforms including the Venice Biennale, two Cultural Olympiads (Canada and Beijing), Canadian Heritage’s first Creative Industries Trade Mission to China, a Trade Mission to Europe, Global Affairs Canada visit to northern Sweden, Canada’s High Commission, Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Council of Mongolia, and as an Official Delegate and Speaker at the 19th ASSITEJ World Congress in Soweto, South Africa, to name a few. Sandra founded Red Sky Performance in 2000, Canada’s leading company of contemporary Indigenous performance in Canada and worldwide. Sandra’s awards and nominations include: the 2021 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize; 2020 Celebration of Cultural Life Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation; 2018 Meritorious Service Decoration on behalf of the Governor General of Canada; and the 2018 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation. In 2017, Sandra was a finalist for the Margo Bindhardt and Rita Davies Cultural Leadership Award; 2014 Vital Ideas (Toronto Community Foundation); 2013 Victor Martyn

Staunch-Lynch Award for Outstanding Artist in Dance (Canada Council); bestowed with a 2011 Honorary Degree (Hons LL.D) from Trent University; 2011 Expressive Arts Award (Smithsonian Institute); Ontario Good Citizenship Medal; City of Toronto and Toronto Life’s “Face the Arts” recipient celebrating Cultural Mavericks; Paul D. Fleck Fellowship in the Arts (Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity); Toronto City Council’s Aboriginal Affairs Award, and participated in the Governor-General’s Canadian Leadership program that celebrates leaders who make a significant impact on Canada. Her company Red Sky garnered 16 Dora Mavor Moore awards and nominations (2020, 2019, 2018, 2016, 2012, 2010, 2006, 2004) and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, among other recognitions. In 2019, Sandra was the Curator and brainchild of the inaugural “The Land on Which We Dance Festival” at Jacob’s Pillow in the USA which featured an embodied land acknowledgement, Indigenous traditional and contemporary dance, storytelling, workshops, masterclasses, and connecting with local Indigenous communities.

In 2017, Sandra was also a Curator for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra celebrating Canada’s diverse musical landscape. She curated and directed a singular concert featuring a new genre-defying creation redskyperformance.com

JENNY LIN PIANIST

Pianist Jenny Lin is an artist of keen musicianship, brilliant technique, and a compelling perspective shaped by a deep fluency in global culture. Born in Taiwan, raised in Austria, educated in Europe and America, Lin has built a vibrant international career, notable for innovative collaborations with a range of artists and creators. In every performance, Jenny Lin places her considerable technical skills and her fierce intellect at the service of the composer’s intention, yielding results that win the loyalty and rapt attention of audiences and fellow artists alike.

In the 2021-23 season, Lin has performances – both digital, and in person – for Washington Performing Arts; at Hudson Hall performing the American premiere of William Bolcom’s Suite of Preludes; at Boston Conservatory’s piano series; at Little Island in NYC; and at Winnipeg New Music Festival performing a piano concerto by Harry Styfalakis. She also releases a number of new albums, including Simple Music with music by Giya Kancheli in partnership with accordionist Guy Klucevsek; Liszt Harmonies poétiques et religieuses on the Steinway label with pianist Adam Tendler; and a new recording featuring the complete vocal works of Artur

Schnabel with contralto Sara Couden, a complement to Lin’s earlier album of the complete Schnabel piano works. Recent performances include dates for the Mostly Mozart Festival; at “Angel’s Share” in the catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery; at St. Olaf College; at OKM Music in Oklahoma; and as the featured pianist in Elliot Goldenthal’s original motion picture score for Julie Taymor’s 2020 film, The Glorias. She performed a recital of Philip Glass’s music for the Morris Museum –a continuation of a close collaboration with Glass, with whom she has appeared regularly since 2014. This experience has inspired the creation of her own commissioning initiative, The Etudes Project, in which she works with a range of living composers to create new technical piano etudes, pairing each new piece with an existing etude from the classical canon. The results form both a series of solo recital programs and albums released by Sono Luminus. The first volume showcases Lin’s commissioning by ICEBERG New Music, a composer collective including a range of brilliant emerging composers. The Etudes Project; Vol. 1 ICEBERG was released to critical acclaim in 2019, and Volume 2 is forthcoming.

Other notable recordings in Lin’s catalogue (which includes more than 30 albums, on Hänssler Classic, eOne, BIS, New World, Albany, et al) include Philip Glass’s Etudes, the complete Chopin Nocturnes, Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues Op. 87, the Liszt

Sonata and Schumann Fantasie. Lin has also recorded “Get Happy,” an album of Broadway song arrangements, and her ingenious Steinway & Sons release of transcriptions of the songs of Chinese pop singer Teresa Teng.

Jenny Lin is the central figure in “Cooking for Jenny” by Felix Cabez for Elemental Films, a musical documentary portraying her journey to Spain. Other media appearances include CBS Sunday Morning, NPR Performance Today, and “Speaking for Myself”, a documentary by filmmaker Bert Shapiro, about Manhattan as seen through the eyes of eight contemporary artists.

A passionate advocate for education, Jenny created “Melody’s Mostly Musical Day“, a musical album and picture book for children, following the adventures of an imaginative little girl from breakfast to bedtime, told in a collection of 26 classical piano works from Mozart to Gershwin. Since the publication of the book in 2016, Lin has toured a multimedia concert version of the program which she performs regularly at schools and educational institutions throughout North America. This season also marks a decade of outreach concerts Lin has programmed and presented in retirements communities.

Lin has performed with orchestras throughout the world, including the American Symphony Orchestra, NDR and SWR German Radio Orchestras, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, and others, with conductors including Lothar Zagrosek, Jiri Starek, Urs Schneider,

Alexander Mickelthwate, Kek-Tjiang Lim, Wen-Pin Chien, Peter Bay, James Bagwell, and Celso Antunes. She has been presented in performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, at BAM Next Wave, Spoleto USA, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and elsewhere.

Fluent in English, German, Mandarin, and French, Jenny Lin studied Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and at Italy’s Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte with Dimitri Bashkirov and Andreas Staier. In addition to her musical studies, Lin holds a bachelor’s degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University. Jenny Lin currently resides with her family in New York City and serves on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music.

ZHOU LONG COMPOSER

Zhou Long, (born July 8, 1953, Beijing, China), Chinese American composer known for his works that brought together the music of the East and the West, thus helping to establish a common ground between different musical traditions and cultures. Among

Zhou’s most famous compositions was the music he created for Madame White Snake (2010), a vivid opera based on a Chinese folk tale, for which Zhou earned the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Zhou spent his early life in Beijing and received instruction on the piano at a young age. During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), however, he was forced to give up his musical studies and was ordered to live in the countryside, where he worked on a farm. In 1977, Zhou returned to Beijing to study composition and music theory at the Central Conservatory of Music. Upon graduating (1983), he became composer in residence (1983-85) with the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra of China. He then studied at Columbia University, New York City, where he earned a D.M.A. (1993), and he subsequently served as music director of Music from China, an ensemble based in New York City that performed traditional and contemporary Chinese music. He later presided as distinguished professor of music composition at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Zhou composed stage and orchestral works, chamber music, and choral and vocal pieces for ensembles worldwide. He became widely known for his exceptional ability for identifying techniques that enabled Western ensembles to effectively reproduce the sounds unique to Chinese music. Much of his work was influenced by his experience in China’s countryside, though he also drew inspiration from ancient Chinese poetry.

Notable among Zhou’s works were Soul (1992) for pipa (Chinese lute) and string quartet, created for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and The Ineffable (1994), commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Library of Congress. Rites of Chimes (2000), commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, was composed for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and musicians associated with Music from China. Among his later works were the symphonic epic Nine Odes (2013), the chamber composition Tales from the Nine Bells (2014), and the piano concerto Postures (2014).

In 2016 Zhou was enshrined into the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Hall of Fame. NYFA had previously awarded Zhou a fellowship in music composition (2000), providing him with the opportunity to further his work in blending the sounds and musical traditions of China with those of the West. Also in 2016, Zhou and his wife, Chen Yi, enjoyed growing acclaim for their jointly composed Symphony Humen 1839, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for best orchestral performance, under the baton of Singaporean conductor Darrell Ang and performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Zhou received numerous other honours during his career, including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2001) and the Academy Award in Music (later the Arts and Letters Award) bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003). His translation of “Words of the

Sun” (1982, revised 1997) was featured on the male vocal ensemble Chanticleer’s Grammy Award-winning album Colors of Love (1999).

JESSICA MACISAAC COMPOSER

Jessica MacIsaac is a composer born and living in Mi’gma’gi (Nova Scotia). Her music is inspired by her early years involved in theatre and dance, as well as a deep love for film scores. Her pieces incorporate elements of movement, humour, and references both overt and obscured. She obtained her B.Mus. in composition from Dalhousie University in 2019, studying under Dr. Jérôme Blais. She is currently pursuing her M.Mus. from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Her works have been performed both locally and internationally by ensembles such as the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, Trio Immersio, the Maritime Brass Quintet, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, and Quartetto Indaco. She is a two-time recipient of the Kenneth Elloway Award for exceptional potential in composition, as well as multiple scholarships from the Nova Scotia Talent Trust and Fountain School of Performing Arts. jessicamacisaac.com

KELLY-MARIE MURPHY COMPOSER

With music described as “breathtaking” (KitchenerWaterloo Record), “imaginative and expressive” (The National Post), “a pulse-pounding barrage on the senses” (The Globe and Mail), and “Bartok on steroids” (Birmingham News), Kelly-Marie Murphy’s voice is well known on the Canadian music scene. She has created a number of memorable works for some of Canada’s leading performers and ensembles, including the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, The Gryphon Trio, James Campbell, Shauna Rolston, the Cecilia and Afiara String Quartets, and Judy Loman.

Dr. Murphy’s music has been performed around the world by outstanding soloists and ensembles, and has had radio broadcasts in over 22 countries. Her music has been interpreted by renowned conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis, David Brophy, Bramwell Tovey, and Mario Bernardi. Her music has been heard in iconic concert halls, such as Carnegie Hall in New York, The Mozarteum in Salzburg, and The National Concert Hall in Dublin.

Besides many academic scholarships awarded in Canada and England, Dr. Murphy has also won prizes for her music,

dating back to 1992. She won first prize and the People’s Choice Award at the CBC Young Composer’s Competition in 1994 (string quartet category); received 2 honorable mentions in the New Music Concerts competition in 1995; earned fifth place at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in 1996 for her first orchestra piece, From the Drum Comes a Thundering Beat…; was awarded first and second prizes in the Maryland Composer’s Competition at Loyola College in Baltimore, 1998; won third place in the Alexander Zemlinsky Prize for Composition in 1999 for her work, Utterances; won first prize in the International Horn Society’s Composer’s Competition, 2001, for her work, Departures and Deviations; and in 2003 won first prize for her harp concerto, And Then At Night I Paint the Stars in the Centara Corporation New Music Festival Composer’s Competition.

Dr. Murphy has completed short residencies at the Snowbird Institute for the Arts, Utah, with Joan Tower; Tapestry Music Theatre/Canadian Opera Company, Toronto; rESOund Festival of Contemporary Music, Edmonton; Strings of the Future International String Quartet Festival, Ottawa; Soundstreams/Encounters, Toronto; and at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 2004, Dr. Murphy was honored with The Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Calgary, and in 2005 as the Roger D. Moore Distinguished Visitor in Composition from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Murphy was granted the distinction of Honorable Mention in the 2008 Barlow Prize for composition. From 2006 to 2008, she served as composer-in-residence to the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Kelly-Marie Murphy was born on a NATO base in Sardegna, Italy, and grew up on Canadian Armed Forces bases all across Canada. She began her studies in composition at the University of Calgary with William Jordan and Allan Bell, and later received a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Leeds, England, where she studied with Philip Wilby. After living and working for many years in the Washington D.C. area where she was designated “an alien of extraordinary ability” by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, she is now based in Ottawa.

JOSH MYERS BASSIST

Josh Myers is proud to offer his open ears and big earthy bass tone to various projects including Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand and Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, as well as his own groups; Big Words and the Josh Myers Quintet. He has had the pleasure of performing in many beautiful places for many beautiful people in concert halls, theaters, and music venues across 49 United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia.

MISSY MAZZOLI COMPOSER

Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York), and has been praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). Mazzoli is the Mead Composerin-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, pianist Emanuel Ax, Opera Philadelphia, Scottish Opera, LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Chicago Fringe Opera, the Detroit Symphony, the LA Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, JACK Quartet, cellist Maya Beiser, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Kathleen Supové, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, the Sydney Symphony and many others. In 2018, she made history when she became one of the two first women (along with composer Jeanine Tesori) to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. That year, she was also nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Classical Composition” for her work Vespers for Violin, recorded by violinist Olivia De Prato.

Mazzoli has received considerable acclaim for her operatic compositions. Her third opera, Proving Up, written with longtime collaborator Royce Vavrek, was commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and New York’s Miller Theatre. Based on a short story by Karen Russell, Proving Up offers a surreal and disquieting commentary on the American dream through the story of a Nebraskan family homesteading in the late 19th century. Proving Up premiered to critical acclaim in January 2018 at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, in April 2018 at Opera Omaha, and in September 2018 at Miller Theatre. The Washington Post called it “harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time”. Mazzoli’s second opera, Breaking the Waves, a collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects in 2016, was described as “among the best 21st-century operas yet” (Opera News), “savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original” (Wall Street Journal), and “dark and daring” (New York Times). Earlier projects include the critically acclaimed sold-out premiere of Missy’s first opera, Song from the Uproar, in a Beth Morrison production at New York venue The Kitchen in March 2012. The Wall Street Journal called this work “powerful and new” and the New York Times claimed that “in the electric surge of Ms. Mazzoli’s score you felt the joy, risk, and limitless potential of free sprits unbound.” Time Out New York named Song from the Uproar Number 3 on its list of the top ten classical music events of

2012. In October 2012, Missy’s operatic work, SALT, a re-telling of the story of Lot’s Wife written for cellist Maya Beiser and vocalist Helga Davis, premiered as part of the BAM Next Wave Festival and at UNC Chapel Hill, directed by Robert Woodruff. This work, including text by Erin Cressida-Wilson, was deemed “a dynamic amalgamation that unapologetically pushes boundaries” by Time Out New York

Mazzoli is currently the Mead Composerin-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 2012-2015 she was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group, and in 2011/12 was Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony. Missy was a visiting professor of music at New York University in 2013, and later that year joined the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music, a division of the New School. From 2007-2011 she was Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York, and in 2016, Along with composer Ellen Reid and in collaboration with the Kaufman Music Center, Missy founded Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program and support network for femaleidentifying, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers ages 12-18.

Last season included performances of her second opera Breaking the Waves at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Adelaide Festival, a performance of her opera Proving Up at the Aspen Music Festival, the world premiere of a Orpheus

Alive, a new ballet score commissioned and premiered by the National Ballet of Canada, the US premiere of her double bass concert Dark with Excessive Bright with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and performances of her work by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Colorado Symphony and the Opera National Bordeaux, among others. Mazzoli also curated concerts with the San Francisco Symphony and the Chicago Symphony. Her next opera, The Listeners, commissioned by the Norwegian National Opera and Opera Philadelphia and created in collaboration with playwright Jordan Tannahill, librettist Royce Vavrek and director Lileana Blain-Cruz, will premiere in March, 2021 in Oslo. Next season will also feature the world premiere of Orpheus Undone, an orchestral work commissioned by the Chicago Symphony, Mazzoli is an active TV and film composer, and recently wrote and performed music for the fictional character Thomas Pembridge on the Amazon TV show Mozart in the Jungle. She also contributed music to the documentaries Detropia and Book of Conrad and the film A Woman, A Part. Missy’s music has been recorded and released on labels including New Amsterdam, Cedille, Bedroom Community, 4AD and Innova. Artists who have recorded Mazzoli’s music include eighth blackbird (whose Grammy-winning 2012 CD Meanwhile opened with Missy’s work Still Life with Avalanche), Roomful of Teeth, violinist Jennifer Koh, violist Nadia Sirota, NOW

Ensemble, Newspeak, pianist Kathleen Supove, the Jasper Quartet, and violinist Joshua Bell, who recorded Missy’s work for the Mozart in the Jungle soundtrack. Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own compositions. Their debut full-length CD, Cathedral City, was named one of 2010’s best classical albums by Time Out New York, NPR, the New Yorker and the New York Times, and was followed by the critically acclaimed Vespers for a New Dark Age, a collaboration with percussionist Glenn Kotche. Vespers was released in March 2015 on New Amsterdam Records along with Missy’s own remixes of the work and a remix of her piece A Thousand Tongues by longtime collaborator Lorna Dune. The New York Times called Vespers for a New Dark Age “ravishing and unsettling”, and the album was praised on NPR’s First Listen, All Things Considered and Pitchfork. In the past decade they have played in venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, the M.A.D.E. Festival in Sweden, the C3 Festival in Berlin and Millennium Park in Chicago. Victoire returned to Carnegie Hall in March of 2015 as part of the “Meredith Monk and Friends” concert, performing Missy’s arrangements of Monk’s work. Missy is the recipient of a 2019 Grammy nomination, the 2017 Music Critics Association of America Inaugural Award for Best Opera, the 2018 Godard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Award, four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant to The Netherlands, the Detroit Symphony’s Elaine Lebenbom Award, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, and the Barlow Endowment. She has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross, VCCA, the Blue Mountain Center and the Hermitage.

Missy attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University. She has studied with (in no particular order) David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, John Harbison, Charles Fussell, Martin Amlin, Marco Stroppa, Ladislav Kubik, Louis DeLise and Richard Cornell.

Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

NICOLAS NAMORADZE PIANIST

– EMANUEL AX Pianist and composer Nicolas Namoradze, whose performances have been hailed as “sparkling… sensitive and coloristic” (The New York Times) and “simply gorgeous” (Wall Street Journal), came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition in

“Set to become one of the truly important artists of his generation.”

Calgary, Canada—one of the largest prizes in classical music. His often sold-out recitals around the globe have been met with universal critical praise, and recent album releases have received extraordinary accolades, including the Choc de Classica, Record of the Month in Limelight, Instrumental Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Editor’s Choice in Presto Classical and Critics’ Choice in International Piano, as well as a first-place debut in the UK charts for classical instrumental albums.

Among the most critically acclaimed musicians of his generation, Namoradze was bestowed the 2020 & 2021 Young Pianist Award by the UK Critics’ Circle, which called him “very much more than a top-flight pianist.” A Gramophone “One to Watch” and BBC Music Magazine “Rising Star,” Namoradze was also named among WQXR’s “20 for 20,” a list that “includes long-time heroes, established favorites and newcomers set for stardom who are redefining what classical music can be.” Recent critical highlights include rare five-star reviews in The Telegraph and The Guardian, which called his performance at Royal Festival Hall “ideally laconic and debonair, weighty yet exquisite, and exactingly precise in tone and touch.” A January 2022 cover feature in International Piano declared Namoradze’s Wigmore Hall debut “astonishing,” concluding that, “with so many talents and interests it is impossible to predict what this young man will go on to do: all we can be sure of is that it will be both original and unexpected.”

Activities of the 2022-23 season include residencies at Toronto Summer Music, the Honens International Piano Competition and the Florida Grand Piano Series; recital appearances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Le Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, Beethovenfest Bonn, Miami International Piano Festival, Kulturpalast Dresden and Lugano Musica, among others; a tour of duo recitals for piano and electronic marimba with Lukas Ligeti to mark György Ligeti’s centenary in 2023; and a series of concerto performances with multiple Canadian orchestras of a new work written for him by Kati Agócs. Highlights of recent seasons include recitals at Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Wigmore Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan and Boston’s Gardner Museum; appearances at Tanglewood, Banff, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Telavi Music Festival, Festspiele MecklenburgVorpommern, Portland Piano International, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and more; and performances with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel and Milwaukee Symphony, with conductors such as Iván Fischer, Karina Canellakis, Ken-David Masur, Finnegan DownieDear and Daniele Rustioni.

Highlights of his work as a composer include commissions and performances by leading artists and ensembles including Ken-David Masur, Lukas Ligeti, Tessa Lark, Metropolis Ensemble and the Momenta, Verona and Barkada Quartets, at festivals such as the Chelsea Music

Festival, Honens Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Portland Piano International and the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, among others. He has also composed and produced a number of film soundtracks, including Walking Painting by Fabienne Verdier and Nuit d’opéra à Aix, made in association with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. His compositions are published by the Japan-based Muse Press.

In tandem with his musical career, Namoradze is actively engaged in various music-related fields in the cognitive sciences. His doctoral dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center developed mathematical models for aspects of musical perception; the work won the Barry Brook Award, a distinction for exceptional achievement, and is published by Springer as the book “Ligeti’s Macroharmonies” in the Computational Music Science series. He now pursues postgraduate studies in neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, London, where his research interests include the effects of mental practice and mindfulness on musical performance.

Namoradze is also the creator of IDAGIO Mindfulness, a platform on IDAGIO, the world’s leading classical music streaming app. Besides a podcast, video series and several other resources, the core of the platform constitutes several mental skills and mindfulness training courses for both performers and listeners. As part of his work in the field, Namoradze has begun presenting a new event type, “mindful

recitals,” interspersing musical performances with guided meditations that combine mindfulness practice and music appreciation.

Namoradze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1992 and grew up in Budapest, Hungary. After completing his undergraduate in Budapest, Vienna and Florence, he moved to New York for his master’s at The Juilliard School and his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center, holding the Graduate Center Fellowship. His teachers and mentors have included Emanuel Ax, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Zoltán Kocsis, Matti Raekallio, András Schiff and Elisso Virsaladze in piano, and John Corigliano in composition. For several years, Namoradze served on the faculty of Queens College, where he taught chamber music, composition and music history.

MICHAEL OESTERLE COMPOSER

The composer and performer Michael Oesterle was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1968. He immigrated to Canada in 1982, and since 1996 has been living in Montréal. He has received several awards, such as the Gaudeamus Prize, the Grand Prize at the 12th CBC Radio National Competition for Young Composers, and the Canada Council Jules Léger Prize. Oesterle’s works have been performed and commissioned

by ensembles and soloists in Canada and throughout the world including Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), cellist Yegor Dyachkov, the Ives Ensemble (Amsterdam), sopranos Karina Gauvin and Suzie Leblanc. He has produced projects in collaboration with composer Gerhard Staebler, violinist Clemens Merkel, painter Christine Unger, video/installation artist Wanda Koop and Bonnie Baxter and choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde. He composed the music for cNOTE, a film by animator Christopher Hinton, produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). cNOTE won the 2005 GENIE award for best animated-short. In 1997 he founded the Montréal based Ensemble Kore with pianist Marc Couroux, and between 2001 and 2004 he was composer-in-residence with l’Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montréal.

GREGORY PARTH COMPOSER

Gregory Parth is a 23-year-old composer from Edmonton, Alberta. He was awarded First Place at the Alberta Music Festival for Music Composition (2014, 2015), the Rose Bowl “Best of the Festival” award at the St. Albert Rotary Music Festival for Piano Performance (2015), and his Level Ten

RCM Piano Certificate (2016). In 2017, he participated in the Young Composers Project with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, where he received mentorship from Composer-In-Residence John McPherson. In 2021, he received composition and orchestration lessons from John Estacio, and continues to write orchestral music in his spare time. In addition to composition, Gregory is currently in his second year of law school and obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alberta (2021)

JULIAN PELLICANO CONDUCTOR

Known for his versatility across a broad spectrum of genres, dynamic interpretations and meticulous technique, American-Canadian conductor Julian Pellicano is the Principal Conductor of Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Associate Conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Bringing an incisive musicality and collaborative spirit to every performance, he has built a wide-ranging international career leading the Winnipeg Free Press to proclaim that “his versatility is truly astonishing.”

As a guest, he has conducted orchestras in North America and abroad including the Seattle Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Orquestra de Valencia,

Edmonton Symphony, the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre, the Hartford Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and the Vermont Symphony among others.

Passionate about the intersection of music and dance, Pellicano has collaborated with internationally renowned dancers and choreographers. Upcoming ballet performances include a debut with the National Ballet of Canada, a return to Orlando Ballet as well as extensive performing and touring with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

A specialist in performing films live with orchestra, Mr. Pellicano’s catalogue of film projects encompasses over 20 titles including the Star Wars and Harry Potter series, E.T. The Extra-terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, Miloš Forman’s award-winning film Amadeus, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with its original 1927 score, Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, Disney’s Fantasia, The Nightmare Before Christmas, plus several of Charlie Chaplin’s silent classics.

Julian Pellicano studied conducting at the Yale School of Music, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and has conducted in masterclasses with Kurt Masur, Peter Eötvös, Zsolt Nagy, Martyn Brabbins, Carl St. Clair, L’Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He was a recipient of the Presser Music Award, prizes from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and Yale’s Phillip F. Nelson Prize for Musical Entrepreneurship.

Julian Pellicano’s career grew out of unconventional beginnings, performing as a primarily self-taught percussionist, timpanist, drummer and accordionist, in styles ranging from folk music to blues and jazz, rock and punk, as well as more traditional ensembles and orchestras. He studied percussion at the Peabody Conservatory, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the Yale School of Music where he was a member of the critically acclaimed Yale Percussion Group directed by Robert Van Sice. As a percussionist, he has performed in concert halls and festivals in North America, Europe and Asia and was notably the percussionist for the legendary composer/conductor Mauricio Kagel during one of his final concert tours throughout the Netherlands. He also holds a degree in philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University.

VICTORIA POLEVA COMPOSER

Victoria Poleva was born in a family of musicians – her grandfather was a renowned singer and her father was a composer. She studied composition in the studio of Ivan Karabyts (1984-1989), and Levko Kolodub (1990-1995) at Kyiv Conservatory, where she also taught composition in 1990-2005. In her early works, including the ballet Gagaku, Transforma for symphony orchestra,

Anthem for chamber orchestra and others, Polevá adopted avant-garde and polystylistic aesthetics. Since the late 1990s, she became increasingly drawn to spiritual themes and simplicity, and developed a style identified by European critics as “sacred minimalism.”

Polevá composes orchestral, choral, vocal, and chamber music, and frequently uses sacred texts.

Polevá’s works have been commissioned by leading international performers of contemporary music, including Gidon Kremer (in 2005 for an international project Sempre Primavera and in 2010 for an international project The Art of Instrumentation) and Kronos Quartet (Walking on Waters, 2013).

She was composer-in-residence at the Menhir Chamber Music Festival (Switzerland) in 2006, and at the XXX Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival (Austria) in 2011, at the Festival of Contemporary Music Darwin Vargas (Chile) in 2013 and other international festivals. In 2009, her Ode to Joy (for soloists, mixed choir, and symphony orchestra) was performed during an international concert commemorating of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Polevá’s works have been performed at the Beethovenfest Bonn, Chamber Music Connects the World (Kronberg, Germany), the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Köln Philharmonie, the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris, the Rudolfinum-Dvorak Hall in Prague, the Yuri Bashmet Festival in Minsk, the Valery Gergiev Easter Festival

in Moscow, the Auditorio Nacional de España in Madrid, the George Weston Recital Hall in Toronto, the Italian Academy in New York City, the Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco, the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, the Seoul Art Center, the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, and at festivals of new music in Ukraine, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, United Arab Emirates, Peru and Chile.

POLYCORO CHAMBER CHOIR

Polycoro has enthralled audiences with contemporary programming and daring artistry since May 2015.

With concerts praised as a “combustion of creativity” by the Winnipeg Free Press, the elite ensemble performs exciting a cappella works by contemporary and ancient composers, adding visual elements in unique venues that augment the sonic experience.

Comprised of eight or more adventuresome vocalists, Polycoro performs challenging, seldom heard contemporary works and rediscovered early music. They produce one or two concerts per season, commissioning new works from Canadian composers

and developing performance collaborations with visual artists.

Polycoro notably wowed capacity crowds during a multi-sensory performance of Joby Talbot’s “Path of Miracles” in collaboration with internationally acclaimed filmmaker/projection designer Deco Dawson in 2018.

Performing with Polycoro at WNMF 2023 are Scott Reimer, conductor; and Merina Dobson-Perry, Chloe Thiessen, Katy Harmer, Sarah Hall, James Magnus-Johnston, Nolan Kehler, Paul Bruch-Wiens and Jereme Wall, singers

RED SKY PERFORMANCE

Red Sky Performance is a leading company of contemporary Indigenous performance in Canada and worldwide.

Since its creation in 2000, Red Sky’s vision is to lead in the creation, elevation, and evolution of contemporary Indigenous performance and make a significant contribution to the artistic and cultural vibrancy of Canada and the world.

Now in their 22nd year of performance (dance, theatre, music, and media), they continue to be guided by their mission to create inspiring experiences of contemporary Indigenous arts and culture that transform society in meaningful ways.

The vision of Red Sky Performance derives from its creator Sandra Laronde (Misko Kizhigoo Migizii Kwe) which means “Red Sky Eagle Woman” in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibway) language

from the Teme-Augama Anishinaabe (People of the Deep Water). Her vision is dedicated to expanding and elevating the ecology of contemporary performance informed by Indigenous worldview and culture.

Laronde’s concept of performance explores the relationship between movement, live music, theatricality, and image. Her engagement in these disciplines involves collaborations with dancers, musicians, composers, choreographers, visual artists, actors, writers, designers, researchers, and culture keepers are integral to Red Sky Performance’s distinct productions. ‘Story’ is paramount to Red Sky because Laronde sees stories as the embodiment of Indigenous voice, ethos, and key to empowerment.

They also provide many opportunities to emerging and established artists as they hone their artistic practice through a collaborative Indigenous process, offering unique opportunities for these practitioners to thrive creatively and professionally.

Touring since 2003, they have delivered over 2,755 performances across Canada including international performances in 17 countries on four continents, including two Cultural Olympiads (Beijing and Vancouver), World Expo in Shanghai, Venice Biennale, and Jacob’s Pillow, among others. At the same time, they remain deeply rooted and invested on a grassroots level and regularly perform in urban, rural, and reserve communities across Turtle Island.

They are the recipient of 16 Dora Mavor Moore awards and nominations, two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, three International Youth Drama Awards from Shenzhen, China, and the Smithsonian Expressive Award, among other recognitions. More than Dance, Red Sky Performance is a Movement.

LIAM RITZ COMPOSER

Liam Ritz is a Canadian-born composer based in Toronto, Ontario. He has been fortunate to work with outstanding musicians and ensembles including the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Gemma New, Veronique Lacroix, Etsuko Kimura, Cameron Crozman, Adam Sherkin and more.

His works have been frequently performed across Canada in festivals and workshops such as the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop, the Scotia Festival of Music, the University of Toronto: New Music Festival, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s What Next Festival, and at the Orford Music Academy. In addition, Liam’s works are often programmed by musicians in solo and chamber recitals, including recent performances in the United States, Italy,

Finland, and Argentina. Recognized for his work, Ritz has received six SOCAN Foundation Young Composers Awards, as well as a Prix Artistique from the Jeunesses Musicales Canada: Concours Do Mi Si La Do Ré. His works have been supported by organizations such as the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the RBC Emerging Artists Project. In 2018, Ritz was selected as the inaugural winner of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer Fellowship Program, in their 2018-19 Season, and was recently awarded a 2020 City of Hamilton Arts Award. Liam received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto, studying composition under Abigail Richardson-Schulte. In addition, he has participated in masterclasses with Peteris Vasks, Robin de Raaf, Ana Sokolovic, and Jean Lesage and has studied conducting under Ivars Taurins, Stephane Potvin, and Gillian McKay. Liam is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. liamritz.com

KYLE SANNA GUITARIST

Hailed by The New Yorker as a “first-rate, versatile musician”, guitarist Kyle Sanna’s musical practice includes composition, improvisation, the recording studio, live coding, and the traditional music of Ireland. His compositions have been performed at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Royal Opera House in Oman, Sydney’s ABC studios, the National Recital Hall in

Taipei, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and many points between. WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck host John Schaefer called his music “unconventionally beautiful.”

Kyle Sanna has received commissions from Brooklyn Rider, The Knights, Palaver Strings, Beta Collide, soprano Danielle Birrittella, and flutist Alex Sopp. His “ruminative and shape-shifting” (San Francisco Chronicle) work for string quartet, Sequence for Minor White, won First Prize in the 2018 Charlotte New Music Festival Composition Competition. Kyle Sanna performs regularly as an improvising guitarist with Ground Patrol and Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand, and performs traditional Irish music with legends Seamus Egan and Martin Hayes.

CAROLINE SHAW COMPOSER

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

This year’s projects include the score to “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s “The Sky Is Everywhere” (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of “The Crucible” (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, a new stage work “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust), the premiere of “Microfictions Vol. 3” for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film “Moby Dick” co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (“Evergreen” and “The Blue Hour”), the score for Helen Simoneau’s dance work “Delicate Power”, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (co-created immersive theatrical work with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from “Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part” (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, La Jolla Music Society).

Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas.

Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, tv series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary. carolineshaw.com

SHHH!! ENSEMBLE EDANA HIGHAM, PIANO ZAC PULAK, PERCUSSION

Shhh!!… a powerful utterance designed to draw attention forward… creating space and awareness… opening ears to something important.

Percussionist Zac Pulak and pianist Edana Higham are the two members of SHHH!! Ensemble, a duo carving a space for themselves as compelling performers, collaborators, and commissioners of electrifying new music. A keen taste for experimentation and discovery has guided their “avantaccessible” projects, which they have workshopped at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, and the Canadian Music Centre, resulting in feature performances at the Tuckamore Festival, Ottawa Chamberfest, Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, and the National Arts Centre #CanadaPerforms series.

They have toured broadly across Canada, celebrating and performing new works by both leading and emerging composers, including Jocelyn Morlock, Kelly-Marie Murphy, John Beckwith, Monica Pearce, Daniel Mehdizadeh, and Mari Alice Conrad. Their 2020 Toronto debut for the Music Mondays series was broadcast nationally on the CBC Radio 2 program “In Concert”.

In 2023, SHHH!! Ensemble will present the world premiere of Kelly-Marie Murphy’s double concerto Machines, Mannequins, and Monsters with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, followed by an appearance at the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec’s Montreal New Music Biennial. Additionally, as co-Artistic Directors of the Ottawa New Music Creators, Zac and Edana enjoy curating performances by leading Canadian and international artists in their home base of Ottawa, Ontario. Their debut album, Meanwhile, recorded for the Analekta label, was released in October 2022 to critical acclaim. shhhensemble.com

NELSON TAGOONA THROAT-BOXER

Nelson Naittuq Tagoona began writing songs and performing when he was 15. Tagoona improvises with traditional throat singing and beat-boxing, developing a technique he has termed “throat boxing”.

This unique performance has garnered Tagoona high praise throughout Canada, including being awarded at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and named one of the “Top 10 Canadian Artists under 20” by CBC Music. Tagoona performed during the opening of the Northern Scene Festival at the National Arts Centre, Pan Am Games, and at numerous other festivals and events Canada-wide.

An accomplished songwriter and performer with more than 300 performances under his belt, Nelson tours and performs regularly at music festivals and has a growing presence on National TV and in the press as an advocate for youth and wellness.

“In a lot of my songs I’ve always talked a lot about believing in yourself, being courageous and not being afraid and having a lot of heart. No matter how dark your days have been, you’ll see that shining light once again.”

– NELSON TAGOONA

As a member of the National Centre for the Arts’ Music Alive program, Tagoona is frequently invited to perform at public events and for youth. The Music Alive program sends teaching musicians to work with children and youth in northern communities, including Iqaluit, Igloolik, Rankin Inlet, Pangnirtung and Kugluktuk. Tagoona also works with Blueprint for Life, a non-profit organization that conducts hip-hop workshops with vulnerable youth to help boost self-esteem and tackle issues like violence, domestic abuse, sexual assault and suicide.

BRAMWELL TOVEY COMPOSER

Bramwell Tovey, OC OM, was a British GRAMMY® and JUNO awardwinning conductor and composer.

“He [was] the very model of a modern orchestral maestro... Not only [was] he a supremely gifted conductor and music director, a much-published composer, a pianist (classical and jazz) and a dreamer of big projects, he [was] also the bearer of a fantastic sense of humour.”

— ERIC FRIESEN in Montecristo Magazine, Spring 2011 Maestro Tovey served as music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra between 1989-2001, founding the Winnipeg New Music Festival in 1991. He was the Principal Conductor of the B.B.C. Concert Orchestra, based in London, U.K. Since September 2018 he was also the Artistic Advisor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

From 2000 to 2018, he was Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Founder and Artistic Advisor of the VSO’s state of the art School of Music in downtown Vancouver. In December 2018, the facility was renamed the Tovey Centre for Music incorporating the VSO School of Music in his honour. He is now the orchestra’s Music Director Emeritus. In January 2019, he assumed the role of Artistic Director of Calgary Opera,

one of Canada’s leading companies with an outstanding record of newly commissioned mainstage work. He most recently led the company in the 2016 Canadian premiere of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt with Lynn Fortin, David Pomeroy and Brett Polegato leading the cast. Maestro Tovey has planned the company’s seasons for 2020-21 and 2021-22 but relinquished the position for health reasons during the COVID-19 crisis. He returned to conduct the company’s performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio in November 2021.

As a guest conductor, he worked internationally with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras. During 2017-18 his guest appearances included the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston, Chicago, Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies.

In July 2018, Bramwell was awarded the Orchestras Canada Betty Webster Award “...as a driving force for music in Canada, as a conductor, orchestra builder, composer, music education advocate and passionate exponent of new music.”

In November 2015, Bramwell Tovey was awarded the $20,000 Oscar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance. Bramwell donated the award to the VSO School of Music for bursaries to study with musicians of the Vancouver Symhony Orchestra. Bramwell made his operatic debut in 1984 conducting Puccini’s Tosca with Leonie Rysanek in the title role for Cape Town Opera, her final performances of

a signature role. He made his Canadian Opera debut in 1994. His recording of Jean Cras’ Polypheme won the Academie Lyrique Française Prix d’or. His repertoire includes Mozart, Britten, Strauss, Gershwin, Bernstein, Puccini and several world premieres. At the 2015 Tanglewood Festival, he led the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Tosca with Sondra Radvanovsky, Bryn Terfel and Brandon Jovanovich. One of his final concerts as music director of the Vancouver Symphony was leading concert performances of Britten’s Peter Grimes with David Pomeroy in the title role and Erin Wall as Ellen Orford.

Bramwell was also an award-winning composer. His Requiem for a Charred Skull won the 2003 JUNO award for Best Classical Composition. His opera The Inventor, written with playwright John Murrell, was commissioned by Calgary Opera and recorded by the original cast with the Vancouver Symphony and UBC Opera for CD release. His trumpet concerto Songs of the Paradise Saloon was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony for their principal trumpet, Andrew McCandless and premiered in December 2010. The US premiere took place at the Sun Valley Festival in August 2011. Alison Balsom played the concerto under the composer’s direction at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in November 2013 and again under the composer’s direction with the Philadelphia Orchestra in December 2014.

In 2008, with violinist James Ehnes, Bramwell and the VSO won a GRAMMY® and a JUNO award for their recording of Barber, Korngold and Walton concertos. In the fall of 2009, the VSO toured to Korea and China, including two concerts at the Beijing International Festival. In the Spring of 2010, the VSO performed in Toronto, Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa. In 2011, the VSO and Naxos records announced the launch of the Naxos Canadian Classics label with a disc of music by VSO Composer Laureate, Fugitive Voices – the Music of Jeffrey Ryan which has been nominated for a JUNO award. In January 2013, Bramwell and the VSO toured the western United States.

In Vancouver, Bramwell led complete symphonic cycles of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler, many Canadian premieres of international works, including Thomas Ades Asyla and John Adams Dr Atomic Symphony, and works from across the choral, classical and Canadian repertoire. Bramwell worked with many leading international choirs including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Amadeus Choir of Toronto, the Melbourne Symphony Chorus, the Pacific Chorale and the Canadian Mennonite Festival Choir in a wide range of repertoire from Bach and Britten to Part and Penderecki. bramwelltovey.com

BRAM VAN SAMBEEK BASSOONIST

Bram van Sambeek is an international bassoonist and professor of bassoon at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. He is known for his highly versatile approach to bassoon playing and for his innovative programming. He is the only bassoonist to receive the highest Dutch Cultural Award: The Dutch Music Prize in 2009. As a soloist, he performs with orchestras such as the Gothenburg, Galicia and Netherlands Symphony Orchestras, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and Camerata RCO. Many composers, such as Vanessa Lann, Sebastian Fagerlund and Kalevi Aho, have written concertos for him.

He played for ten years as principal bassoonist in the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and as a guest principal with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Since 2009, he has been teaching the bassoon at the Conservatories in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague. In 2017, he started a professorship at the Hochschule für Music und Tanz in Cologne, before deciding to return to the Royal Conservatoire The Hague in 2021. Bram has taught masterclasses at schools like Bloomington Indiana, the Royal College of London and the Hochschule für Musik in Basel.

As a chamber musician, he has worked regularly with Alexei Ogrintchouk, Reto Bieri, Hervé Joulain, Radovan Vlatkovich, Liza Ferschtman, Christoph Pregardien, Pekka Kuusisto, Nicolas Altstaedt and his most frequent chambermusic partner Rick Stotijn. In 2010, Bram was offered a Carte Blanche series in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and in 2015, he received a “Wild Card” consisting of many adventurous concerts at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, also in Amsterdam. He is a regular guest at festivals like the Delft Chamber Music Festival, Storioni Festival, Orlando Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and he has experimented with concert formats such as playing people to sleep. In 2016, he was the spokesman of the “Save the bassoon” campaign set up by the Holland Festival. This led to a lot of international attention and publicity for the instrument. Bram is very much interested in playing any style he likes, which leads him to work with rock musicians like Sven Figee at Konzerthaus Berlin, Jazz musicians like Joris Roelofs at the famous North Sea Jazz Festival, and Arab musicians like Kinan Azmeh at the Morgenland Festival.

On the occasion of being awarded the Dutch Music Prize, Bram played the bassoon concerto by Gubaidulina with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and chief conductor Seguin. De Telegraaf newspaper wrote about this performance: “He uses his instrument

freely as a mouthpiece, conjures the finest timbres, and is technically capable of doing anything.” In 2011, he won a Borletti Buitoni Trust Award, and has been admitted to the Chamber Music Society of New York’s Lincoln Center.

About working together with Bram, Yannick Nézet-Séguin remarked in a television interview available at www.bramvansambeek.com: “I think he is able to fall in love with many aspects of the music, and doesn’t set himself too many boundaries.” In another interview about Bram, Valery Gergiev remarked: “... all in all a combination of being artistically involved, motivated and being gifted, being a very nice person, and also being a little bit unusual!”

Bram van Sambeek is a founder of the group ORBI (the Oscillating Revenge of the Background Instruments), performing tailor-made arrangements of rock songs.

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Established in 1947, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO) is a powerhouse Canadian orchestra that regularly surprises audiences, guest conductors and artists with the exceptional musicianship and flexibility of its members. The WSO is integral to Winnipeg’s rich cultural life, delighting more than 225,000 audience members each year with innovative programming and musical excellence. The WSO presents educational programs for more than 40,000 students annually and has toured across Canada,

twice to New York’s Carnegie Hall, and regularly across Manitoba.

Its primary concert venue is the Centennial Concert Hall. The WSO also provides orchestral accompaniment to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Manitoba Opera. The orchestra’s executive director is Angela Birdsell.

Daniel Raiskin is the WSO’s music director. Naomi Woo is the assistant conductor and Julian Pellicano is the associate conductor.

wso.ca

JULIA WOLFE

COMPOSER

Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.

Wolfe’s Her Story, a 45-minute semistaged work for orchestra and women’s chamber choir, receives its world premiere on September 15, 2022 with the Nashville Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero. Co-commissioned by a consortium of five American orchestras, all performances feature the vocal ensemble Lorelei, with stage direction by Anne Kauffman, lighting

design by Jeff Sugg, costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa, and sound design by Andrew Cotton. The world premiere is followed by performances in the 2022-23 season from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (January 6-7), Boston Symphony Orchestra (March 16-18), and San Francisco Symphony (May 25-27); dates with additional commissioner National Symphony Orchestra will be announced at a later date. Her Story invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights and representation for women in America. The 2019 world premiere of Fire in my mouth, a large-scale work for orchestra and women’s chorus, by the New York Philharmonic with The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, received extensive acclaim — one reviewer called the work “a monumental achievement in high musical drama, among the most commandingly imaginative and emotively potent works of any kind that I’ve ever experienced.” (The Nation Magazine) The work is the third in a series of compositions about the American worker: 2009’s Steel Hammer examines the folk-hero John Henry, and the 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning work, Anthracite Fields, a concert-length oratorio for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region. Mark Swed of the LA Times wrote, Anthracite Fields “captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the

sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.”

Other recent works include Forbidden Love (2019), a string quartet performed by percussionists, written for Sō Percussion and co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the LA Philharmonic, and the Kennedy Center; Flower Power (2020), a concerto for the Bang on a Can All-Stars co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Danish National Symphony; and Oxygen (2021) for 12 flutes, commissioned by the National Flute Association — a version for twelve flute choirs (144 flutes) was premiered in August 2022 at the National Flute Convention in Chicago.

Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. Her quartets “combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes.” (The New Yorker Magazine) Wolfe’s Cruel Sister for string orchestra, inspired by a traditional English ballad, was commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and received its U.S. premiere at the Spoleto Festival. Fuel for string orchestra is a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison, and Spinning is a multi-media work written for cellist Maya Beiser with visuals by Laurie Olinder.

Wolfe has collaborated with theater artist Anna Deavere Smith, projection/ scenic designer Jeff Sugg, filmmaker

Bill Morrison, visual artist Laurie Olinder, and directors Anne Bogart, François Girard, and Anne Kauffman, among others. Her music has been heard at venues throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, Muziekgebouw (Netherlands), Southbank and Barbican Centres (UK), Settembre Musica (Italy), and Theatre de la Ville (France.) Wolfe’s music has been recorded on Decca Gold, Naxos, Cantaloupe Music, Teldec, Sony Classical, and Universal.

In addition to receiving the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Wolfe was a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. She received the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music, and was named Musical America’s 2019 Composer of the Year. Julia Wolfe is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can, and she is Artistic Director of NYU Steinhardt Music Composition.

Her music is published by Red Poppy Music and G. Ricordi & Co., New York (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by the Universal Music Publishing Group. juliawolfemusic.com

DARREN XU COMPOSER

Darren Xu is a Canadian-born composer who is based in Vancouver. He enjoys writing music for acoustic instruments, films,

and cross-disciplinary collaborations. He had the opportunity to work with various ensembles, including Standing Wave, Piano-Erhu Project (PEP), and Rose Geller String Quartet. His first orchestral composition, To Liberate, will be premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the Winnipeg New Music Festival in January 2022. Darren’s collaborations with the Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow culminated in performances of his music as parts of installations and showcases of Debra’s Salish weavings, which took place at venues across Vancouver, such as the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Vancouver international Airport. His film score, Stargazer, was awarded Best Score by New York Film Awards in November 2018.

Darren began studying the piano at age 5 and began composing at the age of 19. Having spent his youth in Guangzhou, China, Darren is inspired by the melodious language of Cantonese. He received a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Music from UBC, and is currently pursuing his Master of Music at UBC, where he continues to study composition and research the relationship between Cantonese and music.

darrenxucomposer.com

ISAAC ZEE

COMPOSER

Isaac Zee is a Vancouver based composer, violinist, educator, and

media performer. Originally from Hong Kong, Isaac started his music training at the age of four with piano and violin and gained an interest in music composition soon after. In 2018, Isaac acquired his Undergraduate degree in composition at the University of Manitoba, and proceeded to obtain a Master’s degree at the University of British Columbia in 2020. Isaac writes in a wide range of musical styles, most notably instrumental music inspired by the spectralist movement, jazz, minimalism, and interactive computer music. Isaac’s music exhibits a curious speech-like quality while maintaining a sense of instrumental virtuosity that together with his taste for microtonal harmony creates a unique and intriguing musical fingerprint. Embracing the impossibility of theoretical absolutes and yet rejecting pure romanticism in music, Isaac’s works come across as quirky, bold, but still somewhat relatable. While he favours writing for small ensembles, especially string quartets, the style of his music takes inspirations from many different genres, including contemporary western classical, Balinese gamelan, swing, spectral, and computer-generated music. Throughout his music education, Isaac had the opportunity to work with various ensemble across Canada and internationally, including the Turning Point ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Chroma Quartet, and the Rose Gellert String Quartet.

The piece Conversations was the humble recipient of the Canadian Music Centre Barbara Pentland Award for Outstanding

Composition in 2019. It features quartertones, irregular phrasings, extended techniques, with an emphasis on the natural contour of each individual phrase, like those found in human conversations. This style represents Isaac’s latest composition flavour, with the frequent involvement of spectral analysis and computer assisted composition in the creation process.

Isaac was also part of the UBC Laptop Orchestra as a MaxMSP programmer and composer, where he collaborated with musicians and dancers from the Philippines and successfully created and performed an interactive multimedia performance in the University of Philippines, Diliman (2020).

DMITRI ZRAJEVSKI

RBC GUEST CONDUCTOR

Dmitri Zrajevski holds a master’s degree in orchestral conducting from the Conservatoire de musique de Québec and a bachelor’s degree in composition and music theory from the Université de Montréal. He is currently professor of orchestra, harmony and conducting at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec. Since 2020, he has collaborated with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec as interim assistant conductor, guest conductor and artistic consultant. In 2022, he conducted the Grands Ballets Canadiens’

production of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, stepping in for Maestro Jean-Claude Picard at the last minute. Following this event, he was immediately re-invited to conduct the company’s Nutcracker the same year.

Previously, he has acted as assistant conductor of the Orchestre philharmonique des musiciens de Montréal (2019-2020), guest conductor and chorus master of the Orchestre symphonique de musique de film de Québec (2019), as well as musical director and co-founder of the Chœur cosmopolite de Montréal (2013-2017).

Recipient of the Monique-Barry Scholarship, the Garnier Scholarship and the Merit Scholarship of the Fondation du Conservatoire, Dmitri has taken part in masterclasses in Québec and abroad with conductors Bramwell Tovey, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Raiskin, Yoav Talmi and Gilles Auger. He has also assisted conductors Jean-François Rivest, Jean-Claude Picard, Jean-Michel Malouf, Julien Proulx and Nicolas Ellis.

In 2019 as in 2021, he was selected by Maestro Talmi and Maestro Tovey, respectively, to conduct the Orchestre symphonique de Québec as part of the Domaine Forget International Music Festival. In 2021, he was selected by Maestro Raiskin to participate in the biennial RBC Canadian Conductor Showcase with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

EXECUTIVE OFFICE

Angela

ARTISTIC

Daniel

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Aimee

ARTISTIC OPERATIONS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Jean

Michael

Aidan

Sheena

Aidan

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION

Maria

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Curt Vossen, Chair

Daniel Friedman, Vice-Chair

Jon Kliewer, Treasurer

Julia Ryckman, Corporate Secretary

Terry Sargeant, Past President

James Cohen

Arlene Dahl, Musician Rep.

Steven Dyer, Musician Rep.

Robin Hildebrand

Edward Jurkowski

Margaret Kellermann McCulloch

Matthew Narvey

Robin MacMillan, Musician Rep.

Thor Richardson

Marlene Stern

Daniel Raiskin, Ex Officio

Angela Birdsell, Ex Officio

OUR DISTINGUISHED PATRONS

Her Honour the Honourable Anita R. Neville, P.C., O.M., Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba The Honourable Heather Stefanson, Premier of Manitoba His Worship Scott Gillingham, Mayor of the City of Winnipeg Mr. William H. Loewen, WSO Director Emeritus

WOMEN’S COMMITTEE