2013/ 2014 Overture #4

WSO NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL BEYOND January 2014

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY

ORCHESTRA

Issue 4

WSO SPONSORS, FUNDERS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The WSO proudly acknowledges the ongoing support of the following sponsors, media and funders: NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL Generously sponsored by

EDUCATION & OUTREACH PROGRAMS IN MEMORY OF PETER D. CURRY

Gail Loewen in Memory of Sue Lemmerick

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

POPS SERIES

CONCERTS FOR KIDS SERIES

POWER SMART HOLIDAY TOUR

Proudly continuing our family legacy of supporting the arts community that engages audiences today and inspires the artists of tomorrow.

LOBBY DISPLAY

MEDIA SPONSOR

MASTERWORKS A SERIES

INDIVIDUAL CONCERTS

SOUNDCHECK PROGRAM

WSO IN BRANDON

PIANO RAFFLE

CAR RAFFLE

CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY Women’s Committee of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

FUNDERS

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

SUPPORTING ALL THOSE WHO SEE THE STAGE AS THEIR DREAM DESTINATION. Air Canada is proud to contribute to our thriving arts scene.

23RD ANNUAL NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL Welcome to this year’s New Music Festival.

To start, I would like to introduce my new co-curator, Matthew Patton, who did a fantastic job of creating new connections and coming up with a whole lot of ideas. You can read his bio in the back of this book.

The wonderful Vincent Ho, to whom I’m eternally grateful, finished his tenure last year and as you might know he will be featured in our Carnegie Hall concert in May. The things I’m most excited about this festival are performing with the Hilliard Ensemble during their year long farewell tour; performing Arvo Pärt’s Litany and Valentin Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa; working on a new opera conceived by Jim Jarmusch and Phil Kline; welcoming Glenn Branca to Winnipeg and conducting half an evening of Forgotten Winnipeg that delves into three composers that are more known outside of our boarders than within the perimeter.

Our wind night this year features some incredible music that includes spatial works, music for flute choir and spiritual rituals.

is featured through an exhibition by David Wytik on the Piano Nobile.

We are continuing Pop Nuit, curated

by Matt Schellenberg with two new venues, the Union Sound Hall and the Millennium Centre featuring Colin Stetson and Venetian Snares. And we are collaborating with Cinematheque for the first time with showings of short films before the performances.

In our exploration of the Beyond we delve into new spiritual, emotional, psychological and historical depths of music.

Enjoy the festival!

We have many new collaborations: the 125th anniversary of the Icelandic Festival, which commissioned a new work of Valgeir Sigurðsson. The Toronto based Spur Festival is adding a new layer of talks at 6 p.m. on most concert nights. The Plug In Gallery

— Alexander Mickelthwate, Music Director, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

3

2013–14 SEASON

23RD ANNUAL NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL “What would be really interesting to see in your film is how beautiful things grow out of shit. Because nobody ever believes that. Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head – they’d somehow appeared there and formed in his head – and all he had to do was write them down and they would kind of be manifest to the world. But I think what’s so interesting, and what would really be a lesson that everybody should learn is that things come out of nothing, things evolve out of nothing.

If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted – they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that - then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life, where you can say, ‘well, I know that things come from nothing very much, and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.’

You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. And I think this would be important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work.”

— Brian Eno, from the film “Here is What Is” by Daniel Lanois

4

music director

Alexander Mickelthwate

I was over at Venetian Snares place earlier this evening which, when you read this will have been two months ago. We got into a long discussion not about music, that can be less interesting, but about music’s relation to the person writing it and to that person’s life.

I have always believed strongly that music is about so much more than music. In the case of each composer, it is about a life. Music like everything else is a symptom of a real person with real DNA and to whom real events have happened. It’s a delivery system for emotion. The most important aspect of music is first of all to live an interesting life. In my experience, interesting people write interesting music. The music and the person are one and the same. To look further into this, I once asked a psychoanalyst to psychoanalyse my music – not me – but my music.

resident conductor

Julian Pellicano

COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE

Vincent Ho

first violins

Gwen Hoebig, Concertmaster The Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté Memorial Chair, endowed by the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation Karl Stobbe, Associate Concertmaster Mary Lawton, Assistant Concertmaster Karin Andreasen Chris Anstey Raymond Chrunyk Mona Coarda Hong Tian Jia Simon MacDonald *Rachel Moody Julie Savard Jun Shao **Jae-Won Bang

I believe that the definition of intelligence is in making connections that no one else may see between vastly different things. Brian Eno is very good at this. His thinking is even more interesting than his music which is saying a lot. With Eno I am always conscious of something extremely important, that how you think directly affects how you live your life. Music may be what you hear but you are in fact listening to a whole life.

SECOND violins

Darryl Strain, Principal Elation Pauls, Assistant Principal Karen Bauch Kristina Bauch Rodica Jeffrey Boyd MacKenzie Meredith McCallum Susan McCallum Takayo Noguchi † Jane Pulford Claudine St-Arnauld

— Matthew Patton, New Music Festival Co-curator

violas

Daniel Scholz, Principal Anne Elise Lavallée, Assistant Principal Laszlo Baroczi Richard Bauch Greg Hay Suzanne McKegney Merrily Peters Mike Scholz

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA cellos

Yuri Hooker, Principal Leana Rutt, Assistant Principal Alex Adaman Margaret Askeland Arlene Dahl Carolyn Nagelberg Emma Quackenbush BASSES

Meredith Johnson, Principal Andrew Goodlett, Assistant Principal Travis Harrison Paul Nagelberg Bruce Okrainec Zdzislaw Prochownik FLUTES

Jan Kocman, Principal Martha Durkin

TROMBONES

Steven Dyer, Principal John Helmer BASS TROMBONE

Julia McIntyre, Principal TUBA

Chris Lee, Principal TIMPANI

Jeremy Epp, Principal PERCUSSION

Frederick Liessens, Principal HARP

Richard Turner, Principal Endowed by W.H. & S.E. Loewen

PICCOLO

Martha Durkin

orchestra PerSONNEL MANAGER

Chris Lee

OBOES

Beverly Wang, Principal Robin MacMillan

PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN

Raymond Chrunyk

ENGLISH HORN

Robin MacMillan CLARINETS

Micah Heilbrunn, Principal Michelle Goddard bassoons

Alex Eastley, Principal Kathryn Brooks HORNS

Patricia Evans, Principal Ken MacDonald, Associate Principal James Robertson The Hilda Schelberger Memorial Chair Caroline Oberheu Michiko Singh

ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN

Laura MacDougall

*On Leave **Temporary Position †Dual Section Position Please note: Non-titled (tutti) string players are listed alphabetically and are seated accordingly to a rotational system.

TRUMPETS

Brian Sykora, Principal Paul Jeffrey Isaac Pulford The Patty Kirk Memorial Chair 5

NMF1

SATURDAY JANUARY 25

HILLIARD ZAPPA TO PÄRT ARTISTS

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor Hilliard Ensemble (1)

David James, countertenor

Rogers Covey-Crump, tenor

Steven Harrold, tenor

Gordon Jones, baritone Sarah Kirsch, soprano (2) Karl Stobbe, violin (3) Winnipeg Singers (4), Yuri Klaz, director

Because we care about our communities We know there’s more to life than dollars and cents. There’s passion, endurance, commitment and community. As part of the community, Investors Group is proud to share in this and all of life’s special moments.

Repertoire

Frank Zappa (US) transcribed Ali N. Askin (1992) “G-Spot Tornado ” Pierre Boulez (FR) Le soleil des eaux (The Sun of the Waters) Complainte du lézard amoureux (2) Owen Pallett (CAN) Violin Concerto (3) 1. Adagio 2. Fugue 3. Largo 4. Allegro quasi chorale Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL DOORS OPEN 7PM 8PM INTERMISSION

Jonny Greenwood (UK) 48 Responses to Polymorphia – Canadian Premiere Arvo Pärt (EE) Litany for soli, mixed choir and orchestra (1, 4) PRE-CONCERT

7:10–7:30PM Piano Nobile (Centennial Concert Hall) Discussion with Hilliard Ensemble 7:30–7:50pm Piano Nobile (Centennial Concert Hall) Performance by University of Manitoba Brass Quintet; Richard Gillis, director POST-CONCERT

Plug In ICA Lounge (Piano Nobile) Plug In ICA After Party

HILLIARD ENSEMBLE

SATURDAY JANUARY 25

VENETIAN SNARES

In Support Of Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

with MAHOGANY FROG

www.investorsgroup.com Curated by Matt Schellenberg

UNION SOUND HALL 11PM 110 Market Ave. 18+ Valid ID Required

Presented in collaboration with

Pop Nuit sponsored by: ™ Trademark owned by IGM Financial Inc. and licensed to its subsidiary corporations. ® Imagine Canada’s logo, “Imagine Canada”, Imagine’s logo and “Imagine” are all trademarks used by Imagine Canada, and are used with permission.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

7

NMF1

SATURDAY JANUARY 25

FRANK ZAPPA G-SPOT TORNADO Known to most as an eccentric genius of rock ’n’ roll, Frank Zappa was also obsessed with modern classical music from a young age – especially that of Edgard Varèse – and over the course of his career he composed a number of works for orchestra and other ensembles.

G-Spot Tornado by Frank Zappa was originally recorded by Zappa on Synclavier for his album Jazz from Hell, his Grammy Award–winning instrumental album from 1986. It was assumed by Zappa to be impossible to play by humans but in fact it would be performed by the Ensemble Modern on the concert recording The Yellow Shark.

“During the ‘91 rehearsals, I came in one day, and a few of the musicians were trying to play that tune. They really liked it for some reason, and asked whether they could have an arrangement of it for the concert. It was another one of the pieces that was done on the Synclavier. I printed out the data, turned it over to Ali Askin, and he orchestrated it. The rest is history.”

Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

PIERRE BOULEZ LE SOLEIL DES EAUX Pierre Boulez completed the definitive version of Le Soleil des eaux in 1965, after beginning it in 1948 and reworking it several times. The original incarnation of the music was taken from fragments of incidental music scattered among a radio play by Rene Char. Le Soleil des eaux

8

is part of Boulez’s Char Trilogy, which also includes Le Marteau sans maître and Le Visage Nuptial. When this work was initially produced as a radio play, Char and Boulez were kindred spirits; they were radicals. Boulez called himself “110% Leninist” at the time. Char had been an active member of the French Resistance. The play itself was political, centering on a fisherman who fought against the commercial development of a river.

The polyphony of Le Soleil des eaux is difficult to follow and subordinate to the harmony, which is clear and beautiful. During the course of writing this piece, Boulez continued to use twelve-note rows as the basis of his pieces, but became less concerned with the horizontal aspects of the music and more interested in the vertical challenges. In essence, harmony became more important than melody, and the individual, polyphonic lines were subordinate to harmonic clarity, though not in a traditionally tonal sense. The counterpoint is therefore a sort of continual ornament in progress and is not meant to clarify the direction but to augment the palette of the soundscape. (John Keillor)

OWEN PALLETT VIOLIN CONCERTO The concerto was written to function as a solo violin sonata with string accompaniment. That is: the violin part could stand alone, but is played with an orchestral backdrop. It exists in a traditional Baroque sonata form, Adagio – Fugue – Andante – Presto.

The style of violin writing is written in deference to the Baroque style,

PROGRAM NOTES favourite multiple string voicing and austerity over flashy runs and extended technique.

As a composer I am interested in writing with an insistent use of material, developing a simple idea to the point of critical mass. Inspired by both Lou Harrison’s spectral writing and the Lovecraft story The colour out of space, the orchestra has been tuned scordatura, so that a quarter of the players are playing a quartertone flat, to create original and vivid colourations beneath Pekka’s more meditative chromatic parts.

— Owen Pallett

JONNY GREENWOOD 48 RESPONSES TO POLYMORPHIA Commissioned by the National Audiovisual Institute of Poland to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polymorphia, Jonny Greenwood’s 48 Responses to Polymorphia was premiered on September 9, 2011, as part of the European Cultural Congress.

I started 48 Responses to Polymorphia with the intention of writing 48 very short pieces of music, all beginning with the last chord from Penderecki’s Polymorphia – and all distorting it in different ways, and into different directions.

But, while working on this, I wrote a Bach-style chorale centred on the same chord: and that began to dominate the music. So, in the finished piece, distortions are made to this chorale, as well as to the simple C major chord.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

As well as being heavily indebted to Penderecki’s music, I was also influenced by how, in the 1960s, he took his knowledge of electronic music back to the orchestra, and found ways to recreate it with strings and notation. So much of this piece is an attempt to do the same, but also with the language of more recent computer-aided sound generation and manipulation. — Jonny Greenwood

ARVO PÄRT LITANY The text of Litany is derived from the prayers of St. John Chrysostum (c. 349-407) for each hour of the day and night. These 24 brief prayers, first offered up by the hermit who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 398 (and who is best-known as the author of the liturgy now at the heart of the Russian orthodox service) are heard here as a series of invocations and responses. Each prayer, each plea, begins with the words “O Lord”, variously intoned by the members of the Hilliard Ensemble.

Often composing with no more than basic scales and broken triads, Arvo Pärt has created a body of religious and secular music that simultaneously moves the heart and impresses itself on the mind through its purity of craftsmanship. He has become one of the most frequently performed living composers and his work remains closely associated with the Hilliard Ensemble.

9

NMF1

INTERVIEW

NMF2

OWEN PALLETT VIOLIN CONCERTO What was the genesis for your Violin Concerto?

My relationship to classical violin music is social and private. I play Bach solo sonatas behind closed doors. I play at family functions and weddings and funerals, I play at parties after cocktails. I don’t have the opportunity to practice with an accompanist, so I only learn solo violin music. I don’t learn Ysaÿe or Bartók solo music because their difficulty suggests, in the performer, a level of monomaniacal obsession that reads as anti-social. Pianists have reams of such social, solo music. Violinists do not. With my own concerto, I sought to create a piece of concert music that would succeed in the hall, and also successfully exist as a solo sonata for my own hermetic performance practice. As a result, I looked to Bach for the solo part, marrying his technical devices with my own “spectral” harmonic sensibilities, while paying tribute to Bach’s fourmovement sonata structure.

What were your concerns when you began to write the piece?

As few as possible.

Describe your creative process when composing a new work or in particular your Violin Concerto.

The orchestration uses quarter-tones to enrich the chords and create alien colours and dissolving structures. I am both passionate and skeptical about alternate tunings and do not wish to burden a performer with new tuning schemes unless the alternate tuning is

10

to be of enormous benefit to the piece.

Too often in new music do I hear alternate tuning as an end rather than a means. As a result, I typically seek the path of least resistance. In this case, I used the quarter-tone system.

I set up two keyboards, one at 440 and one -50 cents, and voiced each chord intuitively. For accuracy, I placed the -50 cent players in their own section.

How would you judge or what are your feelings about the finished work?

It’s a good first concerto. I am immensely proud of the first movement, which I feel is one of the most successful things I’ve written. I like the fugue that opens the second movement, which obscures the subject-countersubject construction to create an ever-expanding-andsimultaneously-contracting texture reminiscent of a Shepard tone. As well, the solo violin part of the fourth movement is extremely fun to play and has some devices that I’m pleased with.

What are your present concerns in music going forward and what will you be working on next and in the future?

I hope to write an opera, I am currently working out a librettist.

SUNDAY JANUARY 26

DOUBLE FEATURE

THE HILLIARD ENSEMBLE in Concert + TESLA IN NEW YORK

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL 7:30PM DOORS OPEN 5:50PM

Opera by Jim Jarmusch & Phil Kline ARTISTS

Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor Hilliard Ensemble (1) David James, countertenor Rogers Covey-Crump, tenor Steven Harrold, tenor Gordon Jones, baritone Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano (2) Phil Kline, electric guitar (3) Jim Jarmusch, electric guitar (4) Azure String Quartet (5) Elation Pauls, violin Chris Anstey, violin Laszlo Baroczi, viola Minna Rose Chung, cello

PRE-CONCERT

6–7PM Piano Nobile A NMF / Spur Festival Event Nikola Tesla Panel with Jim Jarmusch, Phil Kline and W. Bernard Carlson (Princeton University Press) Sponsored by

7–7:20PM Piano Nobile Performance by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, concept artists POST-CONCERT

Plug In ICA Lounge (Piano Nobile) Q+A with Jim Jarmusch and Phil Kline

University of Manitoba Singers, Elroy Friesen, director (6) University of Manitoba String Ensemble, Julian Pellicano, conductor (7) Donna Laube & Darryl Friesen, pianos (8) Derek Tywoniuk, percussion (9) Repertoire

Veljo Tormis (EE) Kullervo’s Message (1) Gavin Bryars (UK) Selections from First Book of Madrigals (1) Barry Guy (UK) Un Coup de Dés (1) Toshio Hosakawa (JP) New Work (1) INTERMISSION

Phil Kline/Jim Jarmusch (US) Tesla in New York (1–9) TESLA IN NEW YORK JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

11

SUNDAY JANUARY 26

PHIL KLINE/JIM JARMUSCH TESLA IN NEW YORK Jim and I first talked about the possibility of a piece on Tesla in the summer of 2008, but with other individual projects in the works it was a few years before we began work on it. From the beginning of our research it seemed clear that we would have to absorb as much as we could, take what we needed and invent the rest.

While we have tried to separate fact from myth in our understanding of Tesla, there was little concern that we make a coherent biography. Instead, we’ve tried to find glowing icons in his life, striking personalities and odd episodes, and arrange them in a diorama of free flowing time and space where they can coexist.

Nikola Tesla is a fascinating but daunting subject. One of the modern world’s brilliant visionaries, he lay substantial claim to paternity of the method by which we distribute electricity, the AC motor, radio, remote control and robotics. Those very real accomplishments, however, are obscured by the claims of his cult: that he could make solid objects disappear, transmit thoughts and broadcast electric power via the air.

A lot of this is Tesla’s doing, as he was not above letting showmanship and hokum mask the seriousness of his work. He would too often conceive an invention and act as if it were a fait accompli without actually carrying it out in full. (In that sense he was the opposite of his rival Edison, for whom the final product was everything.) And then there’s the mythic “death ray,” which the aging Tesla would mention to reporters to get a little attention.

12

PROGRAM NOTES To a degree we are letting the characters invent themselves. Most of what they sing is based on their own words, letters, writings and quoted speech, with one exception.

Robert Johnsons’s dialog is based on Goethe’s Faust. It was Tesla’s favorite work of literature and he quoted it frequently, as he does in one of our scenes while digging a ditch. Robert Johnson was his great friend and champion, a minor statesman and a terrible poet. Inasmuch as the Faust legend has almost painful resonance in Tesla’s story, it seemed fitting that his poetic friend would utter these lofty but knowing pronouncements, like an an American Greek chorus.

The unfinished music will be heard in a somewhat reduced arrangement for string quartet with two pianos. The instrumentation for the eventually completed piece will include electric guitars, percussion and electronics.

Photographer: Keith Levit

NMF2

— Phil Kline

Classical & Jazz ensembles for events from intimate to grand.

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

(204) 949-3950 JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

I

wsomusicservices@wso.mb.ca

NMF2

INTERVIEW

PHIL KLINE TESLA IN NEW YORK What was the genesis for Tesla in New York?

Jim and I were taking a walk. I asked him if he’d be interested in collaborating on a musical theatre piece and he said, “yes, could it be about Nikola Tesla” and I said yes.

What were your concerns when you began to write the piece?

My main concern was that Tesla himself was so fabulous and yet elusive. It would have been a lot easier to write an opera about a shoemaker.

“There’s truth and there’s truth. I’ve tried to use as many of Tesla’s (and other characters) actual recorded or written words as possible, though some are cut up or used in a different context.”

14

Describe your creative process when composing a new work or in particular Tesla in New York.

My process involves total immersion with a lot of short breaks, but it’s always different. I try to start each project tabula rasa. With a music theatre piece like Tesla, in the beginning it’s about text. We had to do a lot of research just to dig through the crazy myths, exaggerations and falsehoods that surround the man.

Then, once plausible truths began to emerge, we found we really liked some of the lies, so we may leave a few of those in the mix. There’s truth and there’s truth. I’ve tried to use as many of Tesla’s (and other characters) actual recorded or written words as possible, though some are cut up or used in a different context.

And then there’s the music. I usually plan compositions ahead of time, then throw the map away and go by my instincts. Of course there is a template here, which is the libretto. One nice thing about writing my own libretto is that I don’t have to ask permission to change it. And I am somewhat fanatic about each word being heard.

How would you judge or what are your feelings about the finished work or at least concerning what has been composed so far?

I know I’m going to love it, but it’s not finished, maybe about a third of it. I feel like we’ve done a lot, but just scratched the surface. One thing is that most of the first scenes to emerge have been Tesla’s and Katherine’s, which are on the tranquil side, while some of the yet unwritten ensembles will be much crazier, which only means the excerpts might make the whole thing seem more sedates than it will actually be. There’s a lot of writing and rewriting to do. With the long time scale of a project like this, I have the not only the luxury but the responsibility of reconsidering things, musically and dramaturgically.

“I’m always in a fog, trying to find my way out or just enjoying the mist.”

What are your present concerns in music going forward and what will you be working on next and in the future?

I’m always in a fog, trying to find my way out or just enjoying the mist.

Right now I’m conscious of linking some of my earlier work, much of which was for fields of boombox tape players, to my current work. Lately I’ve been writing nothing but vocal and instrumental music, and it’s a bit more carefully structured. I want to get some of the old naïve energy and chaos back into what I’m doing now.

Other than finishing Tesla, what’s coming up for me in the next few years includes a sort of theatre piece for 12 pianos, an outdoor piece for 20 choruses, a work for string quartet and orchestra, a plain old string quartet inspired by William Burroughs and some small music theatre pieces I need to do just to stay sane and have something to do in my own neighborhood. And there will be some recording projects, too.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

15

NMF3

WINNIPEG JAZZ ORCHESTRA

MONDAY JANUARY 27

RITUAL MASS ARTISTS

Brandon University New Music Ensemble; Megumi Masaki, conductor (1)

MYC

Saturday, February 8 • 7:30 pm Sunday, February 9 • 2 pm & 7:30 pm Winnipeg Art Gallery

MY ONE AND ONLY LOVE featuring vocalist Denzal Sinclaire TICKETS: $34 adult / $15 student 204.632.5299 winnipegjazzorchestra.com McNally Robinson Jazz Winnipeg

The University of Manitoba Flute Ensemble; Layla Roberts & Laurel Ridd, co-directors (2) The University of Manitoba Wind Ensemble; Richard Gillis, conductor (3) The Winnipeg Wind Ensemble; Jacqueline Dawson, conductor (4) Julian Pellicano, conductor (5) Repertoire

Casey Cangelosi (US) Theatric No. 10 (1) Owen Pallett (CAN) Arr. Christopher Byman The Great Elsewhere (1) Owen Pallett (CAN) Arr. Jesse Plessis Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (1) Christopher Byman (CAN) Homages (1) Henry Brant (CAN) Mass in Gregorian Chant for Multiple Flutes (2, 5) 1. Introitus 2. Gloria Patri 3. Gradual 4. Alleluja I 5. Tractus 6. Alleluja II 7. Offertorium 8. Communio

PANTAGES PLAYHOUSE DOORS OPEN 6:30PM 7:30PM PRE-CONCERT

6:40–7PM Pantages Playhouse Discussion with Jacqueline Dawson, Megumi Masaki, Richard Gillis and Layla Roberts.

7-7:20pm Pantages Playhouse Performance by River East Collegiate Percussion Ensemble; Jeff Kula, director.

Music by Owen Clark.

POST-CONCERT

NMF Lounge (Pantages Playhouse) After Party Meet the Artists

INTERMISSION

Frank Zappa (US) “Dog Breath Variations ” (3) Colin McPhee (CAN) Concerto for Wind Orchestra (3) David Maslanka (US) Give Us This Day (4) Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

HENRY BRANT

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

17

NMF3

MONDAY JANUARY 27

HENRY BRANT MASS IN GREGORIAN CHANT FOR MULTIPLE FLUTES The Mass in Gregorian Chant for Multiple Flutes, composed in 1984, is scored for as many flutists as possible with approximately twenty percent of the flutists doubling on piccolo, all playing material provided in the Graduale Romanum for masses. Brant’s own program notes for the Mass state that the “rhythmically uncoordinated configurations of the chant reveal melodic contours which automatically produce their own unique harmonic idiom.” The concept is simple and the results are uncannily beautiful: the flutists encircle the audience, and the beginning of each phrase is conducted with the flutists observing a strict unison. At a given moment, the conductor drops his or her arms, and the flutists are encouraged to move slightly ahead, or fall slightly behind, their neighbours. The resulting sonorities of this fractured unison simulate the decay of the acoustics of the great cathedrals as the audience is surrounded by what is essentially an artificially created decay.

FRANK ZAPPA DOG BREATH VARIATIONS The Dog Breath Variations are a pair of rock pieces dating from the late 1960s by Frank Zappa. They were to be eventually recorded by Zappa and his band, The Mothers of Invention in March 1969 on his double disc album Uncle Meat. This recording was in itself a soundtrack to a movie that wasn’t eventually completed until decades later. The music has been described as “most humanly impossible to play” with not less than 59 changes of time

18

PROGRAM NOTES

NMF4

TUESDAY JANUARY 28

signature in 74 bars of music!

The version heard tonight is based on Zappa’s last recorded CD before his death with the Ensemble Modern, The Yellow Shark (1993). (Fine Arts Brass)

FORGOTTEN WINNIPEG

Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

ARTISTS

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor

DAVID MASLANKA GIVE US THIS DAY

Julian Pellicano, conductor (1)

The words, “Give us this day,” are, of course, from the Lord’s Prayer, but the inspiration for this music is Bhuddist.

I have recently read a book by the Vietnamese Bhuddist monk Thich Nhat Hahn (pronounced “Tick Na Hahn”) entitled For a Future to be Possible. His premise is that a future for the planet is only possible if individuals become deeply mindful of themselves, deeply connected to who they really are. While this is not a new idea, and something that is an ongoing struggle for everyone, in my estimation it is the issue for world peace. For me, writing music, and working with people to perform music, are two of those points of deep mindfulness.

I chose the subtitle, Short Symphony for Wind Ensemble, because the music is not programmatic in nature. It has a full-blown symphonic character, even though there are only two movements. The music of the slower first movement is deeply searching, while that of the highly energized second movement is at times both joyful and sternly sober.

The piece ends with a modal setting of the choral melody Vater Unser in Himmelreich (Our Father in Heaven) – No.110 from the 371 four-part chorales

by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Sarah Kirsch, soprano (2) Eyvind Kang, vocalist (3)

DOORS

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL OPEN 5:50PM 7:30PM

PRE-CONCERT

6–7PM Piano Nobile A NMF / Spur Festival Event “Winnipeg Mythology” with Bruce Duggan, film producer; George Toles, film screen writer; Frank Albo, historian; Esylit Jones, historian

Jessika Kenney, vocalist (4) Prairie Voices, Vic Pankratz, director (5) Anthony Niiganii, Native American flute (6) Andy Rudolph, math drummer (7) Dan Ryckman, math drummer (8) Repertoire

Miguel del Aguila (US) The Fall of Cuzco Glenn Branca (US) Symphony No. 14 First Movement

7-7:20pm Piano Nobile Performance by Kerey Harper, guitar and electronics POST-CONCERT

Plug In ICA Lounge (Piano Nobile)

INTERMISSION

Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney (CAN/US) Concealed Unity (3,4,5) 1. Before we were one we were two 2. Each face has four faces 3. Before the snow Roydon Tse (CAN) Three Musings – a triptych for chamber orchestra (1) Canadian Music Centre’s Emerging Composers Prize – Winning Work

Mychael Danna (CAN) The Ice Storm (6) Venetian Snares (CAN) Deleted Poems – World Premiere (2) Venetian Snares (CAN) The Hopeless Pursuit of Remission – World Premiere (7, 8)

MYCHAEL DANNA

— David Maslanka

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

19

NMF4

TUESDAY JANUARY 28

GLENN BRANCA SYMPHONY NO.14 1ST MOVEMENT Glenn Branca’s idea for Symphony No. 14 was to demonstrate the potential of his harmonic series ideas and the fresh sound it could bring to the orchestra.

He said “I knew that I wanted to finally write a symphony for orchestra written entirely in my harmonic series tuning system. I had already written three symphonies using this system for a variety of electric instruments (including specially designed and built harpsichords (6), “mallet guitars,” re-fretted and restrung guitars and basses as well as a clavichord, retrofitted organ and harmonics guitar). I had used this tuning in parts of some of my orchestral pieces but as yet had not written a symphony. I already had many ideas for things I wanted to try, so conceiving the seven movements of the piece only took a few weeks.”

EYVIND KANG/JESSIKA KENNEY CONCEALED UNITY Concealed Unity is a study in inter subjective transformation, using processes of sound and time, scored for choir and multiple ensembles positioned around the hall. Through meditations on interior/exterior, unconcealed/masked, action/ reception, we experience inversions and paradoxes based on the nature of sound and emotions.

There are two main movements: “Before we were one we were two” begins with static frequencies through a sequence of decelerating time signatures and tempi, much like the way a wind moves through trees, joined by voices in two places as recaptured memories carried by the wind.

20

PROGRAM NOTES

Before the Snow, the second and final movement, is another version of the multiple time signature, this time in simultaneity. The music settles on a substrate and there is a transformation in the sound image from the acoustic movement within the hall to a heightening of the experience of the hall itself as the resonant instrument.

MYCHAEL DANNA THE ICE STORM The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee with music by Mychael Danna, is regarded by many as the best American film of the 1990s. Ang Lee and Mychael Danna have worked together on a number of films and in 2013 both won Academy Awards for their work together on “Life of Pi” - Ang Lee for Best Director and Mychael Danna for Best Music Score.

The soundtrack for The Ice Storm is one of the most conceptually rich, subtle, and effective in recent history. Each element contributes towards a multilayered and yet integrated sound world that lingers in the memory, not only because of the scope of the tragedy at the conclusion of the film, but because of the controlled journey towards it that the soundtrack helps create. Restraint is the principal device employed and through the precise combination of elements within the score, emotion is skillfully withheld and released. Lee has said he only became fully aware of the power of the film when he first saw a rough cut with Mychael Danna’s haunting score.

“I liked the irony of suggesting music endemic to Native Americans to remind us that, as the characters walk through the woods to their mod houses, the ground beneath their feet used to JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

belong to civilizations that are long gone,” composer Mychael Danna has said. “Ang and I wanted to remind people of the power of nature—that nature was there before anyone else, and that nature will be there when we’ve gone.”

Roydon Tse Three Musings – a triptych for chamber orchestra Three Musings - a triptych for chamber orchestra was written in 2010, and is a set of three miniatures entitled Lullaby, Scherzo, and Lament.

Originally conceived as a set of four miniatures, the middle movement was taken out in favour of a slow-fastslow structure for the piece. I wanted to produce a set of three unique studies for orchestra, each featuring different textures and styles. The first movement entitled Lullaby, is a miniature featuring glissandi in the

strings. Inspired in part by Debussy’s Nocturnes, a simple diatonic melody line is passed between the woodwinds and coloured by various instruments in the orchestra. The second movement Scherzo is a jubilant and fun dash for orchestra, the highlight of which is a bombastic duet for double horns. The Lament passes the spotlight to the principal players of the string section as each soloist plays the theme in imitation, creating an overlapping effect.

The piece received its world premiere with the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra as the inaugural winner of their National Student Composers Competition in 2010. It was subsequently read by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in the 2011 Jean Coulthard Readings and by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as part of their 2013 New Creations Festival.

TUE, FEBRUARY 18

Anne Manson presents soprano Suzie LeBlanc and compositions by Christos Hatzis and Alasdair MacLean based on poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.

Also: Wojchiech Kilar & Josef Suk.

WED, MARCH 12

Oboist Nadina Mackie Jackson and trumpeter Guy Few present Carnets de voyages, an album of audio snapshots and stories, plus new music from Glenn Buhr.

manitoba chamber orchestra Concerts begin at 7:30 pm in Westminster United Church Tickets $28 (adult), $26 (senior) + $8 (student), inc GST Available at McNally Robinson, Organic Planet West End Cultural Centre, MCO Ticketline (204) 783-7377 or online at

themco.ca

INTERVIEW VENETIAN SNARES What was the genesis for Deleted Poems and much of your new work?

Discover your

Passion

Discover The Collegiate’s enhanced music program – including instrumental music, choral music and more – in a newly renovated facility opening in September 2014.

Learn more about our music, academic, and performing arts programs at our Open House on February 6, 2014.

204.786.9221 uwinnipeg.ca/collegiate

I had written all of these really sad poems and I had deleted them.

I started to think, can you delete sad periods of your own life? Deleting things is a totally present day concept.

In earlier periods of history if you were to delete something you would need to burn the actual pieces of paper. Now you can delete things with the push of a button. Anything you can create you can make it not exist fast. You can’t pull it out of the fire if you have a second thought. It’s just gone. It’s interesting when you hear people talk about deleting themselves from social media. It’s like an identity suicide. At the same time, they are deleting their virtual identity, which is safe; it’s only a representation of them.

So, if you write a bunch of poetry and delete it, you are doing the same sort of thing in a way. Maybe it’s like going to therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome. If you could, would you really want to delete the sad experiences of your life? Probably not, because who would you be?

Describe your creative process when composing a new work or in particular Deleted Poems.

There is a connection between the emotion I feel and the music I create.

You are living in that space. The music you create or the music you go to live in is created in that emotional space from that feeling, rather than from some technical or academic perspective. It just comes out primal.

I don’t want to know how the feelings generate the music. I just do it, make it.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

It starts with some kind of motif that is rolling around in your head and you play it out, you explore it. The vocal came early on. There is a cello line playing the same melody. Those two elements came early on. And then I started smashing the inside of the piano, which became the weight of the piece. Everything else was dancing around these two things. It’s pretty intuitive. I’m hearing it in my mind and laying it down. I am usually able to get out from my mind what I need to get out. There aren’t many roadblocks.

“If you could, would you really want to delete the sad experiences of your life? Probably not, because who would you be?”

How would you judge or what are your feelings about the finished work?

It’s an embodiment of what I wanted to say, what I wanted to express. It’s there; it’s a painted picture. I feel that way about most of my music and if I don’t, no one ever hears it. If it goes out into the world, its something I wanted to say. I feel good about my music as long as I feel successful at conveying where I was at emotionally when I made it.

23

NMF5

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 29

UNHOLY NOISE DOORS

Creating value where we live and work. Together.

ARTISTS

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor Valgeir Sigurðsson, electronics (1) Repertoire

Frank Zappa (US) “The Perfect Stranger ” Glenn Branca (US) Free Form – Canadian Premiere INTERMISSION

Valgeir Sigurðsson (IS) Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Five – World Premiere (1)

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL OPEN 5:50PM 7:30PM

PRE-CONCERT

6–7PM Piano Nobile A NMF / Spur Festival Event Composers’ Panel with Glenn Branca

7-7:20pm Piano Nobile Performance by Greenhouse (Curran Faris, guitar & electronics) POST-CONCERT

Plug In ICA Lounge (Piano Nobile) Q+A with Glenn Branca and Valgeir Sigurðsson

Valgeir Sigurðsson: Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Five Commissioned by: Icelandic Festival of Manitoba Hjálmar Hannesson, Consul General of Iceland

Glenn Branca (US) Symphony No. 11 – North American Premiere Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

The Icelandic Festival of Manitoba is proud to sponsor the reception this evening as we begin a year of special events and activities to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Icelandic Festival in 2014.

GLENN BRANCA Great-West Life and the key design are trademarks of The Great-West Life Assurance Company.

TM is a trademark of The Great-West Life Assurance Company.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

25

NMF5

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 29

FRANK ZAPPA THE PERFECT STRANGER “I bought my first Boulez album when I was in the twelfth grade: a Columbia recording of Le Marteau Sans Maitre (The Hammer Without a Master) conducted by Robert Craft”.

Zappa goes on to say, “I didn’t know anything about twelve-tone music then, but I liked the way it sounded.

Since I didn’t have any kind of formal training, it didn’t make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin’ Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.”

Zappa’s powers of invention impressed Pierre Boulez sufficiently for the two to collaborate in recordings of his work. The Perfect Stranger is Zappa’s longest work for chamber ensemble. Boulez himself conducted the work, which was performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain. It was released on the album The Perfect Stranger, recorded at IRCAM, recorded on January 10 & 11 1984; Peter Eotvos was the musical director. Zappa’s aesthetic is very similar to that of Edgard Varese, a composer he admired immensely from an early age.

Zappa, FZ, Frank Zappa and the Moustache are marks belonging to the Zappa Family Trust.

All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

GLENN BRANCA FREE FORM

PROGRAM NOTES

larger forces and a more transparent sound. In 1986 I got two opportunities to write for the orchestra, one a fragment for an opera festival and the other a film soundtrack. But I felt that since I had never done it before it would be more sensible to write for string orchestra. Not to mention the fact that I had always felt the strings had been the heart of the orchestra, the instrument that gave it that special sound. I was totally smitten by this sound when I heard these orchestras play my music but later I would find that this special sound required all of the particular instruments in the orchestra, much like any other genre of music, whether swing, rock, c&w, etc.

Free Form was originally part of a piece I had been commissioned to write for a theatrical production. I wrote it very much in the style of one of my guitar pieces. The only difference being that is was far more complex. Not only did I now have a tremendous variety of timbre to work with I was also able to use compositional techniques that would be too difficult or at least outside the realm of the experience of electric guitarists at the time. The main one being the use of two different time signatures at the same time, 3 against 4, an idea I had wanted to try for a while. Eventually this piece would become a movement in my Symphony No. 7.

Free Form was one of my first pieces for full orchestra. Up to this point I had been writing for experimental rock bands then later large electric instrumental ensembles. But my work was evolving quickly and I needed

26

GLENN BRANCA Symphony No. 11 Symphony No. 11 was a far more ambitious piece. Written in 1998, more than ten years after Free Form, it was now my third symphony for orchestra, in addition to a full-length symphonic ballet as well as a number of other shorter pieces for orchestra.

In this piece I wanted to explore a theory that I had been developing for many years, “interpenetrating harmony.” As anyone who is familiar with my music knows, I rarely if ever work with melody and am not really much interested in rhythm either. My main interest is in fields of sound, in this case interpenetrating fields. The piece is divided into three instrument groups or what could be thought of as three separate orchestras.

These three groups are meant to “penetrate” each other in a wide variety of ways. The composition of the piece was very involved and required unconventional compositional techniques to achieve.

In a certain sense it could be seen as something like what Ives’ was thinking when he collaged the sounds of marching bands. But in this case the “collage” is very carefully worked out so that the interaction of the instrument groups is not at all random but integrated so that the sound has musical development and change while still maintaining a sense of never ending movement consumed in an almost drone-like field of sound but unlike a drone is always changing and moving to new places.

30 and under?

Get

Soundcheck’d with the WSO!

• All Soundcheck members are eligible for special events and perks throughout the season.

• Everyone 30 years of age or younger is eligible for this free program.

Full time students over 30 are also eligible.

• One guest can accompany the member for an additional $15 *.

• Tickets can be purchased up to 2 weeks in advance.

• Sit anywhere in the hall, except the loges (subject to availability).

Apply online: www.wso.ca /soundcheck (204) 949-3967 or soundcheck@wso.mb.ca JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

*Subject to a Concert Hall Sustaining fee applied to each ticket.

Attend any

regular season

concert $ for just

15

*

OR

Enjoy our

entire season

85

$

for just

Soundcheck sponsored by

*

NMF5

INTERVIEW

GLENN BRANCA What was the genesis for Symphony No. 14 1st movement?

I was contacted by David Robertson, Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra about producing a performance of my 100-guitar piece (Symphony No. 13) in St. Louis on a bill with the orchestra at a large local rock club. I was surprised by such an idea and of course interested. As it happened David lived in Manhattan so we met at a Starbucks and hashed the whole thing out. During the conversation, I asked what the orchestra would be performing on the program. He knew he wanted to do his take on The Rite Of Spring but otherwise he wasn’t sure. I suggested that they commission a short piece from me. He immediately said yes and agreed on a reasonable price since they were already paying a lot for the 100-guitar piece.

so conceiving the seven movements of the piece only took a few weeks. I had already unsuccessfully applied for grants for it in the past as well as the fact that I had been working with the harmonic series on and off for about 25 years. I thought that if I could get the first movement finished and performed I might be able to get more commissions to finish it.

But the SLSO would only allow me to use a recording for my personal use. Although as things turned out this would not have been a factor anyway since the sound in this rock club was terrible for an orchestra. I think their idea was to try to expand their audience by doing it in this venue and with the 100-guitar piece. Pity.

Oh, and my concerns were simply to demonstrate the potential of the harmonic series and the fresh sound it could bring to the orchestra.

What were your concerns when you began to write the piece?

I knew that I wanted to finally write a symphony for an orchestra written entirely in my harmonic series tuning system. I had already written three symphonies using this system for a variety of electric instruments including specially designed and built harpsichords (6), “mallet guitars”, re-fretted and restrung guitars and basses as well as a clavichord, retrofitted organ and harmonics guitar. I had used this tuning in parts of some of my orchestral pieces but as yet had not written a symphony. I already had many ideas for things I wanted to try,

28

“I suggested that they commission a short piece from me. He immediately said yes and agreed on a reasonable price since they were already paying a lot for the 100-guitar piece.”

“Some pieces have very strictly defined parameters, which I follow almost like rules.

Others I just write off the top of my head…”

Describe your creative process when composing a new work or in particular Symphony No. 14 1st movement.

Minimalism. I almost always want to try to hear something new and the only way to do that is to take a different approach right from the start.

I like to use the mathematical term “initial conditions.” This often causes me to spend a tremendous amount of time before I start working on a piece because I know that the decisions I make at the beginning of the process are going to determine the outcome of the piece.

I use an almost entirely different approach with each piece I write.

These approaches take many different forms. What I mean to say is that the concept of the piece determines how I will write it. Some pieces have very strictly defined parameters, which I follow almost like rules. Others I just write off the top of my head, sometimes elements of both. In some cases it is necessary to write the piece on graph paper. In other cases I make a series of charts that I draw from. I’ll use the computer when I want to hear it back as I’m writing. Although I rarely do this anymore because I find that hearing it can often seduce me away from the original concept. I also rarely use an instrument either, as I would prefer to hear the result of my ideas instead just letting the instrument take me where it wants to go. I’ve used overdubbing in the past.

Of course, if I’m writing something more conventional I’ll use music paper.

I use processes of all sorts. This is one reason I still consider my music to be

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

29

NMF5

INTERVIEW (CONT’D)

NMF6

THURSDAY JANUARY 30

ISOLATION How would you judge or what are your feelings about the finished work?

I’m almost never satisfied with the first version of a piece. In fact, almost every piece I’ve written in the last 30 years has been re-written at least once. There are a lot of things I want to hear, but there is no conventional way that I know of to get them to happen. You have to use untested techniques to get music that doesn’t sound like something that’s already been written. If you use the conventional methods, the results will be conventional and predictable.

Once I said to an interviewer that “all of my music has been a failure” and he used that statement as the headline.

Of course I only meant that the pieces were failures in that I hadn’t gotten exactly what I wanted. But I am my own worst critic. It usually takes me about 10 years before I can appreciate a piece that I’ve written. As far as the first movement of Symphony No. 14 is concerned, I see it as a kind of introduction to the Symphony more than a complete piece in itself. I wanted to hear what some of the ideas would sound like more than developing any one to its full potential. I saw it while I was writing as if looking through a telescope at distant galaxies, just catching a bit of one before moving on to the next, but never focusing in to explore just one, as will happen in the next six movements.

What are your present concerns in music going forward and what will you be working on next and in the future?

That depends entirely on what I’m asked to do. I might be working on some solo pieces for both acoustic guitar and harmonics guitar if the gigs come through. I usually don’t have much choice anymore. The living expenses in New York have become so high. There is the possibility of a new 100-guitar piece in Paris in 2015 (Symphony No. 16). Actually that piece is almost entirely written already so it would be available for 2014 but I’m at the mercy of the economy like everyone else is at the moment.

What I’m working on right now is my autobiography. I really enjoy writing and if the market in music keeps getting worse I may just start writing novels. I did a lot of writing when I was young and that experience has informed my music to a great degree.

It’s nice to see the final product as you type it instead of having to go through the layers of interference that exist in music between what’s on the written page and how it comes out in the concert hall or recording studio.

ARTISTS

Eyvind Kang, viola (1) Jessika Kenney, vocalist (2) Valgeir Sigurðsson, electronics (3) Sarah Kirsch, soprano (4) Zach Bales, laptop (5)

CRESCENT FORT ROUGE UNITED CHURCH DOORS OPEN 6:30PM 7:30PM PRE-CONCERT

7–7:20PM Crescent Fort Rouge United Church Discussion with Guests: Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney and Valgeir Sigurðsson Eyvind Kang/Jessika Kenney

Matthew Patton, electronics (6) Repertoire

Eyvind Kang/Jessika Kenney (CAN/US) The Face of the Earth (1, 2) Matthew Patton (CAN) The Pathology Comes From Within (6) Valgeir Sigurðsson (IS) Architecture of Loss (excerpts) (1, 3) Matthew Patton What The System Is Not (6) Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi Concubia Nocte (4, 5)

Valgeir Sigurðsson 30

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

31

NMF6

THURSDAY JANUARY 30

EYVIND KANG / JESSIKA KENNEY FACE OF THE EARTH “ujung jari balung rondhoning kelapa wineng kuwa sayekti dadya usada” - The slender inner spine of the coconut leaf binding together, becoming medicine.

The compositions on this album are about drawing the binary from the unary, like reflections from a mirror, and its inverse, the concealed unity. Listener/reader, translation/ composition, memory/imagination reflecting each other, they open up a current, which flows in a sudden oscillation.

Here we have followed a geological image; in the expression of the face of the earth (from Pr. “rokh-e khåk”), a new spectrum of binaries is revealed.

In the Classical Persian traditions, this can be found in the dynamic multiplicity exemplified by the term ‘radif’, used in both poetry and music, as both poeme and matheme.

We would invite the listener as reader, by making our ‘reading cards’ in the insert, to become a participant in the creation of meaning, including translation processes, which seek corresponding musical atmospheres.

For example: The Central Javanese Wangsalan is a kind of riddle (two lines, 12 syllables each, divided four and eight), sung by the female vocalist in the gamelan, often using images of natural phenomena alongside descriptions of human characteristics, invoking atmospheres of primordial knowledge, humor, heightened sensation and philosophy, with much hidden wordplay and reference.

32

PROGRAM NOTES

VALGEIR SIGURðSSON THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOSS The Architecture of Loss was originally composed for the ballet of the same name by Stephen Petronio and is Valgeir Sigurðsson’s third LP. The performers were handpicked from Bedroom Community regulars: in addition to Valgeir himself and composer/keyboardist Nico Muhly, the album features violist Nadia Sirota and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily.By deploying an array of digital processes, a small, flexible ensemble and pared-down musical materials, the music can pivot instantly into radically different places. The music flows from no ‘notes’ at all to lyrical, folk-like melody; from spare, acoustic sound to dense digital intervention. The album Architecture of Loss represents the piece as conceived and reconceived for the stage, and then reconceived again as pure music. Created, pored over and developed: the result is a meticulously designed structure, a sound architecture of musical and physical gestures and stillnesses.

Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi Concubia Nocte For voice and live electronics (2003)

Inspired by Gregorian plainchant and early baroque singing techniques, Concubia Nocte is based on ritualistic singing. The text is sometimes used for its semantic content and sometimes for its phonetic qualities. The computer builds an accompaniment of orchestral dimensions. The produced counterpoint is based on both the solo voice itself and other generated sounds.

NMF7

FRIDAY JANUARY 31

RICHTER & SILVESTROV BEYOND ARTISTS

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor Gwen Hoebig, violin (1) Mennonite Festival Chorus; Rudy Schellenberg & Janet Brenneman, co-directors (2) Repertoire

Max Richter (UK) Four Seasons Recomposed – Canadian Premiere (1) 1. Spring 0, 1, 2, 3 2. Summer 1, 2, 3 3. Autumn 1, 2, 3 4. Winter 1, 2, 3

CENTENNIAL CONCERT HALL DOORS OPEN 5:50PM 8PM

PRE-CONCERT

6–7pm Piano Nobile A NMF / Spur Festival Event “Beyond” with Jayenne English, astronomy; Shelley Sweeney, séances; Chris Rutkowski, paranormal activities

7:15–7:50PM Piano Nobile Performance by XIE – eXperimental Improv Ensemble, Gordon Fitzell, director POST-CONCERT

Plug In ICA Lounge (Piano Nobile) Meet the Artists

INTERMISSION

Valentin Silvestrov (UA) Requiem for Larissa – Canadian Premiere (2) 1. Largo 2. Adagio – Moderato – Allegro 3. Largo – Allegro moderato 4. Largo 5. Andante – Moderato 6. Largo 7. Allegro moderato Curated by Matt Schellenberg

Concert sponsored by

FRIDAY JANUARY 31

COLIN STETSON with HANNAH EPPERSON

MILLENNIUM CENTRE 10PM

Pop Nuit sponsored by:

This composition was written to the memory of Luciano Berio, a composer and teacher that stood Baboni-Schilingi close.

MAX RICHTER

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

33

NMF7

FRIDAY JANUARY 31

INTERVIEW

MAX RICHTER VIVALDI RECOMPOSED

VALENTIN SILVESTROV REQUIEM FOR LARISSA

COLIN STETSON

British composer Max Richter was originally approached to be part of Deutsche Grammophon’s acclaimed Recomposed series in which contemporary artists are invited to rework a traditional piece of music. The idea of recomposing and re-processing musical works was common in various periods of musical history and the project presents an opportunity to make certain classics relevant to a wider audience. Richter chose to recompose Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. He wanted to inscribe his new composition into Vivaldi’s and record a new version of a familiar work, in the process creating a new piece of music.

Requiem for Larissa represents Silvestrov’s very personal approach to this traditional genre. It is a very intimate service and an act of remembrance for his wife, Larissa Bondarenko, who died young, and for their life and what they did together.

Only parts of the traditional text of the Requiem are used, and they dissolve into the great vocal and instrumental textures, which cite fragments of those of Silvestrov’s works in which Larissa participated and the performances of which she attended. Thus Symphony No. 1 is cited in the Tuba mirum, whereas the fourth movement cites part of a setting of Taras Shevchenko from the song cycle Quiet Songs (No. 5, “World, farewell, o hard and thankless earth”). A work for piano, The Messenger, is transformed into the Agnus Dei.

What was the genesis for your latest work New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light?

When recomposing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Max Richter said that he “wanted to open up the score on a note-by-note level”... “and in essence re-write it, recomposing it in a literal way.” The biggest challenge for the composer was to create a new score, an experimental hybrid, that constantly references Vivaldi but also is created by Richter, to create music that is current but simultaneously preserves the original spirit of this great work. Richter consequently used a range of different techniques when constructing this piece; techniques borrowed from electronic pop music including looping or sampling. “In my notes you will find parts that consist of 90% of my own material; but on the other hand you will find moments where I have only altered a couple of notes in Vivaldi’s original score and shortened, prolonged or shifted some of the beats. I literally wrote myself into Vivaldi’s score.”

34

PROGRAM NOTES

Silvestrov himself felt when writing his Requiem for Larissa that it would be his last composition. The Requiem draws on the longstanding tradition of the Latin Mass for the Dead, but it uses the text almost entirely in fragmented or even shattered form. Silvestrov’s choice, though, is different: his is a Requiem in which words are not so much trimmed away as forgotten. Phrases are begun, then left adrift, as if the singers could not remember how to continue.

He once famously put it, “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” (Tatiana Frumkis)

Around the time I was recording NHWV2: Judges, I had written and had started to perform a song called To See More Light, which I then recorded a version of. It was very rudimentary, just a skeleton of what it eventually would become, but on first listen it was clear to me that this song would form the musical, emotional and thematic basis for the whole of my next record, the third and final volume – To See More Light. I went on to perform this song many times in the two years that proceeded, and it evolved immensely to the point that, to me, it seems the clearest and most intact document of that period of my development on the instrument.

A period in which I see my abilities, both in physical endurance/strength and the production and direction of sound, as growing more rapidly than in any other. The rest of the record just seemed to fall into place, all having some amount of origin in that song, and ultimately finding an orbit around it.

explored fully in the previous volumes.

And then, in the recording process, I used a number of rooms of various sizes and resonances to enhance that contrast. For a song like To See More Light, I used a huge, resonant gallery with long reverb and rich reflections, and to contrast, In Mirrors was recorded in a dead studio booth with no natural reflection at all.

Describe your creative process when composing a new work or in particular New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light.

As in previous volumes, I first conceived of a storyline, an arc of characters, imagery, and events and then began to flesh it out piece by piece. It’s not exactly linear, in that there is still development and expansion in the story as I write the music and vice versa, but it is one of the main methods I use in creating these records. So, while the music is certainly not about the particulars of the storyline, they are a parallel for each other and share a common arc and themes.

What were your concerns when you began to write the album?

Mainly, I needed Vol.3 to be a culmination of all the themes and imagery that came before it, housing the climax and release of not only the single record, but for the trilogy as a whole. This had to be done first in the writing and performance of the songs themselves, pushing the limits of volume and intensity, as well as capturing an intimacy and selfreflection that I thought hadn’t been

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

35

2013–14 SEASON

MUSICIAN PROFILES

Photographer: Nardella Photography Inc.

Brian Sykora

Steven Dyer

John Helmer

Julia McIntyre

Chris Lee

Takayo Noguchi

Instrument Principal Trumpet Joined WSO 1984 Hometown Cleveland, Ohio area

Instrument Principal Trombone Joined WSO 2001 Hometown Born in Glasgow, Scotland but call Tillsonburg, Ontario my hometown

Instrument Trombone Joined WSO 1983 Hometown Born in Winnipeg; grew up in Vancouver, B.C.

Instrument Principal Bass Trombone Joined WSO 2003 Hometown Toronto, ON

Instrument Principal Tuba Joined WSO 2003 Hometown Toronto, ON

Instrument Violin Joined WSO 2012 Hometown Toronto, ON

What are you most looking forward to when you will play at Carnegie Hall?

I am thrilled that my two younger daughters will see and hear me play there. I hope they will remember it all their lives.

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Yo-Yo Ma

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Glenn Gould

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Midori

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Spike Lee

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Explore the city.

What advice would you give to aspiring musicians?

Choose an instrument whose sound you love.

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Jon Stewart

What New York food are you most looking forward to eating?

Soup dumplings in Flushing

What New York food are you most looking forward to eating?

New York cheesecake

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Louis Armstrong What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Go to a jazz club. Eat a few fine meals!!! Maybe see a musical.

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

No one in particular. Maybe Tchaikovsky; I find his having appeared there quite curious…

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Walk a lot and visit friends

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Martin Scorsese

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Not sure yet. Maybe check out Central Park.

Robin MacMillan

Paul Jeffrey

Travis Harrison

Suzanne McKegney

Meredith Johnson

Isaac Pulford

Instrument English Horn / Oboe Joined WSO 2006 Hometown Sarnia, ON

Instrument Trumpet Joined WSO 2007 Hometown Toronto, ON

Instrument Bass Joined WSO 2013 Hometown Toronto, ON

Instrument Viola Joined WSO 1978 Hometown Toronto, ON

Instrument Principal Bass Joined WSO 2004 Hometown Tuscaloosa, AL

Instrument Trumpet Joined WSO 2009 Hometown Toronto, ON

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

The Beatles

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Fritz Kreisler or Jascha Heifetz (we share a birthday)

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Enjoy the city with my family – Go to MoMA

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Count Basie

What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Gustav Mahler What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Lots of walking and exploring. And hearing as many concerts as possible.

What New York food are you most looking forward to eating?

Cheesecake!

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

See concerts and shows, practice, perform, and then maybe even go to a hockey or baseball game.

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Wynton Marsalis

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Visit my brother in Brooklyn, and get some donuts from DOUGH while I’m there!

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Alec Baldwin

If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Meryl Streep What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Hopefully a Yankees game!

What New York food are you most looking forward to eating?

Soup dumplings at Joe Shanghai’s or maybe a burger from Shake Shack What famous person in history who played at Carnegie Hall would you have most liked to see/meet?

Bill Evans or Carlos Kleiber

What do you plan to do with your time in New York?

Walk around – See the 9/11 memorial If you could bump into a famous New Yorker who would it be?

Mark Messier

Check out our full musician profiles at wso.ca 36

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

37

NMF2014

CONDUCTORS & CURATORS

Alexander Mickelthwate Music Director, CURATOR German conductor Alexander Mickelthwate is renowned for his “splendid, richly idiomatic readings” (LA Weekly), “fearless” approach and “first-rate technique” (Los Angeles Times). Critics have noted Alexander’s extraordinary command over the AustroGermanic repertoire, commenting on the “passion, profundity, emotional intensity, subtlety and degree of perfection achieved” in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 as “miraculous” (Anton Kuerti, 2011).

Following on from his tenure as Assistant Conductor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which he completed in 2004, Alexander Mickelthwate was Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for three years, under the direction of EssaPekka Salonen. Now in his eighth season as Music Director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Alexander has significantly developed the orchestra’s profile through active community engagement and innovative programming initiatives like the annual New Music Festival and the Indigenous Music Festival. Chosen to perform at the Carnegie Hall Spring for Music Festival in New York, May 2014, due to “creative and innovative programming” (CBC Manitoba Scene), the orchestra is the only Canadian ensemble in the showcase.

As well as significantly contributing to the New Music Festival and Indigenous Festival, Alexander lead the orchestra’s first out of province tour since 1979 to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, launched the International Conducting master-classes, the New Music Festival 2012 film project and played a major part in the acoustic overhaul of the Centennial Concert Hall.

Julian Pellicano Resident Conductor

Matthew Patton NMF CO-CURATOR

Matt Schellenberg Pop Nuit Curator

Conductor Julian Pellicano has recently made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall performing with pianist Boris Berman and members of the Yale Philharmonia, he conducted premiere performances of a new opera by Martin Bresnick at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and made his South American debut with the Orquestra Sinfonica de Porto Alegre (Brazil).

Other recent appearances include concerts with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Eastern Connecticut Symphony, New Britain Symphony, and Boston’s Dinosaur Annex Ensemble. From 2009 - 2013, Julian served as Music Director of the Longy Conservatory Orchestra in Cambridge, MA (USA). At the Yale School of Music, Pellicano was Assistant Conductor of the Yale Philharmonia, assisting Music Director Shinik Hahm as well as guest conductors Sir Neville Marriner, Helmuth Rilling, Reinbert de Leeuw and Peter Oundjian. Recognized for his work with living composers and transparent interpretations of contemporary works, Julian has premiered over 40 new pieces and as an artist-inresidence at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival he conducts the Norfolk New Music Ensemble. He has worked 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 holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, the Royal College of Music (Stockholm), and the Yale School of Music where he was awarded the 2008 Presser Music Award and the Philip F. Nelson Award.

Composer Matthew Patton has been collaborating with such internationally acclaimed artists as choreographer Paul Taylor; artistic director, dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov; and most recently film director Guy Maddin.

Born into the bustling metropolis of Kleefeld, Manitoba, home to four streets and one bay, Matthew Schellenberg moved to Winnipeg so that he would be able to buy a Slurpee whenever he wanted.

Speaking in Tongues, his large scale Emmy Award-winning collaboration with American choreographer Paul Taylor has been mounted in new productions at the Paris Opera House, the La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. It was called “a masterpiece for our time” by the New York Times, has been released by Warner Brothers, and in 2013 a new production premiered at the Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York.

His work with Guy Maddin has been performed by Icelandic musicians with Sigur Ros, Mum, Bedroom Community, and actor Udo Kier at the National Arts Centre of Canada and Lincoln Center in New York. He is the co-curator of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival.

He is currently working on a new eveninglength project based on the true story of Winnipeg resident David Reimer, who has been called “the most famous patient in medical history.”

As a young adult, his house on Lipton Street gave birth to a group called The Liptonians, who won a Western Canadian Music Award for Best Pop Recording in 2008. The band toured the country extensively and had their songs arranged to be performed with the WSO in 2011.

As a result of this concert a relationship was born and Schellenberg has been involved in planning, hosting, and curating events with the Winnipeg Symphony ever since.

Schellenberg’s latest musical collective, Royal Canoe, recently inked a management contact with Nettwerk Music and booking agency agreements with Red Ryder in the USA and LOUD Booking in France. The band has toured the continent this past year and has been featured in many a taste-making blog as well as receiving a shout out from the New York Times.

When Schellenberg is not hosting events with the WSO he can be found tinkering with sounds for Royal Canoe’s second album, which will be released in 2015.

Always looking for a fresh approach and creative ways of crossing musical genres, Alexander has collaborated with Iceland’s Bedroom Community, Wayne Shorter, Mark O’Connor, Belle and Sebastian, Jason Alexander, DJ P-Love, Canadian bands Waking Eyes, Liptonians and Dukhs.

38

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

39

WSO NMF 2014

INTRODUCING THE NEW 2014 CLA.

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

AZURE STRING QUARTET Formed in 2010, the Azure String Quartet is comprised of four musicians who are passionate about chamber music. Violinists Elation Pauls and Chris Anstey, and violist Laszlo Baroczi, are members of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, while cellist Minna Rose Chung is a Professor of Cello for the University of Manitoba’s Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music. In 2011 the group performed at the University of Manitoba’s Gala concert in honour of Michael Matthews and was presented by the Women’s Committee of the WSO. In 2012 they made their debut with the Musical Offering concert series and performed an enticing program of Mozart and Haydn. In addition to focusing on the standard quartet literature, the Azure Quartet undertakes projects with composers of today and has future plans to explore vintage and new works.

A Daimler Brand

Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi COMPOSER (MI)

CLAunleash.ca

NEW 2014 CLA. FROM $33,900.*

© 2013 Mercedes-Benz Canada Inc. 2014 CLA 250 with optional Sport Package and optional 18" AMG multispoke wheels shown above, National MSRP $36,000. *All-in pricing for the 2014 CLA 250 up to $36,760 dependent on region. National MSRP pricing is shown and is intended for information purposes only. Prices do not include licence, insurance or registration fees, as well as any other products or services not listed that may be available to you through your selected Mercedes-Benz dealership. Vehicle prices subject to change. Dealer may sell for less. Please contact your dealership directly for prices applicable in your province.

Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi was born in 1971 in Milan. He studied composition with I. Fedele and obtained diplomas from the “G. Martini” Conservatoire of Bologna and the Civica Scuola di Musica of Milan. In 1994/95 he attended the “Cursus de Composition et d’Informatique Musicale” held at IRCAM in Paris (where he also was a researcher composer for many years). He followed Master’s courses with K. Huber and B. Ferneyhough in 1996, and in 1998 he was awarded an Équivalence Universitaire from the École de Hautes Études of Paris, gaining a DEA diploma under the supervision of H. Dufourt.

He composes music for soloists, ensembles, orchestras, for installations and movies and has been working with ensembles such as Ensemble InterContemporain, CourtCircuit, Klangforum Ensemble, Collegium Ensemble, Arditti Strin Quartet, Les Pléiades and performers like C. Delangle, N. Isherwood, A. Quentin, C. Schmitt and P. Contet.

Mercedes Benz Winnipeg, 2554 Portage Avenue, 204.667.2467, www.mbwinnipeg.ca JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

He is deeply involved in music research in Computer Aided Composition and, in 2001, he founded the group of music research PRISMA that he coordinates regularly. Since 1988 he is developing a personal theory concerning the writing of music, which he has formally called Hyper-Systemic Music.

Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi is professor of Composition at the Conservatoire of Montbéliard. He is also a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conservatories in Europe, USA, Latin America and China.

Zach Bales Laptop Born in Winnipeg in 1992, Zach Bales began his studies in music learning electric bass and music theory with Lindsey Collins. In 2010 he began attending the University of Manitoba where he is presently completing his Bachelor’s degree in musical composition, studying under Örjan Sandred and Gordon Fitzell. Recent performances of his music include Xiatne for solo violin and electronics, Song of Midnight for tenor and piano and his opera Wintermute. He is currently looking forward to the performance of his piece for orchestra Forms Untidy in collaboration with the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.

Pierre Boulez COMPOSER (FR) Pierre Boulez, French composer, conductor, and music theorist, is regarded as a leading composer of the post-Webern serialist movement who also embraced elements of aleatory and electronics. As a child Boulez demonstrated a formidable aptitude in mathematics, but left for Paris in 1942 to enroll in the Paris Conservatoire. His studies there often ran into difficulties, as he was rapidly developing revolutionary -- “Praise be to amnesia” -- attitudes towards

41

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

all things traditional. But two decisive influences during those years helped to shape his musical personality. The first was Messiaen’s famous analysis course, the other was René Leibowitz, who introduced him to serial music, where Boulez found “a harmonic and contrapuntal richness and a capacity for development an extension of a kind I have never found anywhere else.”

Boulez is also one of the twentieth century’s most influential conductors, known for extraordinarily precise performances of contemporary works by Bartok, Ligeti, Messiaen, and Varése, among many others.

GLENN BRANCA COMPOSER (US) Glenn Branca was born in Harrisburg, Pa. in 1948. In the last 38 years his work as a composer has included music for experimental rock bands, large ensemble instrumentals for electric guitars, 15 symphonies for both electric instrumentation and acoustic orchestras, chamber ensemble pieces for a wide variety of instrumentation (both electric and acoustic), an opera, a ballet, choral works and music for film, dance, theater and installation art. His ensemble has done hundreds of performances all over the world.

Branca is now considered by many to be one of the most influential living composers both in the fields of alternative and experimental rock as well as contemporary classical music.

His work has inspired and influenced two generations, including major rock stars to Academy Award winners to Pulitzer Prize composers. He has received more than 50 commissions as well as having many of these works sponsored by other organizations in later performances and recordings.

HENRY BRANT COMPOSER (CAN) Born in Montreal of American parents in 1913, Henry Brant began composing at the age of eight. After moving to New York in 1929, he composed and conducted for radio, films, ballet, and jazz groups. Starting in the late 40s, he taught at Columbia University, Juilliard, and, for 24 years, Bennington College. In 1981, he settled in Santa Barbara, California, where he died at home, on April 26, 2008, at the age of 94.

Henry Brant is America’s foremost composer of acoustic spatial music- the planned positioning of performers throughout the hall, as well as on stage. Brant’s mastery of spatial composing technique enables him to write textures of unprecedented polyphonic and/or polystylistic complexity. Brant’s principal works since 1950 are all spatial, and his spatial experiments have convinced him that space exerts specific influences on harmony, polyphony, texture and timbre. He regards space as music’s “fourth dimension,” (after pitch, time and timbre).

Gavin BrYars COMPOSER (UK) Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire in 1943. His first musical reputation was as a jazz bassist working in the early sixties with improvisers Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley.

He abandoned improvisation in 1966 and worked for a time in the United States with John Cage. His first major work as a composer was The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) originally released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975 and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), both famously released in new versions in the 1990s on Point Music label, selling over a quarter of a million copies.

Bryars has composed prolifically for the theatre and dance as well as for the concert hall and has written three full-length operas.

42

Among Gavin Bryars’ other works are three string quartets and a great deal of chamber music, much of it for his own ensemble.

He lives in England and British Columbia, Canada.

The Brandon University New Music Ensemble (BUNME) Megumi Masaki, conductor

The Brandon University New Music Ensemble, under the direction of Professor Megumi Masaki, is a collaboration of 18 emerging undergraduate and graduate student musicians representing all years and instruments. BUNME is dedicated to performance excellence of diverse, interdisciplinary, cutting edge works of living composers and artists that reflect and engage with music culture of today. Main goals of BUNME are to work closely with composers on the performance of works and when possible, on the creation of new works composed or arranged specifically for them. Another important aspect of BUNME is to explore creative performance practice with new technologies. Through annual experiences at the WSO and Brandon University New Music Festivals, BUNME is honoured to have worked with composers including Steven Stucky, John Psathas, Gary Kulesha, Kaija Saariaho, John Corigliano, Nico Muhly, Kjartan Ólafsson, Jorge Córdoba Valencia, Nicole Lizée, Jesse Plessis, Christopher Byman and Patrick Carrabré.

“Homages” is a sonata for chamber orchestra that drew inspiration from three central sources. Byman identified closely with American mythologist Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory, or the hero cycle, as the piece gained “its movement titles directly from Campbell’s theory and blends them into the familiar sonata.” This source of inspiration came from the religion course, Introduction to World Mythology, taught

by Dr. Susan Medd. Byman also noted inspiration from American composer Steve Reich and the revolutionary use of phasing in his compositions.

Casey Cangelosi COMPOSER (US) Composer, educator, and award winning percussionist, Casey Cangelosi is a “Voice of the new generation” -Fernando Meza, 2010 International Marimba Festival.

His composition style and boundary-pushing virtuosity has nicknamed Cangelosi “The Paganini of Percussion” among his peers and “a marimbist of magisterial power and insight” by the Classical Marimba League.

Cangelosi has received numerous composition awards from the Massachusetts Percussive Arts Society, Sam Houston State University, and the Classical Marimba League. Since 2011, he has been commissioned for over 20 compositions by many performing institutions, universities, companies, ensembles, and individual soloists.

Christopher Byman COMPOSER (CAN) Chris Byman composed the piece “Homages” especially for Megumi Masaki and the Brandon University New Music Ensemble of which he is a member and second year graduate clarinetist with a minor in composition. Byman began composing formally in his last year of undergraduate studies. He began composing “Homages” in September 2012 and completed it by mid-October.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

43

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

Mychael Danna COMPOSER (CAN)

WINNIPEG SINGERS

2013-2014 Concert Season An Inspiring choral performance !

Icons & Incense IV: Music of the Orthodox Tradition

Sunday, February 9, 2014 – 3:00 p.m.

Featuring Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom by Rachmaninoff, one of the most popular choral works of the Russian Orthodox tradition, plus a newly written Canadian mass.

See us at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church.

Tickets are also available through McNally booksellers or at the door.

Mychael Danna is an Academy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music.

He composed the transculturally inspired 2013 Oscar and Golden Globe-winning score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, as well as many award-winning scores for his longtime collaborator, Atom Egoyan. Danna has composed for all of Egoyan’s films since 1987’s Family Viewing, winning the Genie for their films Exotica, Felicia’s Journey, Ararat and The Sweet Hereafter. Other noted credits include films such as Moneyball, Capote, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Monsoon Wedding, Shattered Glass, Little Miss Sunshine, (500) Days of Summer, Surf’s Up, Water, Antwone Fisher, Being Julia and Girl, Interrupted.

“The most gratifying filmmaking experiences are ones that take effort to unpeel the layers surrounding the heart of the story and to find the best musical expression of that heart,” says Danna. “Those are always the film scores I am most proud of.”

Miguel Del Aguila COMPOSER (US) Two-time Grammy nominated American composer, Miguel del Aguila came to the attention of European audiences in 1983 when his Messages premiered at Musikvereinssaal, the home of the Vienna Philharmonic. Soon performances at Konzerthaus and Bösendorfer Hall followed, and in 1987 Peermusic published his first works. 1988 KKM-Austria and Albany Records released his first CDs. During the 90’s Aguila’s list of works grew as did the number of his recordings, performances and honors which by 1995 included the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award among many others.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

After ten years in Vienna, Aguila returned to California in 1992, where soon Los Angeles Times critics welcomed him as “One of the West Coast’s most promising and enterprising young composers.” Currently Aguila’s catalogue reaches 107 works for all genres, most published by Peermusic Classical and available on twenty-seven CDs released by Naxos, Bridge, Dorian, Telarc, New Albion, Albany, Eroica, and others.

Hannah Epperson VIOLINIST / VOCALIST Armed with only her violin, loop pedal and voice, singer/songwriter Hannah Epperson is rising in Western Canada’s music scene as a wild talent from Vancouver’s rising tide of indie artists. With just a 5 track home recorded, self-released EP to her name, Hannah’s emergence as one of Canada’s Top Artists to Watch in 2013 (CBC Radio) has been driven by word-of-mouth praise for her unguarded and deeply intimate solo performances. From Salt Lake City, Hannah found a new home in Vancouver in 2002, where she was soon collaborating with acclaimed independent musicians. However, it wasn’t until a year-long hiatus from her studies at UBC that she began developing her solo project, experimenting with a loop pedal and her violin under derelict bridges in Berlin. An unusual and ever graceful performer, Hannah is among BC’s Top 20 artists vying for 102,700 as part of the Peak Performance Project.

Darryl Friesen PIANO Darryl Friesen completed his DMA at the University of Illinois, studying with Dr. William Heiles and Prof. Dennis Helmrich.

He has given acclaimed performances as a soloist and collaborative artist across Canada, the United States, Europe and China. He has

45

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

also been featured in concert on CBC Radio.

He has been the recipient of many awards, including substantial grants by the Canada Council of the Arts in both 2005 and 2006 and the coveted Sylva Gelber Foundation Award, given annually by the Canada Council to the most talented Canadian classical artist under the age of 30. Darryl is in demand as a soloist, collaborative artist, clinician and teacher. He and his wife live with their four children in Winnipeg, where he holds the position of Assistant Professor at Providence University College, as well as Sessional Instructor at the University of Manitoba Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music.

Dr. Elroy Friesen director Dr. Elroy Friesen is Associate Professor and Director of Choral Studies at the University of Manitoba where he conducts numerous choirs and teaches graduate choral conducting. Recently publishing his research on the choral music of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, Elroy continues to pursue his passion of study and performance of new Nordic repertoire. Beginning in fall of 2014 he will also be the new Artistic Director of Canzona, Winnipeg’s professional Baroque choir. His award-winning ensembles tour nationally and internationally, and are frequently recorded and broadcasted by the CBC.

Jonny Greenwood COMPOSER (UK) Jonathan Richard Guy “Jonny” Greenwood is best known as a member of the rock band Radiohead.

Noted for his aggressive playing style, Greenwood is consistently named as one of the greatest guitarists of the modern era. Beyond his primary roles as Radiohead’s lead guitarist and keyboardist, Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist and also plays viola,

46

harmonica, glockenspiel, ondes Martenot, banjo and drums, and works with computergenerated sounds and sampling; he is also a computer programmer and writes music software used by Radiohead. Greenwood wrote the soundtracks for the films Bodysong (2003), There Will Be Blood (2007), Norwegian Wood (2010), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2010) and The Master (2012), and serves as composer-in-residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra. He is the younger brother of Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood.

Barry Guy COMPOSER (UK) Barry Guy is an innovative bass player and composer whose creative diversity in the fields of jazz improvisation, chamber and orchestral performance and solo recitals is the outcome both of an unusually varied training and a zest for experimentation, underpinned by a dedication to the double bass and the ideal of musical communication.

He is founder and Artistic Director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed and his skilful and inventive writing has resulted in an exceptional series of compositions.

Hilliard Ensemble The Hilliard Ensemble is one of the world’s finest vocal chamber groups. Its distinctive style and highly developed musicianship engage the listener as much in medieval and renaissance repertoire as in works by living composers. The group’s standing as an early music ensemble dates from the 1980s with its series of successful recordings for EMI and its own mail-order record label Hilliard LIVE, now available on the Coro label; but it has always paid equal attention to new music. A new development began in August 2008 with the premiere at the Edinburgh

International Festival of a music theatre project written by Heiner Goebbels in a production by the Théâtre Vidy, Lausanne: I went to the house but did not enter. With the release of their third collaboration with Jan Garbarek on the ECM label, Officium Novum, the group continues to tour Europe.

Gwen Hoebig VIOLIN Recognized as one of Canada’s most outstanding violinists, Gwen Hoebig is a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York City.

As a student she won every major Canadian music competition, and in 1981 was the top prizewinner at the Munich International Violin Competition. A champion of new music, she has given the Canadian premieres of violin concertos by S.C. EckhardtGramatté, T.P. Carrabré, Randolph Peters, Gary Kulesha, Joan Tower, Christopher Rouse and Philip Glass. As soloist with orchestra she has performed all the major violin concerti with orchestras across Canada, the United States and Europe. Gwen joined the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as concertmaster in 1987, having been awarded the position as the unanimous choice of the audition committee. In 1993, she was honoured by the Government of Canada when she received the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation, in recognition of her contribution to the Arts. She has also been a member of the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Music and teaches regularly at the Mount Royal College in Calgary, where she is a member of the Extended Faculty.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

Jacqui Horner-Kwiatek mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek is a member of vocal quartet Anonymous 4; performing all over the world and recording award winning CDs, including the Billboard chart-topping American Angels. She was a featured soloist on the Grammy award-winning album Calling All Dawns. She has made solo appearances with Washington Bach Consort, Bach Sinfonia DC, Carmel Bach Festival, Capitol Hill Chorale, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Parthenia, Armonia Nova, Folger Consort, Baltimore Consort, Sonnambula, American Baroque Orchestra and Hudson Chorale. Her repertoire includes alto solos in Messiah, St Matthew and St John Passions, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio and Paine’s Mass in D. She has worked with composers in Europe and the U.S. including Karlheinz Stockhausen, Judith Weir, Sir John Tavener, David Lang, Steve Reich and Phil Kline and was most recently a Visiting Artist at Duke University. She teaches voice at Columbia University and Fordham University and is a member of the faculty at the annual choral workshop Musica Deo Sacra.

Toshio Hosakawa COMPOSER (JP) Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Toshio Hosokawa, Japan’s preeminent living composer, constantly explores the boundaries between cultures. His distinctive compositions examine the relationship between Western avant-garde art and traditional Japanese culture, and are influenced by the static structures of the Gagaku music of the Japanese court. Nature and its inherent transience also greatly influence his compositions. “Transience is beautiful”, says Hosokawa, who uses the Buddhist notion of balance between life and death to describe his musical language: “The tone comes from silence, it lives, it returns to silence.”

47

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

Jim Jarmusch electric guitar Born in Akron, Ohio, Jim Jarmusch lives and works in New York. His films include Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), Year of the Horse (1997), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) The Limits of Control (2009) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013).

Eyvind Kang vocalist Eyvind Kang is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who has released many acclaimed albums, including The Narrow Garden (2012), Grass (2012) Athlantis (2007) and The Yelm Sessions (2007), as well as two duo albums with Jessika Kenney, Aesturium (2012), and The Face of the Earth (2013). He has toured and recorded with Jessika Kenney, Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, among many others. His compositions have been commissioned by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Coro da Camera di Bologna, and the Frye Art Museum Seattle.

Jessika Kenney vocalist Jessika Kenney is a vocalist and composer who practices the traditional vocal arts of Classical Persian Avaz and Central Javanese Sindhenan. Her on-going collaboration with violist/composer Eyvind Kang has been described in The New York Times as a “work of delicate beauty”. Jessika has performed the vocal works of John Cage, Lou Harrison, Jarrad Powell, Morton Feldman and Tadao Sawai, and collaborated with many others for live performances and

48

recordings. Jessika’s compositions focus on the translation of melodic nuance found in classical poetry, including a new work for gamelan and Persian instruments based on the life and ideas of Jalaluddin Rumi’s teacher, Shams of Tabriz, performed in 2013

by Gamelan Pacifica, as well as Concealed Unity for choir and orchestra, co-composed with Eyvind Kang. Jessika has studied and performed Classical Persian music and poetry with Ostad Hossein Omoumi since 2004 and is an adjunct faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts.

Sarah Kirsch soprano Sarah Kirsch is a soprano/ vocalist based in Winnipeg.

She’s proud to have collaborated with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Phoenix Collective, MusikBarock, Canzona, Little Opera Company, Manitoba Opera and as part of the Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts Festival, Agassiz Summer Chamber Music Festival and the WSO’s Millennium Centre Concert Series. She has been the premiere interpreter of a number of new works by emerging and established living composers, but Sarah surfs the gamut of musical evolution – she feels as at home with Bach as Boulez. Independently, she regularly curates art song recitals with pianist Chris Kayler, is half of experimental a/v duo The Gritty with video artist Jaymez and nurtures a small private voice studio.

Sarah received a BMus from the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music and a MMus from the University of Manitoba Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music.

Phil Kline electric guitar

Mahogany Frog BAND

Phil Kline is a composer whose work ranges from experimental electronics, performance art and sound installations to songs, choral, chamber and orchestral music. The walking sound sculpture Unsilent Night debuted in Greenwich Village in 1992 and is now performed annually around the world.

Other prominent works include the song cycles Zippo Songs and Rumsfeld Songs, Blue Room and Other Stories for string quartet and a full-length choral Mass, John the Revelator. Recent compositions include A Dream and its Opposite written for the La Jolla Symphony, Canzona in Two Hearts commissioned by the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, dreamcitynine commissioned by Lincoln Center to honor the 100th birthday of John Cage and Out Cold, a monodrama. He is currently working on Tesla in New York, a music theatre collaboration with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Phil was raised in Ohio, educated at Columbia and lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Mahogany Frog is an instrumental electronic rock band from Winnipeg.

The group is comprised of four multi-instrumentalists: Graham Epp (guitar/ keyboards/trumpet), Jesse Warkentin (guitar/keyboards), Scott Ellenberger (bass/keyboards/trumpet) and Andy Rudolph (drums/electronics). The music draws influence from 60s psychedelic, electronica, 70s krautrock, jazz, 50s ultra-lounge and experimentalism. Using an arsenal of keyboards, cacophonous, feedback ridden guitars, fuzz bass and walls of electronics, the group creates dynamic, multi-layered songs that explore tone, mood and composition. Although Mahogany Frog’s unorthodox sounds and complex arrangements can challenge the ear, their haunting progressions and playful melodies are catchy and satisfying. The band performs furiously and at massive volumes, often connecting multiple songs together with interludes consisting of ambient noise. Mahogany Frog has recorded five LPs, delivered high-profile performances at Pop Montreal, Winnipeg Jazz Festival, ProgDay, and SESC in Sao Paulo, Brazil and shared the stage with notable artists like Caribou, Deerhoof and Eric’s Trip.

Donna Laube piano A native of Saskatchewan, Donna received a B. Mus. from Brandon University as a student of Dr. Joan Miller and subsequently a M. Music in Piano accompaniment from McGill University under the tutelage of Dale Bartlett. Donna is also an alumnus of the Franz-Schubert-Institute in Austria (with a focus on German Lieder and poetry), and of Opera Nuova in Edmonton.

She has been active for the past decade as a pianist for singers, instrumentalists and choirs performing at international competitions as well as for CBC Radio Two. Donna is currently Principal Pianist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and is performing as orchestral pianist with the WSO this season.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

David Maslanka COMPOSER (US) David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1943.

Maslanka’s music for winds has become especially well known. Among his 40-plus works for wind ensemble and band are Symphonies 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9, 12 concertos, a Mass, and many concert pieces. His wind chamber music includes four wind quintets, two saxophone quartets, and many works for solo instrument and piano. In addition, he has written a variety of

49

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

orchestral and choral pieces. He has served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, and since 1990 has been a freelance composer.

Colin McPhee COMPOSER (CAN) Colin McPhee (1900 1964) was a composer, ethnomusicologist, pianist and writer. His studies of the music, dance and theatre of Bali and Java gained him international recognition as an authority on the subjects, and they also influenced several of his symphonic, choral and chamber compositions, among which are his TabuhTabuhan and Balinese Ceremonial Music for orchestra. McPhee was responsible for introducing the great English composer Benjamin Britten to the Balinese music that influenced his works The Prince of the Pagodas, Curlew River, and Death in Venice.

Mennonite Festival Chorus, Rudy Schellenberg & Janet Brenneman, co-directors The Mennonite Festival Chorus made its debut in 1985 under the distinguished leadership of Robert Shaw, together with the WSO in Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. Following this auspicious beginning, the choir was reorganized under its founders William Baerg and George Wiebe, subsequently appearing twice at the International Choral Festival in Toronto with the TSO, in 1989 with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Robert Shaw) and in 1993 with Britten’s War Requiem (Bramwell Tovey). The MFC is proud to have a strong musical relationship with the WSO, together performing the breadth of the symphonic choral repertoire from J.S. Bach to Valentin Silvestrov. It has sung under the distinguished leadership of WSO music directors Bramwell Tovey, Andrey Boreyko

50

and Alexander Mickelthwathe, as well as guest conductors such as Helmut Rilling, Ivars Taurins and Jane Glover.

Anthony Niiganii Native American flute Anthony Niiganii, a member of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, is an emerging Cree composer and musician, who combines the traditional, contemplative and modern styles of sacred music with the spiritual and natural sound of the traditional Indigenous flute and song. In 2009, for World Water Day, Anthony composed, Water’s Gifts, a solo for traditional flute, which he performed at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 2009 Indigenous Festival. In 2007, Anthony was invited to compose a chorale piece for ReSound Ecumenical Chamber Choir’s 2007 “Composers Wanted: Dead or Alive” Concert. Combining the elements of sacred hymn, Aboriginal music and body percussion with the words of Chief Dan George’s most famous prayer, Oh Great Spirit, Anthony’s Prayer to the Great Spirit premiered at that concert. Anthony continues to promote arts in the Aboriginal Community and encourages young people to explore music, in whatever form that may be.

Owen Pallett composer (CAN) Owen Pallett is a singer/ violinist from Toronto best known for his solo recordings as Final Fantasy.

Classically trained from an early age, at 15 he started playing solo violin shows.

As his musical interests shifted to indie pop, Pallett collaborated with a multitude of indie artists, including Jim Guthrie, Royal City, the Hidden Cameras, the Vinyl Cafe, Gentleman Reg, and Arcade Fire. As well as touring in various string sections in the mid-2000s, he was an active composer, writing arrangements for Arcade Fire’s

groundbreaking Funeral and Neon Bible, along with albums for Fucked Up, Beirut, and the Last Shadow Puppets.

Despite being the go-to violinist for other artists and an avid remixer, Pallett’s primary focus remained his own work as Final Fantasy. In 2009, Pallett announced that he would no longer be using Final Fantasy as his moniker, to avoid confusion with Square Enix’s popular video game series by the same name.

Arvo Pärt composer (EE) Arvo Pärt is one of the most important composers of our time. His first works, dating from the 1950s, showed the influence of Prokofiev and Shostakovich but as his musical studies continued, he was drawn toward serial techniques and turned out a number of works in the 1960s in this vein. By the end of that decade, Pärt had become disenchanted by the 12-tone technique and began writing music in varying styles. In 1976, however, Pärt started composing in what he called his tintinnabulation method, which involves the prominent use of pure triads. This new style resulted in music so radically different from that which had preceded it, that many observed that it seemed to have come from a different hand altogether.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Pärt, a devout member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, wrote a number of large-scale choral religious works, including the St. John Passion (1982), Magnificat (1989), The Beatitudes (1990), and Litany (1994).

Prairie Voices Vic Pankratz, director

performance of innovative contemporary choral music from all over the world.

Placing an emphasis on Canadian and Manitoban composers, the choir uses energy, expressiveness and movement to connect avant-garde composition with a popular audience.

Prairie Voices has performed around the world, bringing their unique touch to a diverse repertoire, from African spirituals to Broadway hits. Prairie Voices has managed to grow as an organization while still remaining true to their Canadian roots.

This past season, Prairie Voices released their new CD, Autumn.

Max Richter composer (UK) Born in 1966, Max Richter trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Luciano Berio in Florence.

On completing his studies, Richter co-founded the immensely successful contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus, where he stayed for ten years, commissioning and performing works by Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe and Steve Reich. Richter was also pro-active in developing the group’s use of live sampling.

Working with a variety of collaborators including Tilda Swinton, Robert Wyatt, Future Sound of London, and Roni Size, Max’s work explores the meeting points of many contemporary artistic languages and embraces a wide range of influences.

His music has formed the basis of numerous dance works, including pieces by Lucinda Childs, NDT, Ballet du Rhin, American Ballet Theatre, Dresden Semper Oper, The Dutch National Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, among many others, while film makers using work by Max include Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island).

Founded in 2000 by Elroy Friesen, Prairie Voices is an award-winning company of singers ages 18-25 dedicated to the

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

51

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

Andy Rudolph math drummer Andy Rudolph is an artist obsessed with sound. His work spans nearly all facets of audio creation including: musical composition, performance, interactive installation, audio engineering and most points in between. He has performed and exhibited around the world, garnering impressive reviews. He is, perhaps, most well known for his role behind the drums for Mahogany Frog and The Catamounts and by his hip-hop alter-ego: Grey Jay.

Dan Ryckman math drummer Daniel Ryckman, known around the world as “The Prince of Mince”, is a human machine performing punk and metal drumming in Winnipeg bands Electo Quarterstaff and past band Under Pressure. He is also the front man of Archagathus, playing guitar and singing. This past fall Archagathus toured Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Australia. In 2014 Archagathus will embark on their third extensive European tour. Ryckman also holds a degree in physics from the University of Winnipeg and specialized in quantum mechanics for his thesis year.

Valgeir Sigurðsson electronics (IS) Valgeir Sigurðsson is a composer, producer, engineer, musician and founder of Greenhouse Studios and the Bedroom Community record label, based in Reykjavík, Iceland. He has released three solo albums (Ekvílibríum, Dreamland and Architecture of Loss) and has collaborated with artists such as Björk, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, CocoRosie,

52

Feist, Damon Albarn, the Kronos Quartet, Nico Muhly, Ben Frost and many others.

Valgeir has composed music for film, stage and dance and his work has been performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Chiara String Quartet and others.

Valentin Silvestrov composer (UA) Valentin Silvestrov is considered one of the leading representatives of the “Kiev avant-garde,” which came to public attention around 1960 and was violently criticized by the proponents of the conservative Soviet musical aesthetic. In the 1960s and 1970s his music was hardly played in his native city; premieres, if given at all, were heard primarily in St. Petersburg or in the West.

This situation gradually changed throughout the 1980s and 1990s with his growing international acclaim and increased number of performances.

In both his earlier avant-garde period and beyond, Silvestrov dispensed with the conventional compositional devices of the avant-garde and discovered a style comparable to western “post-modernism.”

The name he has given to this style is “metamusic,” a shortened form of “metaphorical music.” In Silvestrov’s view - a view that reveals the lyric basis of his art regardless of the period in his career - one of the crucial prerequisites for the continued existence of music resides in melody, which he also regards in an expanded sense of the term. This has found expression in the remarkable role that vocal music has played in his musical output.

Colin Stetson SAXOPHONIST Colin Stetson established himself as an intensely original solo composer and performer in 2011 with the release of the widely acclaimed New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. Judges ended up on countless yearend lists and emphatically proved that Colin’s approach to solo saxophone transcends niche or genre; a unique and emotionally resonant instrumental music with many influences.

Colin channels these musical strains into a singularly identifiable and personal sound as a polyphonic soloist who doesn’t rely on looping/layering or multitrack/overdubs technologies. New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light is the final installment in a trilogy of solo albums and is Colin’s most ambitious song cycle to date. The record’s 15 minute centerpiece title track To See More Light, is the longest piece Colin has recorded and possibly the heaviest.

Karl Stobbe violin Karl Stobbe has made a name for himself as one of Canada’s most accomplished and diverse violinists. In addition to appearing frequently as a concertmaster in Canada and the United States, Karl regularly performs concerti, recitals and chamber music, where his concerts have been called “a clinic in the art of violin playing” (Winnipeg Free Press, 2013). He has performed in Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Segerstrom Hall, Roy Thompson Hall, the Orpheum Theatre and many other concert venues in North America. In recital, Karl has performed all of the Bach Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas and Partitas, all six Ysaye Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas and will complete performances of all 16 Beethoven String Quartets in the next year. He will be releasing a solo CD, the complete Ysaye Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas, in 2014.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

The University of Manitoba Flute Ensemble; Layla Roberts & Laurel Ridd, co-directors

The University of Manitoba Desautels Faculty of Music Flute Ensemble is excited to appear at the New Music Festival again this year. The U of M Flute Ensemble is composed primarily of current and former students of the Faculty, who have studied with Laurel Ridd, Layla Roberts or Jan Kocman. Most members are undergraduates, some are pursuing further studies in the Faculty of Education, and others are working in musicrelated fields. The group is joined by two high school students who are considering a career in music. For this performance the ensemble will be led by WSO Conductor-In-Residence Julian Pellicano.

University of Manitoba Singers Elroy Friesen, director The last three decades have brought the University Singers to prominence as a performing ensemble in Canada; they have performed and recorded with organizations such as the Hilliard Ensemble, the WSO, the Penderecki String Quartet, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. Most recently they performed works by Schnittke and Auerbach with the Latvian Radio Choir. In addition to the University Singers’ extensive performance of new works, they regularly perform traditional choral repertoire.

Recent concerts have included Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium, Mozart’s Requiem, and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. The University Singers have placed first in the CBC National Choir Competitions. They have toured extensively throughout the Americas and Europe and will be performing in Serbia and Hungary in May 2014.

53

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

University of Manitoba String Ensemble Julian Pellicano, conductor

2013-14 Concert Season

The University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra is the premiere ensemble for orchestral training and repertoire at the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music. Conducted by Music Director Julian Pellicano, the UMSO performs four concerts annually exploring a wide range of repertoire encompassing Baroque and contemporary music in addition to the standard classical and romantic orchestral canon. The UMSO also collaborates with student composers to present new works annually and performs with the University of Manitoba Opera Theatre in fully staged productions. Members of the ensemble are drawn internationally to Winnipeg and are all performance majors at the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music.

Veljo Tormis composer (EE) Estonian composer Veljo Tormis is regarded as one of the greatest living choral composers, whose work exceeds 500 individual choral songs, most of it a cappella. The great majority of these pieces are based on traditional ancient Estonian folksongs (regilaulud), either textually, melodically, or merely stylistically.

Tormis’ works have been heard worldwide since the 1990s when he began to receive commissions from some of the pre-eminent a cappella groups in the West such as the King’s Singers and the Hilliard Ensemble.

Tormis has said of his settings of traditional melodies and verse: “It is not I who makes use of folk music, it is folk music that makes use of me.”

THE BEST THE BEST C NEW MUSIC NEW MUSIC The University of Manitoba Wind Ensemble Richard Gillis, conductor

from Winnipeg and around the world

From remixed Wagner to choral feasts to live film

Buy your tickets now!

soundtracks, GroundSwell's 2013-14 season brings

Online gswell.ca/tickets

you the best new music from Winnipeg and around the world. Don't miss the second half of this incredible season featuring special performances by Swedish quartet the peärls before swïne experience, Canzona choir, new music revolutionary Lori Freedman and a collaboration with núna (now)!

Call

204.943.5770

Visit

McNally Robinson Booksellers

Visit gswell.ca for full details

Now in its fourth decade, the University of Manitoba Wind Ensemble continues to program and perform first-class repertoire, including works by Grainger, Hindemith, Holst, Husa and Schwantner. The ensemble has been active in commissioning and performing new music for winds, including pieces by Canadian composers Bruce Carlson, Allan Gilliland, Michael Matthews and Andrew Staniland. The U of M Wind Ensemble has performed throughout Manitoba and Western Canada, has been an invited guest at the Cantando International Music Festival in Edmonton, and has been recorded for CBC Radio. The ensemble has released four CDs of Canadian Wind Band Music, North Winds I, II, III and IV. The ensemble has been a guest performer for the past several years at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival.

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

Roydon Tse composer (CAN)

Described as an “awe inspiring” composer (herviewphotography. com) and hailed by the Vancouver Sun as writing works “glittering with professionalism”, Roydon Tse is one of Canada’s brightest emerging composers. While a student at University, he has won prizes from several national and international competitions, such as the 2013 Trio Anima Mundi International Composers Competition, the Robert Avalon International Composers Competition, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir’s Young Composers Competition among others.

Born in Hong Kong in 1991 and educated in Canada and the UK, Roydon Tse began his musical studies in piano and violin, and eventually received his Bachelors in Composition from the University of British Columbia and a Licentiate from the Royal Schools of Music in Piano Performance.

Currently completing his MMus in Composition at the University of Toronto,

55

WSO NMF 2014

ARTIST / COMPOSER BIOS

his teachers have included Christos Hatzis, Dorothy Chang, Stephen Chatman and John Estacio.

Venetian Snares ELECTRONICS Aaron Funk a.k.a. Venetian Snares hails from Winnipeg in Canada. Since his debut 12” in 1999 on a small Minneapolis label he has risen out of the drill’n’bass/breakcore mire to become one of the most astonishing and popular musicians working in the experimental electronic sphere including Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. With a slew of releases on Planet Mu from 2001 – 20011, and his most recent releases on his own Time Sig imprint, Aaron is a producer you can never put your finger on – infamously unpredictable and everchallenging Aaron never fails to blow minds and keep blasting until the bitter end.

Winnipeg Singers Yuri Klaz, director For three decades, The Winnipeg Singers have brought the best of choral music to Canadian audiences.

This 24-voice ensemble presents four subscription concerts each season, along with tours, broadcasts, and various guest appearances. Their repertoire ranges from medieval organum to new music. New commissions are an important part of The Winnipeg Singers’ mandate. Some of the composers commissioned over the years include Chester Duncan, Leonard Enns, John Greer, Holly Harris, Michael Matthews, and Sid Robinovitch. The Winnipeg Singers are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council. They have two recent recordings: O Praise Ye the Lord, and Prairie Voices. The Winnipeg Singers were invited to sing at the Toronto International Choral

56

Festival in June 2002. The Winnipeg Singers have twice received the Canada Council’s Healey Willan Award for Choral Excellence and continue to be recognized as one of Canada’s finest chamber choirs.

The Winnipeg Wind Ensemble Jacqueline Dawson, conductor

The Winnipeg Wind Ensemble (WWE) was formed in the fall of 1985 by band directors and other professional musicians dedicated to bringing wind band music of the highest quality to Winnipeg audiences and is currently under the direction of Jacqueline Dawson, artistic director. In concert, the WWE regularly includes soloists and chamber groups from within its talented ranks. They have also had the pleasure of featuring special guest artists such as trumpet legend Armando Ghitalla, trumpeter Rami Oren from the Israel Philharmonic, tubist John Griffiths and many soloists from within the ensemble. The WWE has performed alongside the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, the Renaissance Voices, Women of Note, the University of Manitoba Wind Ensemble and Concert Band, the Manitoba Senior Honour Band, and other Winnipeg groups. The ensemble is frequently featured at the WSO New Music Festival and presents an annual three-concert series in Winnipeg.

FRANK ZAPPA COMPOSER (US) Frank Zappa, American Composer, fl. 1940 – 1993

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE

The Women’s Committee of the

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Presents

WSO NMF 2014 ADDITIONAL MUSICIANS NMF1

NMF4

NMF5

APRIL 6, 2014 10:30 a.m.

NMF7

Laurel Ridd | Flute Caitlin Broms-Jacobs | Oboe Sharon Atkinson | Clarinet Allen Harrington | Bassoon Derek Tywoniuk | Timpani & Percussion Jamie Pham | Percussion Victoria Sparks | Percussion Tony Cyre | Percussion Donna Laube | Keyboard Derek Tywoniuk | Timpani & percussion Tony Cyre | Percussion Donna Laube | Keyboard Laura Loewen | Keyboard Derek Tywoniuk | Timpani Donna Laube | Keyboard Laura Loewen | Keyboard

Delta Hotel • 350 St. Mary Avenue, Winnipeg Featuring

The University of Manitoba Desautels Faculty of Musical Theatre Ensemble WSO Brass Quintet Silent Auction • Door Prize • Delicious Buffet • Favourite Broadway Tunes • Dress: Favourite Broadway Musical Character (optional) Tickets: $65 (partial tax receipt)

Tickets are available at the Music Stand at WSO concerts or by calling Margaret at 204-489-0938

PRESIDENT’S ADVISORY COUNCIL

Tony Cyre | Percussion Victoria Sparks | Percussion Derek Tywoniuk | Percussion Donna Laube | Keyboard Laura Loewen | Piano Alan Nagelberg | Guitar Andrew Goodlett | Mandolin

Al Alexandruk Mal Anderson Carol Bellringer Marilyn Billinkoff Doneta Brotchie John and Bonnie Buhler Edmund Dawe, D.M.A. Greg Doyle Jamie Dolynchuk Julia De Fehr Susan Feldman Barbara Filuk Wally Fox-Decent Jack Fraser Evelyn Friesen Elba Haid Helen Hayles Kaaren Hawkins Sherrill Hershberg Ian Kay Roger King Bill Knight Michele Lagacé

Zina Lazareck Gail Leach Dr. Hermann Lee Naomi Levine Bill Loewen Dr. Brendan MacDougall Don MacKenzie Bill Marr Ed J. Martens Michael Nozick Harvey Pollock Dr. William Pope John Rademaker Kathleen Richardson George & Tannis Richardson Lenny Richardson Ed Richmond Lorne Sharfe William Shead Graeme Sifton Joanne Sigurdson Bonnie Staples-Lyon Brenlee Carrington Trepel Dennis Wallace

PRESIDENTS OF THE WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 1948-51 1951-53 1953-55 1955-57 1957-58 1958-61 1961-62 1962-64 1964-65 1965-67 1967-69 1969-71 1971-73 1973-74 1974-76 1976-78 1978-79 1979-80 1980-81 1981-82 1982-83

Hon. Mr. Justice J. T. Beaubien Mr. J. M. Sinclair Mr. Digby Wheeler Mr. W. D. Hurst Dr. Hugh H. Saunderson Mr. E. W. H. Brown Mr. David Slater The Hon. Mr. Justice Monnin Mr. Norman J. Alexander Mr. R. W. Richards Mr. W. R. Palmer Mr. E. J. Smith Dr. M. M. Pierce Mr. H. S. Brock-Smith Mr. Allan G. Moffatt Mr. Julian D. T. Benson Mr. John L. Buckworth Mr. N. Roger McFallon Mr. John F. Fraser Mr. William W. Draper Mr. John O. Baatz

1983-84 1984-86 1986-88 1988-90 1990-92 1992-94 1994-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 Feb 1999-May 1999 Jun 1999-2000 2000-Feb 03 Mar 2003-Dec 2003 Dec 2003-Jan 2005 Jan 2005- Jul 2006 Jul 2006-Nov 2006 Dec 2006- Jun 2007 2007-2012 2012-present

Mr. Andrew D. M. Ogaranko, Q.C. Mr. Harold Buchwald, Q.C. Mr. Michel Lagacé Mr. William H. Loewen Mrs. Julia DeFehr Mr. Gordon Fogg Mrs. Helen Hayles Mr. Anthony Brookes Mrs. Helen Hayles Mr. William Norrie Mr. William Loewen Mr. Bruce MacCormack Mr. Roger King Ms. Patti Sullivan Mr. Wally Fox-Decent Ms. Carol Bellringer Mr. Harvey Pollock (Interim President) Mr. Brendan MacDougall Ms. Dorothy Dobbie Mr. Timothy E. Burt, CFA

2013–14 SEASON

WSO BOARD & STAFF

OUR DISTINGUISHED PATRONS

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

His Honour the Honourable Philip S. Lee C.M., O.M. Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba

Timothy E. Burt, CFA President & Chair Richard Turner Vice President Rob Kowalchuk Treasurer Muriel Smith Secretary Dorothy Dobbie Past President Jim Carr Sylvia Cassie Michael Cox Arlene Dahl Alan Freeman

The Honourable Greg Selinger, Premier of Manitoba His Worship Sam Katz, Mayor of the City of Winnipeg Mr. W.H. Loewen & Mrs. S.E. Loewen, WSO Directors Emeritus WOMEN’S COMMITTEE EXECUTIVE Shirley Loewen, President Sylvia Cassie, Vice-President Lesia Peet, Past President

Dr. Daya Gupta Gregory Hay Micah Heilbrunn Peter Jessiman Michael D. Kay Maureen Kilgour Sotirios Kotoulas Caroline Ksiazek Jackie Lowe Terry Sargeant Trudy Schroeder, Ex-officio Alexander Mickelthwate, Ex-officio

Isobel Harvie, Treasurer

OFFICIAL AUDITORS

Evelyn Davidson, Secretary

Runchey Miyazawa Abbott Chartered Accountants

TRUDY SCHROEDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE, MUSIC DIRECTOR

EXECUTIVE OFFICE Lori Marks, Confidential Executive Assistant

ARTISTIC Bramwell Tovey, Conductor Laureate Julian Pellicano, Resident Conductor Vincent Ho, Composer-in-Residence

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION John Bacon, Director of Finance & Administration Sandi Mitchell, Payroll & Accounting Administrator Leanne Plett, Accounting & Administrative Assistant DEVELOPMENT Joanne Gudmundson, Director of Development Carol Cassels, Development Manager Jason Hayes, Development Assistant Caroline Murphy, Telefunder, Donations & Raffles SALES & AUDIENCE SERVICES Ryan Diduck, Director of Sales & Audience Services Rachel Himelblau, Patron Services Coordinator Theresa Huscroft, Group Events Representative Jeremy Krahn, Patron Services Representative PATRON SERVICES REPRESENTATIVES (P/T): Phil Corrin Meg Dolovich Melissa Houston

Chelse McKee Crystal Schwartz Stephanie Van Nest

ARTISTIC OPERATIONS Jean-Francois Phaneuf, Director of Artistic Operations James Manishen, Artistic Operations Associate Andrea de Haan, Production Manager Amanda Wilson, Stage Manager Chris Lee, Orchestra Personnel Manager Ray Chrunyk, Principal Librarian Laura MacDougall, Assistant Librarian Lawrence Rentz, Stage Supervisor EDUCATION & OUTREACH Tanya Derksen, Director of Education & Outreach Amy Wolfe, Education & Outreach Coordinator Brent Johnson, Community Outreach Coordinator MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Lisa Abram, Director of Marketing & Communications Sarah Panas, Marketing & Communications Coordinator Matt Brooks, Multimedia Coordinator Bethany Giroux, Intern Design by

WINNIPEG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TICKET INFORMATION WSO ADMINISTRATION OFFICE Richardson Building Suite 1650 – One Lombard Place Winnipeg, MB R3B 0X3 p 204-949-3950 f 204-956-4271 wso.ca

WSO BOX OFFICE Centennial Concert Hall 555 Main Street Winnipeg, MB R3B 1C3 p 204-949-3999 wso.ca

TICKETMASTER 1-855-985-ARTS Ticketmaster.ca GROUP EVENTS 204-949-3995 groupevents@wso.mb.ca

The WSO is a chartered non-profit organization operated by a voluntary Board of Directors 60

JANUARY 2014 | OVERTURE