44th season | 362nd eventSunday November 16, 2014

The Music Gallery, 197 John Street, Toronto

New Music Concerts and The Music Gallery present

Generation 2014Ensemble contemporaine de Montréal (ECM+)

Veronique Lacroix direction

Programme:

Marie-Pierre Brasset (Canada 1981)cou_coupé (2014)

Alec Hall (Canada/USA 1985)Object Permanence (2014)

Evelin Ramon (Cuba/Canada 1979)Labyrinth of Light (2014)

Anthony Tan (Canada/Germany 1978)Ksana II (2014)

8:00pm Concert | Hosted by Gabriel Dharmoo

ECM+ produces innovative, multidisciplinary concerts and showcases Canadian musical creation throughout thecountry. Renowned for her flair and her appetite for risk-taking, artistic director Véronique Lacroix is passionate aboutcreation and, with her musicians, is helping to foster the next generation of composers. In addition to its regular season’sproductions, ECM+ tours Canada with the Generation project every two years since 2000 and has participated ininternational exchanges with France, Belgium, Mexico, Ukraine, and Singapore.

ECM+ has premiered 234 works, mostly Canadian, since it was founded in 1987. Its productions have garneredprestigious awards, including the 2002 Grand Prix du Conseil des arts de Montréal and the 2002 Prix Opus for MusicalEvent of the Year. In 2007, ECM+ was the designated ensemble for the final concert of CBC’s National Competition forYoung Composers, after a first time in 2003. The ensemble has released ten CDs and its concerts are regularly broadcaston Radio-Canada’s Ici Musique and CBC Radio Two. ECM+ has been in residence at the Conservatoire de musique deMontréal since 1998.

Véronique Lacroix completed her musical studies in 1988 at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal,where she was the recipient of numerous distinctions. She founded the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+)in 1987 to be able to work closely with composers, and served as artistic director for several ensembles in Quebecand Ontario. The winner of multiple conducting awards from both the Canada Council for the Arts (twice) and theOntario Arts Council, she also received the 2007 Prix Opus for Artistic Direction of the Year, honouring her 20 yearsat the helm of ECM+, whose programming offers audacious multidisciplinary productions. Passionate about creation,she discovers emerging Canadian composers and showcases their work for the public, with whom she is eager toshare her vision.

In recognition of her involvement in the creation of numerous Canadian works, she was appointed as Ambassadorfor the Canadian Music Centre and won the Friends of Canadian Music Award 2009, awarded jointly by the CanadianMusic Centre and the Canadian League of Composers. Since 1995, Véronique Lacroix has enjoyed directing the

New Music Concerts 2014-2015 Season Index1 SUN. NOV. 16, 2014 GENERATION 2014 | 2 THURS. DEC. 11, 2014 STROPPA+SLUCHIN |3 TUES. JAN. 20, 2015 MARITIME MINIATURES

4 SAT. FEB. 14, 2015 EAST + WEST | 5 SAT. MAR. 14, 2015 DUO SZATHMÁRY/TZSCHOPPE

6 SAT. APR. 4, 2015 UKRAINIAN-CANADIAN CONNECTION | 7 SUN. MAY 17, 2015 THE BELGIAN CONNECTION

apprenticeship of young virtuosos at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, preparing their journey throughthe contemporary music repertoire, and she is regularly invited to conduct in Canada and abroad.

Marie-Pierre Brasset holds a bachelor’s degree in composition from Université Laval (class of Eric Morin),as well as a Master’s degree from Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (classes of Michel Gonneville, in composition,and Serge Provost, in analysis). With the support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture, she iscurrently preparing a doctorate on vocal music at Université de Montréal under the supervision of Isabelle Panneton.In addition to her studies in music, she has obtained a bachelor degree with major in History, culture and societyfrom Université du Québec à Montréal.

Her contemplative listening of nature guides her music towards a broad and organic formal breathing as well as aprofusion of melodic and motivic inventions. The ideas of directness and clarity imposed themselves little by littleto her aesthetic, expressing a will to establish an intimate relationship between composer, performer and listener.

cou_coupé

I have a particular fondness for lyrical abstraction, a trend in abstract painting practiced by such artists as Riopelle,Bryen, and Wols. This approach to the act of creation has the advantage of allowing material to come into beingfreely, directly, and in a way that is entirely personal. I composed my musical material in the same way for cou_coupé.Clearly, what emerged out of the sessions was permeated by all sorts of influences. Here, I can say that the works ofSchnittke and Kancheli, an opera I am working on, and the practice of painting on canvas all contributed to shapingthe content of these “found” musical objects. Once I have them in my hands, I work hard to question, transform,refine, and—consciously— structure them into music.

Alec Hall currently lives in New York City where he studies with George Lewis in the doctoral program at ColumbiaUniversity. His works are primarily experimental in nature, with a strong focus on semanticity and representation inacoustic structures. His music is frequently performed throughout Europe and North America, with notable premieresby the Ensemble SurPlus, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensembleand Talea Ensemble, among others. He has won five prizes in the SOCAN competition for young composers and wasa finalist for the Jules Leger Prize in 2011. Principal teachers include Tristan Murail, Philippe Manoury and Fred Lerdahl,while he has also worked closely with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Takasugi and Roger Reynolds. He is also the founderand co-director of Qubit, a non-profit organization in New York dedicated to presenting events highlighting new andexperimental works with electronics. Alec holds a M.A. in composition from the University of California, San Diegoand a B.Mus. in composition and violin performance from McGill University.

Object Permanence

A basic concept, most frequently invoked when speaking of developmental milestone for infants and other youngcreatures. The exact definition itself, however, inspires a great deal more mystery: object permanence is theunderstanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled orsensed in any way).

This “understanding” is deeply complex, and in fact forms the foundation for the totality of our engagement asdiscrete beings with both the physical and social universe. We all wield an abstract, immaterial form of objectpermanence. For instance, we know that gravity exists and will always pull us to the ground, even if we cannotconsciously sense it; social codes and cultural norms govern our behavior, despite their invisibility; or, that during thecomposition of a violin concerto the canon of such historical works is omnipresent in the mind’s eye.

It was partially with this understanding that I composed this piece, together with a deconstruction of the relationshipbetween soloist and accompaniment. Using varied sources, from pop stars like Ke$ha and Drake, to summerblockbusters or Mozart violin concerti, I took both figurative and literal inspiration from sampling other prominent“soloists”. The materials from such moments were then woven into an existing musical fabric, or else became thesupports on which longer segments were constructed.

In Object Permanence, our continuously present object is the abstract concept of the star performer. It materializesin strikingly different iterations throughout the work, during which one has to have faith that it is is always there, evenwhen you cannot hear it.

Evelin Ramon, a native of Cuba, completed a Master’s degree in composition from Université de Montréal underthe supervision of Ana Sokolovic !. She previously studied piano, choir conducting and singing at Santiago de Cuba’sConservatory, as well as composition at Universidad de las Artes of Havana. She has attended seminars led by MauricioSotelo, Beat Furrer, Philippe Leroux, John Rea, Denys Bouliane et Lasse Thoresen. Her work has been rewarded by firstprizes at the Universidad de las Artes music festival, at the national composition contest of Havana and at the Concoursde composition d’opéra de l’Université de Montréal (2011). She also won the Concours de composition Serge-Garant2011 and the 2010 composition contest of the Orchestre de l’Université de Montréal. In 2012, Evelin won a residency incomposition of the Faculté de Musique de l’UdM, which allowed her to work with the École de Danse Contemporainede Montréal.

Labyrinth of Light

When I began working on this piece, I happened upon, somewhat by chance, the poem Fairy-Land by American poetEdgar Allan Poe. Powerful, yet touching, sound images: just what I needed to nourish this music. Something thatwould communicate and at the same time trigger feelings like urgency, hope, darkness melancholy, and strength. Allthis was summed up in a few words within the poem itself: Labyrinth of light (which became the title of the piece).The harmony that is used in the work comes mainly from a system of chords based on a series of multiphonicsproduced by the bassoon in the piece. This series also served to generate the only melodic material in the piece,which may not be apparent on first listening. The poem itself allowed me to determine the shape of the work: foursections, each containing an internal microstructure, like so many sometimes interwoven ramifications or tresses.

Anthony Tan is a Canadian composer now residing in Germany where he is pursuing the Meisterklasse at theMusikhochschule Dresden with Mark Andre and Franz Martin Olbrisch. His music has been performed by EnsembleRecherche, Les Cris de Paris, Ensemble Cairn, L’Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne, Ensemble ModerneAkademie, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. He has presented his music at the Stockholm Sound and Music ComputingConference, the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival, ICMC, Voix-Nouvelles, Domain Forget and Acanthes. Alsoinvolved with music for contemporary dance, he has written for the Merce Cunningham School, Tangente, and theBravo!FACT dance movie commissions. Anthony holds a Ph.D. (ABD) from McGill University in Montreal, under thesupervision of John Rea (Composition) and Steven McAdams (Psychoacoustics). From 2009 to 2010 he studied mixedmusic with Philippe Leroux and the analysis of electroacoustic music with Robert Normandeau at the Université deMontréal.

Ksana II

Ksana defines a Sanskrit word for ‘moment’. This moment can be considered a single mental experience or literally ameasurement of a chronological instant. I began a triptych of works that explores this concept of ‘moment’ fromvarious musical perspectives. Within this second iteration I explore the ‘moment’ from a microscopic point of view.One may consider the entire work as a representation of a single moment, or a single impulse, that was temporallystretched and internally observed. This single moment, however, contains within it, many musical ‘situations’. Icomposed each situation as an object in which gestural, ambient, discursive, and energetic processes occur, presenting,hopefully, a series of musical situations contained within a single moment.

Theoretically, this work is a prolational or mensural canon, often deployed in Renaissance music, whereby melodicstreams of different rhythmic proportions become simultaneously juxtaposed. Instead of a melody of pitches,however, I use a series of timbre structures, creating a timbre ‘melody’. With each instrument having its own timbre‘melody’ and simultaneously layered with other instruments, we achieve a multi-layered textured stream whereby anensemble/emergent sound occurs. Furthermore, by presenting horizontal constructions at different temporalproportions, I intend to create multiple temporal perceptions and perhaps lead the listener to the experience of atimeless whole.

44th season | 363rd eventThursday December 11, 2014

The Music Gallery, 197 John Street, Toronto

New Music Concerts and The Music Gallery present

+Marco Stroppa guest composer | Benny Sluchin solo trombone

Wallace Halladay saxophone | NMC Ensemble | Robert Aitken direction

Programme:

Elliott Carter (USA 1908-2012) Epigrams (2012)Stephen Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello Gregory Oh piano

Canadian premiere

Paul Steenhuisen (Canada 1965) Anthropo (2014)Benny Sluchin trombone Paul Steenhuisen electronics

World premiere, funded by The Canada Council

— Intermission —

Marco Stroppa (Italy/Germany 1959) …of Silence (2007-13)Wallace Halladay alto saxophone Marco Stroppa electronics

Canadian premiere

Marco Stroppa From Needle’s Eye (1996-2001; rev. 2007)Benny Sluchin solo trombone Les Allt !ute Clare Scholtz oboe Max Christie clarinet

Bill Cannaway bassoon Joan Watson horn Stuart Laughton trumpet David Pell tromboneScott Irvine tuba Rick Sacks percussion Doug Perry viola Adam Scime contrabass Robert Aitken direction

Canadian premiere

Composer, researcher and professor, Marco Stroppa (Verona, 1959) undertook a range of musical studies (piano,choral music and choir conducting, composition and electronic music) under Laura Palmieri, Guido Begal, RenatoDionisi, Azio Corghi and Alvise Vidolin at the Conservatories of Verona, Milan and Venice. He also studiedcomputer music, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence at the Media Laboratory of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1984-86. Between 1980 and 1984 he worked at the computermusic centre of the University of Padua (Italy), where he produced his first mixed piece, Traiettoria, for piano andcomputer. In 1982 Pierre Boulez invited him to work as a composer and researcher at IRCAM, the largest institutionof the world devoted to computer music. His constant contact with this institution has been fundamental to hismusical education and work as a composer. A highly appreciated and active pedagogue, he has lectured widelyand has published essays in a number of international reviews. In 1987 Mr. Stroppa founded the composition andcomputer music workshop at the International Bartók Festival in Szombathély, Hungary. During thirteen years atits head, he met the greatest musicians in the country and broadened his horizons by reading a great deal ofpoetry. He also taught composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and Lyon andsince 1999 he has been professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts(Musikhochschule) in Stuttgart, as successor to Helmut Lachenmann.

Mr. Stroppa composes for both acoustical instruments and new media. His repertoire includes works forconcerts, one music drama, two radio operas and various special projects. His keen interest in sound and spacehas often led him to rethinking the placement of the instruments on stage so as to achieve a spatial dramaturgythat will be revealed and highlighted by the unfolding of the music. He often groups several works around large

cycles exploring specific compositional projects, such as a series of concertos for instrument and a spatializedorchestra or ensemble inspired by poems of W.B. Yeats, a book of Miniature Estrose for piano and three stringquartets. He has approached chamber and choral music for only ten years. His widely acclaimed first opera, ReOrso (King Bear) was premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 2012. He is currently writing a horn octet andtwo concertos, one for three accordions and orchestra and one for cello.

X Marco Stroppa: …of Silence (2007-13)

for alto saxophone and acoustic totem, from The enormous room, a cycle for solo instrument and chamberelectronics. Commission: Concert Hall Shizuoka / Shizuoka City Cultural Promotion Foundation.

1. Winsome 2. Sensible and quick3. Scattering 4. Smarting

Lady of Silencefrom the winsome cage ofthy bodyrose

through the sensiblenightaquick bird

(tenderly uponthe dark’s prodigious facethyvoice

scattering perfume-giftedwingssuddenly escortswith feetsun-sheer

the smarting beauty of dawn)— e. e. cummings

…of Silence is the fourth piece of a cycle of works based on poems of e.e. cummings for solo instrumentand chamber electronics, a term invented by myself which has several meanings: aesthetically, I amsearching for a delicate and intimate relation between a soloist and other invisible sounds around himor her; technologically, all the electronic sounds are diffused only from the stage; spatially, the performeroccupies for each movement a different position on the stage. In …of Silence a single sound source,made of five loudspeakers, is standing on the stage, a system that I call an “acoustic totem”. Theunfolding of the piece follows the poem, which depicts the passage of the night (the lady of silence)toward the “smarting beauty of dawn.”

This is the first work that used a revolutionary system, called Antescofo and developed at IRCAM by ateam directed by Arshia Cont, which gives the computer a more musical behaviour and allows it tofollow the score and the tempo of a human performer, exactly as in a chamber music situation.— MarcoStroppa

X Marco Stroppa: From Needle’s Eye (1996-9/2007)

for solo trombone, double quintet and percussion. Commission: Ensemble InterContemporain.

1. Polished 2. Silently boundless3. Crackling (like a whirl of unrestrainable dances)

A Needle’s EyeAll the stream that’s roaring byCame out of a needle’s eye;Things unborn, things that are gone,From needle’s eye still goad it on.

— W.B. Yeats (from: A Full Moon in March, 1935)

This is the second work belonging to a cycle of concertos inspired by poems by W. B. Yeats. It is alsothe first outcome of a long-lasting cooperation with Benny Sluchin, that started in 1982 at IRCAM, whenhe was working on the analysis of mutes for brasses. The ensemble is “spatialised”: in the centre, infront, the soloist; on the left and right hand side of the stage two quintets “battenti” – as the doublechoirs in Venice in the XVI century; in the centre, but behind, a percussionist, a kind of fleeting shadowof the soloist. Each quintet, comprising one string instrument, two woodwinds and two brasses, has aspecific sound colour: soft and velvety on the left, harsh and biting on the right. During the whole piecethe placement of each sound in this space was used as a way to generate, for instance, an oppostionof volumes or spatial “canons.”The piece has three movements connected to each other. The first is based on oscillating chordsbetween the two quintets. Each chord is finely “polished” in all its details of orchestration and furtherenriched by bowed percussion instruments. The oscillation, which may suggest a supple breathing, ispunctuated at first by short, almost “shy” notes played by the solo trombone, and then by increasinglylonger and more expressive phrases. This process yields a series of “beginnings of phrases,” that nevermanage to be entirely developed and start each time again and again, as if the soloist were in quest ofan impossible contact with the ensemble.

The second movement is announced by the stroke of a Tam Tam at the end of the first movement, thatis metamorphosed into a glissando Tam (a water gong). Inspired by the sonority of the “dung,” thehuge Tibetan trumpet played on the roofs of the monasteries, the movement explores an unusualfeature of “virtuosity,” a dimension, each concerto has to deal with in a way or another! Rather thanpushing the instrumental technique to its extremes of speed or power (a very western interpretation ofvirtuosity), I tried to achieve complete mastery of a very slow, but perfectly smooth movement: aglissando in the lowest register of the trombone (the so-called pedal tones). The majesty of the “dung,”as well as the impressive beauty of the boundless landscape surrounding them, is thus recalled bysounds quietly growing in the most unfathomable of the trombone’s registers, and by a glissando gong,a percussive double bass (playing with a timpani mallet) and, at the end, by the enigmatic presence ofa bell.

The third movement emerges from the atmosphere of the second one and starts with an increasinglyfrenzied cadenza for trombone and wah-wah mute, where the soloist has to dissociate the movement ofthe right hand (the slide of the trombone), from the one of the left hand, opening and closing the waa-waa mute according to different rythmical patterns. The other instruments progressively join thetrombone, build a highly polyrhythmic and hectic fabric around it, and finally fade out into a soft andimmobile atmosphere that ends the piece. I would like to thank Benny Sluchin, whose bravura, inquisitivemind and patience have greatly inspired me. — Marco Stroppa

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, oneof the few composers ever awarded Germany’s Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made “Commandeurdans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the Government of France, as well as receiving the insignia ofCommander of the Legion of Honor in 2012, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized as one of America’sleading voices of the classical music tradition. He was a recipient of the Prince Pierre Foundation Music Awardand was one of the few living composers to be inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame duringhis lifetime. Carter was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Committee for the first time in 1960 for hisgroundbreaking String Quartet No. 2. Igor Stravinsky hailed Carter’s Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano,

and two chamber orchestras (1961) and Piano Concerto (1967), as “masterpieces.” Carter’s prolific careerspanned over 75 years, with more than 150 pieces, ranging from chamber music to orchestra to opera, oftenmarked with a sense of wit and humor. His astonishing late-career creative burst resulted in a number of briefsolo and chamber works, as well as major essays such as Asko Concerto (2000) for Holland’s ASKO Ensemble.Some chamber works include What Are Years (2009), Nine by Five (2009), and Two Thoughts About the Piano(2005-06), widely toured by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Carter showed his mastery in larger forms as well, withmajor contributions such as the opera What Next? (1997–98), Boston Concerto (2002), Three Illusions forOrchestra (2004), called by the Boston Globe “surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated,” Flute Concerto(2008), a piano concerto, Interventions (2007), which premiered on Carter’s 100th birthday concert at CarnegieHall with James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (December 11, 2008), and thesong cycle A Sunbeam’s Architecture (2011).

— Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

X Elliott Carter: Epigrams (2012)

Epigrams is Elliott Carter’s final work, composed during the spring and summer of 2012 at the age of 103. Itwas written for the Aldeburgh Music Festival and was premiered there in 2013 during a Tribute to Elliott Carterpresented by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Oliver Knussen. This is the work’s first Canadian performance.

Born in Vancouver, Paul Steenhuisen is an independent composer working with acoustic and digital media.!Hisconcert music consists of orchestral, chamber, solo, and vocal music, often including live electronics andsoundfiles.!Additionally, he is the composer for the HYPOSURFACE installation project based in Cambridge,Massachussets, which was most recently exhibited for six months at the Canadian Centre for Architecture inMontreal. Raised by parents from The Netherlands and Curaçao, the confluence of his heritage and upbringingin North American culture has informed both his education and musical output.! Initially, Steenhuisen workedwith Keith Hamel (DMA, UBC), simultaneously with Louis Andriessen (Royal Conservatory, The Hague) andMichael Finnissy (Hove, England), and later with Tristan Murail at IRCAM (Centre Pompidou, Paris).!During thoseyears, he was laureate of more than a dozen national and international awards, including the Governor Generalof Canada Gold Medal as the outstanding student in all faculties (UBC), seven awards from PROCAN/SOCAN,and four in the CBC Young Composers Competition. !He was a finalist in the Gaudeamus Music Week, and hispiece WONDER was a “recommended” work at the International Rostrum of Composers (UNESCO, Paris).Subsequently, Steenhuisen was composer in residence with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and AssistantProfessor of Composition at the University of Alberta.!In 2011, he was awarded the Victor Martin Lynch-StauntonAward (Canada Council for the Arts) as the outstanding mid-career artist in music.!He is also the author of‘Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers’, and host of the!SOUNDLAB New Music Podcast!(iTunes).!Hismusic has been called “Superb… the high point of the concert” (Neuzeit Graz, Austria), as well as “filth” (LaPresse, Montréal), with!a “freshness that bodes well for the future” (Paris Transatlantic).

X Paul Steenhuisen: Anthropo (2014)

From the root ánthr"pos (human being), the trombone becomes the unstable centre of ambiguoushybrids – combined, cross-synthesized, anthropomorphized, and cannibilized (anthropophagized). Analysesof the trombone (anthropometrics) are resynthesized into dynamic physical models of the instrument(via Modalys/IRCAM), then further compounded by pushing the outputs back through virtual models ofmetals – like taking the sound of the trombone and resonating it through the metal of another trombone,multiplied by X and divided by fragile impurities. Anthropo was written for Benny Sluchin with the supportof a multi-faceted project grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. — Paul Steenhuisen

Ma femme à la taille de loutre My wife is the size of otterentre les dents du tigre between the teeth of the tigerMa femme à la bouche de cocarde My wife has the mouth of a roundelet de bouquet d’étoiles de dernière grandeur and rosette bouquet of stars latter grandeurAux dents d’empreintes de souris Teeth imprints of white mice

blanche sur la terre blanche White on the white earth

L’union libre, André Breton

Des loups viennent mordre le poignet Wolves are biting the wrist of man (Rights)(de l’homme) sans détente, without relaxation,et la main qui s’épuise. and the hand that runs out. Les rats s’approchent, sautant sans bruit, Rats are approaching, jumping without noisesans bruit. Impuissance, puissance des autres. Without noise. Impotence, power of others.

Le singe se renverse et devient balai. The monkey is reversed and becomes broom.La loutre se renverse et devient éponge. The otter is reversed and becomes sponge.L’âne se renverse et devient un bu!e et The donkey is reversed and becomes a bu"aloDevient un REQUIN QUI S’ÉLANCE VERS VOUS and becomes a SHARK that rushes TO YOULA GUEULE RENVERSÉE POUR HAPPER. AND REVERSES ITS MOUTH to snap.

Animaux fantastiques, Henri Michaux

X Benny Sluchin, trombone

Benny Sluchin studied music at the conservatory of his native city, Tel Aviv, and in the Academy of Music inJerusalem. Simultaneously, he studied mathematics and philosophy at the university of Tel Aviv and receivedhis “Master of Science.”

For two years, Sluchin played in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. For the following 4 years he was co-soloistin the Symphony Orchestra of Jerusalem (Radio Orchestra). A scholarship from the German governmentbrought him to Cologne where he studied with Vinko Globokar, receiving his Artist’s diploma with distinction.

Since 1976, he has been a member of the Ensemble InterContemporain (dir. Pierre Boulez), playing the mostrepresentative music of the present century and participating as soloist in premières of solo works by IannisXenakis, Vinko Globokar, Gérard Grisey, Pascal Dusapin, Frédéric Martin, Elliott Carter, Luca Francesconi, MarcoStroppa, James Wood, Paul Méfano, György Kurtag, Jonathan Harvey…

Apart from this, he participates in various research projects in brass acoustics and musicolgy at IRCAM (Institutde Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). He completed a PhD thesis in Mathematics and is theauthor of many articles and pedagogical books. The SACEM prize for pedagogical realization was given in 1996to his Introduction to contemporary trombone techniques, Contemporary Trombone Excerpts and Jeu et chantsimultanés sur les cuivres (Éditions Musicales Européennes). Writing with Raymond Lapie he also publishedLe trombone à travers les âges (Buchet-Chastel, 2001).

Trombone professor at the Conservatoire de Lavallois, and teacher at the Conservatoire National Supérieur deMusique de Paris (CNSMDP), he offers workshops, instrumental master classes and conferences. Benny Sluchintook part in many recordings and completed Le Trombone Contemporain, (Musidisc 243673), French Bel cantoTrombone (Musidisc 243662), Xenakis - Keren (Erato 2292-45770-2), Berio - Sequenzas (DGG 457 038-2),and Luca Francesconi – Animus (Kairos 0012712KAI).

44th season | 364th eventTuesday January 20, 2015

Jane Mallett Theatre, 27 Front St. E., Toronto

New Music Concerts and Music Toronto present

Maritime Miniatureswith Barbara Pritchard, piano

7:15pm Introduction | 8:00pm Concert

Programme Notes

ALWYNNE PRITCHARD (b. 1968)Mesarch (1998)

Mesarch was composed as a musical response to the work of visual artists James Hugonin and SarahBray. The title of the piece describes the structure of plants in which the first-formed xylem (the tissuethat conducts vital elements from the roots to all other parts of the plant) is surrounded by that formedlater - as in fern stems. Mesarch, although still a stand-alone piece, was also later incorporated intoanother work, forming the second movement of the more extended piano piece Der Zwerg.

— Alwynne Pritchard

ANTHONY GENGE (b. 1952)History and Memory (2012-13)

History and Memory for solo piano explores ideas suggested by the title of the work in a number ofways – the way that musical material within a piece can create a kind of musical history for the listener,and also the way that the personal musical history of an artist can influence the creation of a new work.History and Memory is in more than 20 sections, played without a pause. As such, the work is a kind ofmusical tapestry. A fast-moving figure, first heard at the opening of the work, re-occurs several timesthroughout the piece, and serves as a ‘frame’ for the music of the other sections. As in much of myrecent work, the music in the other sections varies greatly in style and content, ranging from lyricallymelodic, sections of pulsating rhythmic repetition, and areas that are almost static. Harmonically, thework explores the gamut from modality to atonality. However, this diverse musical material is unifiednot only by the reoccurring opening figure and various tonal relationships, but also by the way thatmusic in earlier parts of the work reappears later in the piece, referencing or commenting on the originalmaterial.

I have also been increasingly interested in how a composer’s personal musical history and compositionalinfluences, and the vagaries of memory of these things, might affect their work, perhaps in very subtle oreven unconscious ways. Although often discussed in relation to the work of visual artists, this is perhapsan understudied aspect of the creative process of composers. In History and Memory, the music in somesections of the work comments not only on the music heard elsewhere in the piece, but also, in my mindat least, makes references to my own earlier works, and some of my diverse compositional influences,interests and musical concerns from over the last 30 years.

— Anthony Genge

DARYL JAMIESON (b. 1980)mountain / cherry / blossoms (2012)

These seven miniatures are based on seven poems from the famous mediaeval Japanese anthologyHyakunin Isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each). Each of these poems – all in the classical 31-syllable tanka form – were analysed numerologically, and arranged in quasi-serial matrices that becamethe harmonic bases of the pieces. The overarching title, mountain / cherry / blossoms, comes frompoem 66 (the seventh and final piece), though the three characters straddle a semantic break, leadingto the slashes in the English title. Most of the poems include images of either mountains, cherries, orflowers. Ageing, loneliness, and love are the main themes of these seven short pieces.

— Daryl Jamieson

From ‘Variations’:

Barbara Pritchard writes:

“Variations is a set of miniatures for solo piano, written by more than 50 different composers at my request.They are based (or not) on the composers’ reactions to an excerpt from Maggie Helwig’s poem “The OtherGoldberg Variations” in Talking Prophet Blues. I don’t remember exactly how the project first arose. I think Ihad come across a reference to Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s poem in which he uses the phrase ‘movers and shakers.’He isn’t referring to business and political leaders, but to musicians, I believe. I was really struck by this. I thoughtit would make an interesting basis for a project, but it became apparent that others had already done this.Then, in 1991, I came across Maggie Helwig’s book Talking Prophet Blues and, while riffling through it, noticedthe fragment I eventually chose.

The piano is not the end, butthe means, the mediator

of body and music. The bodyis not the beginning, but

must do for the moment. The musicis not the end.

“It is up to the composers to do whatever they want with the poetry. Some of them ignore it entirely, whichis another way of varying things. Most recently, the composers have been focusing on Bach and the Aria. It’sinteresting to see that development. I like to ask composers if they want to be a part of the project, but I feela little embarrassed to do so as I have no money to pay them. It’s like asking for free samples. Most of themgraciously agree, for which I am really, really thankful. There were six variations initially, three of which werecommissioned by The Canada Council for the Arts. The idea seemed to work, so I expanded it in 1996 andhave continued to add to it. I hope eventually to record a selection of them.

“When programming the Variations for concerts, they are wonderful to work with as there are so many waysto sort them: by geographical location of the composer, by choice of material, by style of music, taking intoconsideration the audience I’m playing for. At the very beginning, I play a recorded version of the Aria as anhomage to Glenn Gould. I understand entirely his wish to control the final product – so many unexpected thingscan happen in live performance, not all of them good. In general, I believe live music is the best way to reachan audience, but when I make a mistake playing Bach, I want to crawl off stage and hide under a rock. Thisway, I can present my interpretation of the Aria without having to cut the performance short by leaving early...”

CLARK ROSS (b. 1957)Broken Glass (1991)

Broken Glass, commissioned through the Canada Council in 1991 for Barbara Pritchard, is a response toboth the Helwig poem, and the Bach reference in its title.

— Clark Ross

ANTHONY GENGE (b. 1952)Variation for Piano (1995)

Variation for Piano is a brief work in an arch form. A central slower series of chords is surrounded by afaster moving ostinato figure. A single harmonic structure is used as the basis for all of the work’smusical material.

— Anthony Genge

WL ALTMAN (b. 1959)Utter Variation (2005)

Utter Variation is a struggle. The pianist performs unconventional tasks in quest of an unattainable ideal.A sense of futility infuses both the technical process and the musical product. You might also detectthe smothered spirit of Glenn Gould struggling to express itself.

— WL Altman

JÉRÔME BLAIS (b. 1965)Inventio (2005)

When Barbara Pritchard invited me to write a one-minute miniature for her Variations project, the formatof the Two-Part Inventions immediately jumped at me. Practicing those little gems in my teen yearsand later writing pastiches of them at university will always remain fond memories for me. And everytime, it was as if the name BACH would be floating around, coming out of the piano or the paper.

— Jérôme Blais

IAN CRUTCHLEY (b. 1965)Opening and Variations (2005)

Two things really inform this work: 1. The phenomenally simple, yet distinctive opening to the GoldbergVariations, is unmistakable and its ability to conjure up all sorts of thoughts about Bach, the piano, andmost of all, Glenn Gould is permanent. 2. The opportunity to write even a short work for BarbaraPritchard is a privilege for any composer.

— Ian Crutchley

RICHARD GIBSON (b. 1953)Twenty-four Notes… (2005)

I decided to give myself the additional handicap of limiting the register to the two octaves above middleC (and yes, a 25th note does occur when the middle C is played at the end!). Written with a view toeventually offering it to one of the many (!) toy piano performers in the world, I tried to evoke some ofthe elegance of Japanese music, of which I know almost nothing but to which I retain nevertheless astrong fascination. Given that Barb is one of the most ardent champions of Atlantic Canadian new music,and a personal friend, the piece was composed in a spirit of great pleasure and gratitude.

— Richard Gibson

ROBERT BAUER (b. 1950)(Dis-) Integration Variation (2011)

What I have done in this little piece is to take the original Bach aria and chop it into pieces. Then Irandomly transposed, inverted and retrograded the pieces for re-assembly with some personal addedtouches, partly as linkage and partly for colour.

— Robert Bauer

DAVID LITKE (b. 1977)Goldbird (2011)

This miniature is a ‘bird’s-ear hearing’ of Bach’s Goldberg Aria. The piece’s florid surface gestures are builtupon the skeleton of the aria’s opening antecedent phrase; you can hear the bones poking out now andagain.

— David Litke

MICHAEL PARKER (b. 1948)Refug(u)e, Op. 64 (2014)

The title of the work – Refug(u)e – is a combination of the words ‘refuge’ and ‘re-fugue.’ Whenever I amin need of spiritual restoration I always turn to the music of Bach as my refuge. In form, the piece is afugue, but is also a reworking of material from the original Goldberg Variations: hence a ‘re-fugue.’ Thefirst two bars of the Aria become the subject of the fugue. However, instead of developing this melody,I chose to combine the fugue subject with exact quotes from some of the variations in the Bach original(specifically Variations 1, 8, 17, 20, 23). There is a cadenza over (and under) lengthy trills in the middleof the piece and the work ends with a dramatic coda.

For Refug(u)e, I was especially drawn to two phrases in the Helwig poem. I interpreted the phrases “thepiano is not the end…the music is not the end” to mean that the music never stops. I have thereforeended Refug(u)e in such a way as to suggest that the fugue is continuing even though the pianist hasstopped playing.

— Michael Parker

DENNIS FARRELL (b. 1940)‘Quodlibet’ (Lat.: a ‘what-cha-ma’-call-it’)

& Exit-Lullaby (2004)

Ah! the famous Goldberg bass-line, "wand’ring idly over the noisy keys": – suppose Bach’s final, 30th Variationhad found better-known ‘upper’ parts, comprising, perhaps, a more ‘updated’ quodlibet? Alas! – useless toany insomniac, however congenial, the miscalculated lullaby tiptoes quietly away; but, left behind, theregularly-tasked musical snuff-box, has, meanwhile, drowsily nodded-off…

— Dennis Farrell

44th season | 365th event

Saturday February 14, 2015Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street

Concert Sponsor: Roger D. Moore

New Music Concerts presents

New Works from East & WestProgramme:

Fuhong Shi (China 1976) Mountains and Seas (2015)World premiere, commissioned by New Music Concerts with the "nancial assistance of The Royal Conservatory

Weiwei Lan pipa Dianne Aitken !ute Max Christie clarinet Erica Goodman harp Rick Sacks percussion Steven Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello Robert Aitken direction

Norbert Palej (Poland/Canada 1977) The Grey Hour (2015)World premiere, commissioned by New Music Concerts with the "nancial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council

Stacie Dunlop soprano Robert Aitken !ute Max Christie clarinet Stephen Clarke piano Rick Sacks percussion Steven Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello Norbert Palej direction

Yanqiao Wang (China/Canada 1937) Impression (2015)World premiere, commissioned by New Music Concerts

Weiwei Lan pipa Dianne Aitken !ute Stephen Clarke piano Erica Goodman harp Rick Sacks percussion David Schotzko marimba Adam Scime contrabass Robert Aitken direction

— Intermission —

Adam Scime (Canada 1982) from what hand to speak (2015)World premiere, commissioned by Daniel Cooper

Stacie Dunlop soprano Véronique Mathieu violin

Laurie Radford (Canada 1958) meaninglessnessingisms (2015)World premiere, commissioned by Chantal Perrot for New Music Concerts

Stacie Dunlop soprano Dianne Aitken !ute Erica Goodman harp David Schotzko percussion Steven Sitarski, Véronique Mathieu violins Doug Perry viola David Hetherington cello

Laurie Radford signal processing Robert Aitken direction

Fuhong Shi is an Associate Professor of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCoM) in Beijing. She is an active composerand curator of musical activities. Fuhong received her Doctoral degree in composition from the University of Torontoin 2009. She has studied with a number of world renowned composers and composition professors, such as GaryKulesha, Chen Yi, Chou Wen-Chung, Tang Jianping, Guo Wenjing, Chen Qigang, James MacMillan, Salvatore Sciarrino,Murray Schafer, Gilles Tremblay, Brian Cherney and Augusta Read Thomas among others.

In 2005, her orchestral work Dialogue II was read by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and her string quartetRefractions was selected for the inaugural Masterclass held by the Quatuor Bozzini. She was the recipient ofthe 2007 Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music and won the Generation 2008 Ensemble Contemporain deMontréal Composer’s Competition. She was also awarded a scholarship from Acanthes InternationalComposition Workshop in France in 2008.

Fuhong has collaborated with numerous Canadian orchestras and ensembles including the VancouverSymphony Orchestra, New Music Concerts, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, Queen of Puddings MusicTheatre, Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne, Continuum Contemporary Music, Taiwan SymphonyOrchestra, Esprit Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, and Soundstreams. In China her music has been performed byensembles in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Beijing. Her compositions have been broadcast in the USA, Canada,Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and Southeast Asia.

Mountains and Seas

Mountains and Seas is composed for the traditional pipa and sextet. The work is inspired by the primevalgoddess Nü Wa (also known as Nü Gua or Nü Kua) in The Classic of Mountains and Seas as well as theancient Chinese myths and legend. Nü Wa is the creatrix of humankind and the Mother of the Landwho symbolizes the greatness and solemnness of creating and producing life. At the begining of time,Nü Wa awoke. She used the moist clay to create mankind. Her hands unfolded and bloomed like piecesof flower petals. Nü Wa and Fu Xi (Fu-shi) tightly twisted themselves together like vines around a tree.Suddenly, the four pillars of the sky were broken. She ran quickly and shouted loudly, at the same timerepairing the pillars of heaven with smelted five-colored stones. Passing through time and space, NüWa’s life-affirming power unceasingly influences the contemporary sensibility and souls. Listen! Hersweet singing floats from the rosy clouds and the remote horizon. — Fuhong Shi

Mountains and Seas was commissioned by New Music Concerts with the financial assistance of The RoyalConservatory.

Norbert Palej is Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Toronto. He also serves as the directorof the University of Toronto gamUT chamber orchestra, and as the artistic director of the annual New MusicFestival. He holds composition degrees from Cornell University (D.M.A.), The Juilliard School (M.M.), and theNew England Conservatory (B.M.).

Recent commissions include an orchestral work for the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony, operas for Tapestry NewOpera and the Canadian Children's Opera Company, two string quartets for the Penderecki String Quartet, apercussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie, chamber works for the Canadian Art Song Project and for NEXUS, anda choral work for Soundstreams Canada, featuring the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Polish Chamber Choir, and theToronto Children's Chorus. His music has been performed worldwide. A guest composer at the 2012 BeijingModern Music Festival and the 2013 Thailand International Composition Festival, he is a recipient of the ToruTakemitsu Award from the Japan Society in Boston, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, theRobbins Family Prize in Music Composition, the Benjamin Britten Memorial Fellowship, the Susan and FordSchumann Fellowship, as well as Ontario and Toronto Arts Council Recording and Commissioning grants. Heparticipated in the Tapestry New Opera's Composer-Librettist Laboratory, the Minnesota Orchestra ComposersInstitute, the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Academy for New Music andAudio-Art in Tyrol, Austria, as well as the Tanglewood, Aspen, Caramoor, and Budapest music festivals. His recentCD was nominated for a JUNO Award.

The Grey HourCommissioned by NMC with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council

Between day’s indifferent eye (Set, dear sun!) and hollow night: the grey hour of hopelessness. All thatremains: Ächzen und Erbärmlich Weinen. But who hears? There are no ears here. — Norbert Palej

TEXT:

Zachodzze, s"oneczko, skoro masz zachodzic, Bo nas nogi bola po tym polu chodzic.Nogi bola chodzic, rece bola robic, Zachodzze, s"oneczko, skoro masz zachodzic.Za las, s"onko, za las, nie wygladaj na nas, Wrocisz do nas jutro, jak bedzie raniutko.

— old Polish peasant song

[Do set, dear sun, since you must set anyway, For our legs hurt from walking this field.Our legs hurt from walking, our arms hurt from working, Do set, little sun, since you must set anyway.Go behind the forest, dear sun, behind the forest, don’t peek out at us, You will return to us

tomorrow, in the early morning.]

Moj Boze![My God!]

Yanqiao Wang, composer and conductor, graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Beijing.He is a guest professor of CCM, and emeritus professor of Xinjiang Arts University. He is a member of the

Chinese Association of Musicians, and the North American Association of Composers. Before going abroad,he was composer in residence for the China National Symphony Orchestra, where he, Mr. Wu Zuqiang andothers composed the famous Chinese ballet The Red Detachment of Women and a pipa concerto, Prairie LittleSisters. He also composed music for the movies Large Running River, Drizzly Spring Rain, Wedding and others.

Mr. Wang went to Japan in 1980 as an International Cultural Exchange Foundation fellow, and then becameprofessor and deputy dean of the Japan International Academy of Music. Immigrating to Canada in 1991, Wangcontinued composing, teaching and conducting. Many of his students, including his son, Li Wang, are outstandingmusicians active in China and on the international music scene. Mr. Wang has been serving as music director andconductor of the Chinese Canadian Choir of Toronto for over 13 years.

Mr. Wang came to the attention of New Music Concerts last May when Xiaoyong Chen, who wrote a piece forBob Aitken and Weiwei Lan for performance at the 21C Festival, introduced Wang as his former teacher andmentor. When we confirmed that Weiwei Lan was returning to Toronto for tonight’s concert, NMC took theopportunity to invite Mr. Wang to compose a new piece for pipa and our ensemble for the occasion.

Impression: Qing Shui Jiang at Night

This is one of Mr. Yanqiao Wang’s productions on Chinese chamber folk music about love stories of theMiao ethnic group young people living along the banks of Qingshui River in Guizhou Province, China.

Quingshui River looks like a green silk belt, passing through hills, mountains, rocks and rapids. The Miao,a typical agrarian society in southwestern China, are generally adept singers and dancers and specializein love songs and songs for toasting. They celebrate many festivals, such as the Sister’ Meals Festival.This festival is considered as celebration of love, similar to the western Valentine’s Day. The traditionallove stories evolve around canvassing activities, especially during the nighttime, through the main datingway of antiphonal singing.

Toronto composer and performer Adam Scime has received many awards including the SOCAN YoungComposer’s Competition, the Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music, The Esprit Young Composer Competition,and the Electro-Acoustic Composer’s Competition. His music has been performed by many renownedensembles and soloists including Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, The Esprit Orchestra, The Gryphon Trio, NewMusic Concerts, Soundstreams, Nadina Mackie Jackson, Carla Huhtanen, and l'Orchestre de la Francophonieamong others.In November of 2012, Adam’s work was featured in the Emergents Concert Series, a series that showcasesemerging artists from across Canada and is hosted by the Music Gallery. In early 2012, Adam (along with threeother composers) wrote music for Rob Ford, An Operatic Life, an opera that attracted an audience of over 800people, and was received with much critical praise. New Music Concerts premiered Adam’s new trio, After the rioT,in March of 2011 for a concert celebrating the music of the prominent late English composer Jonathan Harvey,subsequently commissioning his In The Earth And Air for soprano Carla Huhtanen for the 2012/2013 concert season.Adam has been selected for numerous composer workshops including Domaine Forget, The SoundstreamsEmerging Composer Workshop, The Vocalypse Opera from Scratch Workshop, The National Arts Centre composertraining program, the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshop and the Chrysalis Workshop with the ContinuumContemporary Ensemble.

In addition to his activities as a composer, Adam also works frequently as a freelance double bassistspecializing in new music, appearing regularly with the Arraymusic Ensemble and New Music Concerts. Adamis currently studying with Gary Kulesha at the University of Toronto where he has been awarded a fullfellowship as a doctoral student in composition. He initially studied composition at The University of WesternOntario, where his teachers included Peter Paul Koprowski and Paul Frehner. Adam has also received privatelessons with Roberto Sierra, Anders Hillborg, Vinko Globokar, Colin Mathews, Chen Yi, and Osvaldo Golijov.

from what hand to speakeight settings of Oana Avasilichioaei

The tradition of oral storytelling is an ancient and intimate ritual between any type of narrator andaudience. The intimacy and connection between narrator and audience member is strengthened if thenarrator shapes the story to suit the needs of a particular listener. One may also experience theimmediacy and personal impact of the creative process taking place in front of them, and as a result

become empowered with the creative spirit. As a story is passed from person to person and retoldcountless times, any number of events may change, or perhaps be left out completely. This effect isoften augmented if translation from one language to another is to occur. How our narrator looks andacts may also have an influence on how we envision the story in our in mind. Throughout her book, WeBeasts, poet Oana Avasilichioaei has been inspired by how a collection of text may be altered and inturn experienced in the aforementioned ways. Oana’s text undergoes many transformations fromtranslation to unique page placement throughout We Beasts in order to engender a sense of flexibilityof implication in the reader. After reading We Beasts and speaking to Oana about the creative intentionbehind the book, I was quite enthusiastic to set a selection of this text to my music, and in turn createyet another mode of communicative metamorphosis for those who are to experience Oana’s words. Ihave extracted eight brief selections from We Beasts for this piece. Some of these selections are fullpoems, others are fragments of poems all of which I felt were especially suited not only for musicaltreatment, but also for my particular aesthetic. The piece was written especially for violinist VéroniqueMathieu and soprano Stacie Dunlop. My gratitude extends to Oana Avasilichioaei, and her publisher,Wolsak and Wynn, for allowing me to set the chosen text. I would like to dedicate this piece to Mr.Daniel Cooper whose generosity and dedication to Canadian music made this collaboration possible. Iwould also like to thank New Music Concerts for supporting this project. — Adam Scime

Composer Laurie Radford creates music for diverse combinations of instruments and voices, electroacousticmedia, and performers in interaction with computer-controlled signal processing of sound and image. His musicfuses timbral and spatial characteristics of instruments and voices with mediated sound and image in a sonicart that is rhythmically visceral, formally exploratory and sonically engaging.

His music has been performed and broadcast throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. He hasreceived commissions and performances from ensembles including the Aventa Ensemble, GroundSwell, Earplay,Ensemble Transmission, Esprit Orchestra, New Music Concerts, Le Nouvel Ensemble Modern, L'Ensemblecontemporain de Montréal, Pro Coro Canada, Totem contemporain, Trio Fibonacci, Trio Phoenix, the Penderecki,Bozzini and Molinari String Quartets, and the Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Montréal SymphonyOrchestras.

Radford’s music is available on empreintes DIGITALes, McGill Records, PeP Recordings, Clef Records, EclectraRecords, Centrediscs and Fidelio Audiophile Recordings. He has taught composition, electroacoustic musicand music technology at McGill University, Concordia University, Bishop’s University, University of Alberta, CityUniversity (London, UK), and is presently an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary.

meaninglessnessingisms

Aphorism. Mechanism. Fetishism. Hedonism.Euphemism. Eroticism. Schism. Prism.

Spoken language is fluid, malleable, in constant evolution as we push and pull the words and phrases, theaccents and rhythms that rush forth and express the forces that move about and within us. The borderbetween sound and meaning in language is in constant negotiation, defended or breeched, abandonedor embraced. Likewise, the “isms” that describe knowledge, belief, and action; they rise and fall, adaptand dissolve with the forces of change and the shifting of perspective. meaninglessnessingisms addressesthe inherent instability of language, the playground of sound and sense so akin to the world of music, yetso distinct as primal human utterance. The “play on words” here is overt as new words are created andstrive towards sense, established words are fragmented towards the nonsensical, and phase and meaningteeter on the brink of (in)coherence.

At times in support of the solo voice, at others times in competition, solo flute and harp serve as drivingforces in the work, with percussion and strings reacting, enabling, and providing commentary. The 8-channel audio processing bends and extends the voice and instruments, casting additional layers ofsound and (non)sense about the listener. — Laurie Radford

meaninglessnessingisms was commissioned by Robert Aitken and New Music Concerts of Toronto with fundinggenerously provided by Chantal Perrot.

44th season | 367th event

Saturday March 14, 2015 (8pm)Church of the Holy Trinity, 10 Trinity Square, Toronto

Sunday March 15, 2015 (4pm)St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church, 1541 Oakhill Drive, Oakville

New Music Concerts and Organix! present

Duo Szathmáry/TzschoppeZsigmond Szathmáry organ | Olaf Tzschoppe percussion

Programme:

Andreas Paparousos (Greece 1975) 2 II* (2010/12)for organ and percussion • written for O. Tzschoppe and Z. Szathmáry

Joh. Christian Schulz (Germany 1962) ORGANOLOGICS* op.54 (2007-2008)for organ and percussion • written for O. Tzschoppe and Z. Szathmáry

Annette Schlünz (Germany 1984) -verstummen-* (2004)for organ and percussion • dedicated to O. Tzschoppe

Claude Lefebvre (France 1931-2012) Der Nachtbote (Le Facteur de la nuit)* (1994)for organ • dedicated to Zsigmond Szathmáry

Olaf Tzschoppe (Germany 1962) Kolongala* (2008)for percussion

Zsigmond Szathmáry (Hungary 1939) Sense of Rhythm* (2011)for organ and percussion • dedicated to O. Tzschoppe

* Canadian premieres

Programme Notes

X Andreas Paparousos - 2 II (2010/12)

Andreas Paparousos was born in Athens in 1975. He studied Philosophy at the University of Athens and alsocomposition and music theory with Ioannis. He received his undergraduate diploma in 2002, followed by amaster’s degree in 2006. He also took piano lessons with Anastasia Parissi and organ lessons with ChristosParaskevopoulos. In 2005 he studied composition with Younghi Pagh-Paan and electronic composition withKillian Schwoon and Joachim Heinz at the University of the Arts Bremen. He is member of the composers unitEnargia in Athens and is a co-founder of the Ensemble New Babylon in Bremen.

2 II (2010): …dedicated to Domenico Scarlatti... Music as the highest art form should change radicallythe way of thinking through self-reflection that [it] can effectuate in the best case, otherwise [it] isuseless... — A. Paparousos

X Joh. Christian Schulz - ORGANOLOGICS op.54 (2007-2008)

Johann Christian Schulz was born in Karlsruhe in 1962. After private lessons in guitar, piano and composition(the latter with Robert Wittinger), he studied music-ethnology and musicology at the universities of Freiburgand Basel with Hans Oesch, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht and Hans Peter Haller among others as well ascomposition with Milko Kelemen at the Stuttgart College of Music. His compositions include both chamberand symphonic music but also works for electronic media and vocal ensembles. He is often called upon as aconductor in the area of new music and stage productions. As of 1984 he has pursued a parallel career as aproducer for many international labels and artists. After living in Ireland for more than 20 years he now residesas a freelance composer near Freiburg in the far south-west of Germany. He is a founding member and, since2012, the chairman of the composers association!Interessengemeinschaft Freiburg Komponisten e.V..

Organologics I, written for and dedicated to Zsigmond Szathmáry and Olaf Tzschoppe, has thesymmetrical construction of a winged altar, a triptych of the baroque period. The outer pictures of theclosed altar correspond to the beginning and the ending, the open sides with their dramatic anddynamic development point to an atmospheric dense but metrically freely notated central picture.Mistrusting symmetrical constructions a small Coda was added which takes up the theme of the centralpicture and ends quite conciliatorily in a major key. The tonal material originates from a sequence offifths ! (c-g-d-a-e-b-f#-c#…), from which all harmonious structures are derived. Challenging is thecombination of pitched percussion instruments (vibraphone and glockenspiel) with the more flexibleintonation of the organ, which can generate very lively mixtures and interferences one would ratherexpect to find in electronically produced music. — JC Schulz

X Annette Schlünz -verstummen- (2004)

Annette Schlünz is a German composer of mostly stage, chamber, vocal, and multimedia works. She studiedcomposition from a young age in Halle, becoming a pupil of Udo Zimmermann in Dresden and undertakingfurther studies in Berlin. She has taught in Germany and South America and been the recipient of numerousawards including the Hanns Eisler Prize and Heidelberg Artists’ Prize. She is!co-founder of the German-Frenchensemble Compagnie de Quatre and has collaborated with the French sculptor Daniel Depoutot in thepresentation of the opera TagNachtTraumstaub at EXPO 2000 in Hannover. She is actively engaged ininterchange between early and new music. Her!music is finely wrought and subtle in effect, employing sensitivesifting and transformation of colours.

- verstummen – (1994/2004): 20 years ago I wrote –verstummen– (to fall silent) for three percussionistsand organ, an unusually vehement work for my way of composing, after a text by Fernando Pessoa,“transversal rain”. Finally this piece led me a way to plumb out the extremes between slowness andfastest motion and the commuting between the softest low sounds and the painfully shrill ones. This isreinforced in the new version of the piece and leaves also for acoustical reasons a single percussionistwho will quieten down the organ. — A. Schlünz

X Claude Lefebvre - Der Nachtbote (Le Facteur de la nuit) (1994)

The French composer and poet Claude Lefebvre (1931-2012) trained with Darius Milhaud at the ParisConservatory and with Pierre Boulez at the Musik Akademie in Basel. In Metz he was appointed teacher ofanalysis and composition at the conservatory (1966) and also taught at the University. The initiator of the CERM

(Centre européen pour la recherche musicale), he founded and directed the festival of Rencontresinternationales de musique contemporaine de Metz (1972-1992), and later the Rendez-vous musique nouvellein Forbach (1996-2003). Claude Lefebvre composed both electro-acoustic and mixed or purely instrumentaland vocal works. His compositional research was founded upon contrasts between dissonant and consonantharmonies, chromatic chords as well as phenomena of tension and relaxation. He wrote pieces for unusualinstrumental formations as well as pedagogical works. He was also interested in relationships with other arts,notably painting, literature, and particularly the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

Der Nachtbote (Le Facteur de la nuit) (1994): The suggestions for this composition were provided bySzathmáry who performed the première performance in 1994 during the “International Studio-Weekfor New Sacred Music” in Cologne. The title of the piece indicates a poetic idea which inspired the

composition and, at same time, finds clear expression in the composers’ poetic verses. Lefebvretransformed this nocturnal vision into a broad tonal picture with even progressions and delicate-sounding layers of chords contrasting with abruptly changing tonal occurrences. Repetition andvariation are the structural principles which form the composition. The colour variations formulated inthis vision find their reflection in the choice of organ stops. Altogether, the conveyance of moods takesprecedence over the procedural principle.

X Olaf Tzschoppe - Kolongala (2008)

Olaf Tzschoppe is a member of the internationally renowned ensemble Percussions de Strasbourg and is afounding member of the ensemble for contemporary music ensemble SurPlus in Freiburg, Germany. Hefrequently tours throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. His artistic interest is centredon the solo repertoire and the chamber music of the 20th and 21st centuries, with a special focus on therepertoire for organ and percussion and interdisciplinary collaborations with other art forms. Besides frequentconcerts as a soloist Tzschoppe has performed in many other ensembles including the MusikFabrik in Cologne,the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt and the Klangforum in Vienna and is also frequently involved with improvisedmusic. He studied percussion in Freiburg with Bernhard Wulff and in Ann Arbor at the University of Michiganwith Michael Udow. Olaf Tzschoppe is Professor for percussion at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany.

Kolongala for solo percussion is a collage of sounds dominated by intense rhythms and ritual elements.There is a tension between the distance that restrains and!creates the immediacy with which one isdrawn to the texture of sound. After a furious drum introduction, the piece sinks into a reflective, almostmeditative atmosphere. It gains coherence and meaning over time through its hidden mysteries. Soundsof cymbals and tam-tam are interrupted by little eruptions and accents leading into a coda where thepiece finds its balance in the combination of previous elements. — Olaf Tschoppe

X Zsigmond Szathmáry - Sense of Rhythm (2011)

Zsigmond Szathmáry (b. 1939, Hódmez#vásárhely, Hungary) studied composition with Ferenc Szabó and organwith Ferenc Gergely at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest from 1958 to 1963. He pursued post-graduate instrumental education at first in Vienna with Alois Forer and after he moved to Germany from 1964at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule with Helmut Walcha. Parallel to this he participated from 1964 to 1967 in theCologne Courses for New Music, studying composition with Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen, andattending the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1964 and 1965, studying with GyörgyLigeti. After sitting his A-exams in church music in 1970, Szathmáry worked at first as cantor and organist inHamburg-Wellingsbüttel and from 1976 to 1978 at the Bremen Cathedral. From 1972 he was also active as alecturer at the conservatories in Lübeck, Bremen, and Hannover. In 1978 he accepted the position of professorof organ at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Besides guest professorships in Tokyo and Seoul, and organcourses, Szathmáry has developed a worldwide career not only as an organist and pianist, but also as aconductor. His artistic activities have been rewarded with numerous prizes and honours. Since 2007 Szathmáryhas been titular organist at St. Peter’s in Cologne.

Sense of Rhythm (2011): Making music together is just like talking, having a dispute and then reconciling, justlike real life with all its ups and downs. It demands rigour and mildness and above all understanding. Since bothparticipating instruments can unfold their particular features (organ: particularly harmony - percussion:particularly rhythm) a new dimension of greatness and chromaticity arises, which is fascinating for me. It is asif a new instrument has come to existence, which is much more than some instruments from the baroque erawith their build in toys such as drum or glockenspiel. I have dedicated Sense of Rhythm to my friend OlafTzschoppe. — Zsigmond Szathmáry

44th season | 368th event

Saturday April 4, 2015Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis St., Toronto

New Music Concerts presents

Ukrainian-Canadian ConnectionIlana Zarankin soprano

New Music Concerts EnsembleRobert Aitken direction

Programme:

Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine 1937) Drei Postludien (1981-82)Postludium No. 1 ‘D-S-C-H’ for soprano, violin, cello and piano

Postludium No. 2 for solo violin Postludium No. 3 for cello and pianoIlana Zarankin soprano Gregory Oh piano Stephen Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello

Gary Kulesha (Canada 1954) Pro et Contra (1995)Stephen Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello

Anna Pidgorna (Ukraine/Canada 1985) Weeping (2015)Robert Aitken !ute Keith Atkinson oboe Rick Sacks percussion Douglas Perry viola David Hetherington cello Roberto Occhipinti contrabass Anna Pidgorna conductor

World premiere, NMC commission

— Intermission —

Alex Pauk (Canada 1945) Beyond (1977)1. Beyond 2. So Light! 3. Jade Piece 4. Jungle 5. Photograph

Robert Aitken !ute Keith Atkinson oboe Stephen Clarke electric organ Gregory Oh electric piano Rick Sacks percussion David Hetherington cello Roberto Occhipinti electric bass Alex Pauk conductor

Karmella Tsepkolenko (Ukraine 1955) Cantata: Three Autumnal Elegies (2015)Ilana Zarankin soprano Keith Atkinson oboe Max Christie clarinet Stephen Clarke piano

Stephen Sitarski violin David Hetherington cello Robert Aitken conductorWorld premiere, NMC commission

Valentin Silvestrov - Drei Postludien (1981-82)

Valentin Silvestrov was born on 30 September 1937 in Kiev [Kyiv]. He came to music relatively late, at the age of fifteen,and was initially self taught. From 1955 to 1958 he took courses at an evening music school while training to become a civilengineer; from 1958 to 1964 he studied composition and counterpoint, respectively, with Boris Lyatoshinsky and LevRevutsky at Kiev Conservatory. He then taught at a music studio for several years. He has been a freelance composer inKiev since 1970. Silvestrov is considered one of the leading representatives of the “Kiev avant-garde,” which came to publicattention around 1960 and was violently criticized by the proponents of the conservative Soviet musical aesthetic. In the1960s and 1970s his music was hardly played in his native city; premieres, if given at all, were heard only in Russia, primarilyin Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), or in the West. Despite these successful performances in the West (the composer himselfwas not allowed to attend them), Silvestrov’s music met with no response in his own country and tended to remain “subrosa.” Since the end of the 1980s the number of performances increased, even in Russia and Ukraine. Silvestrov’s musicwas celebrated in Moscow (1989, 1995), St. Petersburg, (1994), and at the Silvestrov 60th Birthday Festival in Kiev (1998).During the 1990s, Silvestrov's music was heard throughout Europe as well as in Japan and the United States. Both in hisearlier avant-garde period and after his stylistic volte-face of the 1970s, Silvestrov has preserved his independence ofoutlook. In recent decades he has dispensed with the conventional compositional devices of the avant-garde and discovereda 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 one of the crucial prerequisites for the continued existence of music resides inmelody, which he also regards in an expanded sense of the term. This same approach also governs Silvestrov’s instrumentalmusic, which is always richly infused with both logical and melodic tension. — Courtesy of Schott Music GmbH

Postludium No. 1 ‘D-S-C-H’ (soprano, violin, cello, piano)Postludium No. 2 (solo violin)Postludium No. 3 (cello, piano)

Silvestrov believes that a coda is more than something which brings a work to an end. It is one of the mostimportant parts of a composition, or at least just as important as the other sections. His cantatas and symphoniesall have lengthy codas, and so do his songs, in which the postludes sometimes seem to take on a life of their own.These lingering “postludes” subsequently evolved to form a new genre. The process began with the chambertriptych Three Postludes. The first Postlude DSCH for violin, violoncello, piano and voice (1981) pays homage toShostakovich in a deliberately subdued manner (which is in stark contrast to the monumental and not infrequentlyunoriginal works dedicated to Shostakovich by certain Soviet composers). The second Postlude for solo violin(1981) is based on the contrast between a cantabile baroque improvisation and a virtuoso toccata. The thirdPostlude for violoncello and piano (1982) is an elegiac miniature, which is similar to the “postludes” of Silvestrov’ssongs.” — Tatiana Frumkis

Gary Kulesha - Pro et Contra (1995)

Gary Kulesha is one of Canada’s most active and most respected musicians. He is principally a composer, but is also activeas a conductor, pianist, and teacher. Mr. Kulesha’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by musiciansand ensembles internationally. His work spans more than 40 years, and several of his works have entered the repertoire ofperformers all over the world. His music is extensively recorded and broadcast. From 1988 to 1992, he was Composer InResidence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra. From 1993 to 1995, he was Composer In Residence with theCanadian Opera Company. He has been the Composer Advisor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since 1995, has writtenseveral works for the orchestra, and has conducted them frequently. Mr. Kulesha has guest conducted many of the mostimportant orchestras in Canada. He has appeared with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra,the orchestras of Kitchener-Waterloo, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Nova Scotia, and Victoria, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra,the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, Thirteen Strings of Ottawa, and many others. He has premiered hundreds of new works,and has conducted standard repertoire extensively. He has also been active as a recording artist in a wide variety ofrepertoire. Mr. Kulesha is also on staff at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, where he teaches composition andperformance. He has worked with young composers throughout his career, and many of his students and the composers hehas worked with are now important professionals throughout the world.

The title Pro et Contra (“for and against”) has no meaning beyond the obvious musical qualities it mirrors in the piece.The basic material of each section is presented jointly, and roles are then reversed. Each instrument “argues” a point ofview about the material, sometimes very similar to what has just been said, sometimes rather different. Overall, the twoparts seem to be in agreement about most things, but many ideas are repeated upside down or backwards as they arepassed to the next instrument. There is a great deal of canon throughout the work, much of it very close canon. Jaggedpointillistic lines are often stated in not-quite unison, with slight variations of rhythm and octave displacement betweenthe instruments. Pro et Contra was written for David Stewart and Bryan Epperson. The Ontario Arts Council providedhalf the funds for this commission. — Gary Kulesha

Anna Pidgorna - Weeping (2015)

Anna Pidgorna (b. 1985) is a Ukrainian-born, Canadian-raised composer and media artist who combines sound, visual arts,writing and carpentry to create works that are dramatic and picturesque. Her part-time work on a heritage house renovationin Vancouver inspired Through closed doors, a violin duo inscribed on a restored antique door, which was premiered by theThin Edge New Music Collective in Toronto in September 2014. Her fascination with Ukrainian folksong took her on a journeythrough Ukrainian villages in the fall of 2012, with generous funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. The songs shecollected inspired several works, including the chamber opera On the Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which was awarded the BMOMainstage Award in Boston Metro Opera’s Contempo Festival Competition in 2014. Ms. Pidgorna is a recipient of two SOCANFoundation Emerging Composers’ awards and has taken part in composition workshops at Carnegie Hall with Kaija Saariaho,Ottawa’s National Arts Centre with Gary Kulesha and Chen Yi, and Toronto’s Soundstreams with R. Murray Schafer and JulietPalmer. Her Light-play through curtain holes represented Canada at the ISCM World New Music Days 2013 festival in Vienna.Ms. Pidgorna holds an MMus from the University of Calgary, where she studied with David Eagle, and a BA from Mount AllisonUniversity. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Princeton University.

Weeping is my emotional and musical response to the death and suffering happening in Ukraine during its fightfor independence and a better way of life. I was born in Ukraine and still have many relatives there, so my connectionto the Revolution of Dignity and the ensuing conflict in the eastern and southern parts of the country is painfullypersonal. This work is a way for me to channel my emotions and mourn the lives lost or broken in the fight. I havedrawn much of the musical material from traditional weeping songs, which women sing at funerals and cemeteriesto mourn the dead. They are half-sung, half-chanted dirges made up of repetitive and somewhat formulaic phrasesinfused with crying and grief. The effect is both emotionally devastating and soothingly meditative. Though Irecorded hours of singing in villages throughout the country, I was not able to experience the weeping songs

firsthand. Understandably, people do not grieve on command in front of strangers. This is also a dying and raretradition, which if difficult to come by in the 21st century. I was lucky to find a small collection of recordings inarchives and private collections of ethnographers, and have endeavoured to capture the timbral and expressivequalities of each voice using the idiosyncrasies of the instruments to imitate the unintended vocal cracks andhiccups of the singers. The structure of the piece, with each instrument moving largely independently to create anoccasionally cacophonous texture, was inspired by a recording of women grieving at a cemetery on a designatedday of mourning.

— Anna Pidgorna

Alex Pauk - Beyond (1977)

Alex Pauk has had much to do with revitalizing the Canadian orchestral music scene for audiences and Canadian composersalike. By founding Esprit Orchestra in 1983, he has provided Canada’s leading home and performance platform for neworchestral music. In addition to conducting an outstanding annual series of concerts in Koerner Hall, one of Canada’s finestperforming venues, he has led the Orchestra on several Canadian and European tours and has created innovativeperformances in alternative locations such as night clubs, art galleries and the outdoors. He has conducted the CBCVancouver Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Québec Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver New Music Society, DaysMonths and Years to Come, the Hannaford Street Silver Band and the Toronto Symphony. As a composer he has composedmore than sixty works and has a wide range of experience with works for every kind of performing ensemble in the concerthall and for theatre, film, television and dance companies. In 2007, Alex Pauk was awarded the prestigious Canada Councilfor the Arts Molson Prize, and in 1999 was named Musician of the Year by peers at the Toronto Musicians’ Association. Hehas also been a recipient of the Louis Applebaum Award for Film Score Composition as well as the Golden Sheaf Awardfor Best Film Score at The Yorkton Film Festival. In 2014, in recognition for his significant lifetime contribution to Canadianorchestral music, Alex Pauk was appointed to the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honour.

Beyond was composed for the Vancouver new music group Days, Months, and Years to Come. As conductor andkeyboard player, I helped found the group and led it during the 1970s. The ensemble was known for its ability toplay everything from really difficult, hard edge new music, to conceptual or performance art pieces involving bitsof theatre. During that time I was also writing for theatre, conducting pit orchestras at the Vancouver Playhouseand working with jazz elements in my music. This wide range of experience came into play when I composedBeyond. As an alternative to compositional trends that were increasingly alienating audiences, the piece embracednew music techniques but was free of the orthodoxies of that period’s schools of thought in contemporary music.The work aimed to move beyond being strictly new music, old music, pop music or jazz. It was my way of creatingmore accessible new music during a time when some other composers were doing this by writing in post-modern,neo-Romantic styles. The work has a floating form, sometimes creating states of suspension, sometimes divinginto jazzy licks. In some instances, improvisation is required from the performers, at other times, they must playlayers of complex, strictly notated rhythms. Parts of the piece ask for utmost simplicity in playing while othersections indicate dense, complex improvised textures. Beyond is in five connected movements, each named tosuggest a feeling, space or image.— Alex Pauk

Karmella Tsepkolenko - Cantata: Three Autumnal Elegies (2015)

Karmella Tsepkolenko was born in 1955 (Odessa, Ukraine). She graduated from the Odessa State Special Secondary MusicSchool as a pianist and composer. She continued her education at the Odessa State A.V. Nezhdanova Conservatoire (now theNational Music Academy) as a composer under Prof. O. Krasotov and as a pianist with Prof. L. Ginzburg (1979). She receivedher PhD at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute with Prof. G. Tsypin. Tsepkolenko attended composition master-classes inGermany (Darmstadt, 1992, 1994; Bayreuth, 1993) and has been awarded diplomas and prizes at Soviet All-Union andinternational composers’ competitions. She has received creative residences, grants and scholarships from the Heinrich BöllFoundation (Germany, 1995), She is the author of more than 100 music works, most of which have been produced on 12 CDsand broadcast in many countries. Tsepkolenko is the founder and Artistic Director of the annual International Festival ofModern Art Two Days and Two Nights of New Music in Odessa. She is the founder and chair of the International PublicOrganization Association New Music – the Ukrainian Section of International Society of Contemporary Music/ISCM. She isProfessor of composition at Odessa National A. V. Nezhdanova Music Academy and, since 2005, Secretary of the Board ofthe National Ukrainian Composers’ Union. She was awarded the B. Ljatoshyns’kyj Prize (2001), chevalier of the Chapter Journal“Ji” (2012), Laureate of “Honorary Distinctions” from the Odessa Regional State Administration (2014) and is a Honoured ArtsWorker of Ukraine (2006).

The cantata Three Autumnal Elegies on poems of Oksana Zabuzhko for soprano and ensemble (Odessa, 2014)consists of three parts: September, October, November. Each month represents a certain state. September – astate of nature, which goes into a state of mind. October – the movement, all the changes taking place in October.November – a symbol of cool, coming cold, fading life, stop time. Three Autumnal Elegies was commissioned byrenowned Canadian composer, flutist, and artistic director Robert Aitken for New Music Concerts with the financialsupport of the Shevchenko Foundation, John Stanley and Helmut Reichenbächer. — Karmella Tsepkolenko

44th season | 369th event

Sunday May 17, 2015Jeanne Lamon Hall, 427 Bloor St. W., Toronto

New Music Concerts presents

The Belgian ConnectionÉthel Guéret soprano | Gregory Oh piano

NMC Ensemble | Robert Aitken solo !ute & directionBrian Current guest conductor

Programme:

Henri Pousseur (Belgium 1929-2009) Sur le Qui-Vive: 3rd Movement (1985)Éthel Guéret soprano

Henri Pousseur Huitième Vue sur les jardins interdits (1973; arr. Michel Gonneville 2015)Dianne Aitken flute Cary Ebli oboe Max Christie clarinet Fraser Jackson bassoon

Gregory Oh piano Rick Sacks percussion Stephen Sitarski violin Douglas Perry viola David Hetherington cello Adam Scime contrabass Brian Current conductor

World Premiere

Jean-Luc Fafchamps (Belgium 1960) Lettre Sou!e: Sh(ìn) (Pour moi, dans le silence...) (2009)Dianne Aitken flute Max Christie clarinet Rick Sacks percussion Gregory Oh piano

Stephen Sitarski violin Douglas Perry viola David Hetherington cello Robert Aitken conductor

Pierre Bartholomée (Belgium 1937) Chant de route “À la mémoire de Henri Pousseur” (2011)Éthel Guéret soprano Dianne Aitken flute Max Christie clarinet Gregory Oh piano Stephen Sitarski violin David Hetherington violoncello Robert Aitken conductor

— Intermission —

Karel Goeyvaerts (Belgium 1923-1993) Aquarius-Tango (1984) and Pas à pas (1985)Gregory Oh piano

Michel Gonneville (Canada 1950) Henricare’s Flight (2015)Robert Aitken solo !ute Dianne Aitken !ute Cary Ebli oboe Max Christie clarinet Fraser Jackson bassoon

Rick Sacks percussion Gregory Oh synthesizer Stephen Sitarski violin Douglas Perry viola David Hetherington cello Adam Scime contrabass Brian Current conductor

World Premiere, New Music Concerts / Canada Council commission

Henri Pousseur Sur le Qui-Vive: 3rd Movement (1985) - reprise

! Henri Pousseur

A lready before 1950, the musical studies of Henri Pousseur (Belgium, 1929-2009) had seen him introduced toSchoenberg’s dodecaphonism and expressionism, and to Webern’s music. Quickly befriended by Boulez,Goeyvaerts, Stockhausen and the like, he was to partake actively in the musical revolution of the 50s and 60s, with

prominent contributions to the development of integral serialism, of aleatoric composition, of electroacoustic and mixedmusic, as well by his works as by his theoretical writings.

A major turn in his approach of music and composition occurred in the first years of the 60s when he sought to go beyondthe auto-imposed language and stylistic limitations that characterized the music of his generation. Labeled (by himself)“le refus du refus,” initiated while working on his emblematic “mobile opera” Votre Faust (with the French writer MichelButor), this turn could be summed up by two concepts: “generalized periodicity” and the “integrative reconsideration ofharmony,” that would allow the reintegration of repetition, thematism and consonance in a larger vocabulary and languagethat would allow borrowings, allusions and crossovers, all these being considered as a continuation and a generalization ofintegral serialism. Other exemplary works of this new attitude are Pousseur’s Couleurs croisées, Vue sur les jardins interdits,La seconde apothéose de Rameau; but one could associate Berio’s Sinfonia and Stockhausen’s Mantra with the same trend,which can be considered as an anticipation of musical postmodernism.

Pousseur’s socialist political opinions and concrete-utopian striving for a better society (inspired notably by the germanphilosopher Ernst Bloch) are everywhere to be seen, understood and felt in his works and writings. It also permeated hisconception and accomplishments in the educational and pedagogical domains, notably as director of the Conservatoire royalde Liège (1975-1986) and as inspirer of the Institut de pédagogie musicale of Paris.

Henri Pousseur - Sur le Qui-Vive: 3rd Movement (1985)

This monody is the third movement of Sur le qui-vive, a ten-movement work for voice and five instrumentalists,composed in 1985 on texts by Pousseur’s long-time friend and collaborator, Michel Butor. These texts convey differentvisions of the future and are organized here in such a succession that, along with the music, they raise to euphoricutopia (movement 1 to 6) and then fall to funereal realism (the remaining 4 movements). The monody, whose fourverses all start with a promising Un jour (One day), is located on the ascending side of the form. Its general melodiccontour itself is slowly ascending, following the words of Butor (from the caverns and marshes to the sky and stars).The intervallic structure of the monody tends also to go along with the semantic purposes and the significance ofthe text: augmentation of the initial interval of each verse, on Un jour; evocative variations of the “modal network ofnotes” (the “harmonic climate” - HP) used for each verse, with its increasing contraction in the high register; etc.

The choice of this monody to open and close this homage concert to Henri Pousseur and to his essential utopianconvictions, was for me evident. The structure of my own piece, Henricare’s Flight, its general ascending direction,some of its motivic aspects even, owe a great deal to it. — Michel Gonneville

Henri Pousseur - Huitième Vue sur les jardins interdits (1973; arr. Michel Gonneville 2015)

Originally composed for saxophone quartet and premiered at a saxophone congress in Bordeaux in 1973, Vue sur lesjardins interdits has undergone a series of arrangements, mostly by Pousseur himself, but also by a former student(Jean-Louis Robert) and by a musician long acquainted with the composer (Jean-Pierre Peuvion). This arrangementby Michel Gonneville will be the eighth.

The piece is built on a choral by Samuel Scheidt (XVIIth century), heard about halfway through the form, with itsharmonic movement slightly amplified. All the rest of the music is deduced from it, becoming all the more foreignand modern as one goes away from the quote, upwards or downwards. As Pousseur was well on the way in thecomposition process came the news of the death of Bruno Maderna, an Italian composer and conductor who wasalso a very generous and dedicated figure of European contemporary music, and as such, well appreciated byPousseur. This event has influenced the ending of Vue towards its introspective character.

An emblematic work in Pousseur’s catalog, representative of his effort to technically and organically integrateapparently irreconcilable harmonic styles, Vue is also one of the backbones of another major contribution of thecomposer, La seconde apothéose de Rameau, an extensive “musical polemic” for large ensemble, composed in1981. — Michel Gonneville

! Jean-Luc Fafchamps

J ean-Luc Fafchamps (Bruxelles, 1960) is active both as a pianist and as a composer. As a member of the EnsembleIctus, Jean-Luc Fafchamps participated in numerous projects (premieres of works by Lindberg, Reich, Aperghis,Leroux, etc) but also in multi-disciplinary performances, particularly accompanying dance (for Rosas / Anne-Teresa

de Keersmaeker) and theatre. He contributed to numerous recordings (on the Sub Rosa label) with the Ictus Ensemble,with the Bureau des Pianistes, with several singers, and as a soloist.

First designed for theatre and dance, his work gradually shifted to pure music.!After devoting himself to writing for variousgroups in which the piano played a central role, his interest for non-tempered harmonies and polyphony of timbre lead him toother sound combinations.!He is currently developing several long-term projects in which his taste for paradoxical constructionsand his sense of synthesis are blossoming into mutually referential pieces.!Since 2000, he has worked on the development of avast network of cycles – the Sufi Letters – a manifesto for writing, for stylistic openness as rhetoric, and for the use of analogcorrespondences as the basis for a system.

His compositions were hailed by the UNESCO International Rostrum of Young Composers and won him the Octave desMusiques Classiques 2006. The Ictus Ensemble, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Musiques Nouvelles, the LiègePhilharmonic Orchestra, the Danel quartet, and many more have performed his work, notably during such internationalfestivals as Présence, Ars Musica, the Venice Biennale, and in Warsaw, Budapest, Sidney, Berlin, Lima, Copenhagen, etc.The last part of his triptych for piano Back to... was written as imposed work for the semi-finals of the Queen ElisabethCompetition in 2010. His work is recorded on Sub Rosa (five monographic recordings) and on Fuga Libera. He has taughtpiano, chamber music and applied and interactive composition. He currently teaches musical analysis at Arts (Conservatoirede Mons).

Jean-Luc Fafchamps - Lettre Sou!e: Sh(ìn) (2009)

Sufi Letter: Sh(ìn) (Pour moi, dans le silence...) for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano and string trio was commissionnedby the Spectra Ensemble and premiered in Ghent on April 4, 2009, conducted by Filip Rathe�. Shìn is the ninth piecein a large project “Lettres Soufies,” a reflection on musical writing, time, memory and form, in which I exploit thesymbolism as described by certain Sufi masters — Sufism is a mysticism related to Islam — as a key to poeticcorrespondences. Every single piece is, at the same time, a research into a specific sonorous status (with a materialvoyaging freely from one piece to another) and an implementation or a transformational logic.

Shìn, associated with acceptation, white aloe, the cleansing fire, constitutes a form of lamento, or rather a statusof abandonment and renunciation where a silent and restrained lamentation is dreamt, a plaint adressed to noother one, like a stupor enclosed too intimately. Timid remnants [souvenirs or premonitions] on a background ofmurmurs. From this state, through a slow transformation — svelte in this case like an advent of the murmur, a recognitionof its reality — emerge the necessary conditions in expectation of consolation. — Jean-Luc Fafchamps

! Pierre Bartholomée

T he professional activities of Pierre Bartholomée (Bruxelles, 1937) include both domains of composition andinterpretation. As a friend of Henri Pousseur as early as 1962, he co-founded the Musique Nouvelle ensemble andthe Centre de recherches musicales de Wallonie. His catalogue of works includes three operas, nine symphonic pieces,

a Requiem, an oratorio, two String Quartets, an Organ Book, song cycles, and many pieces for ensembles, duos and soloinstruments. His works have been played in Europe, in the United States, in Canada and in China. Many are available onCDs. Both as a pianist and then as a conductor, his repertoire encompasses from Bach to Xénakis (Haydn, Beethoven,Schumann, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky, Berio, Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Takemitsu) with premieres ofBerio, Boesmans, Bon, Brouwer, Constant, de Pablo, Gagneux, Goeyvaerts, Höller, Joachim, Korelis, Ledoux, Longtin,Maiguashka, Frédérick Martin, Miroglio, Denis Pousseur, Henri Pousseur, Reibel, Rens, Robert, Rzewski, Van Rossum, Weeksand many others. As artistic director of the Orchestre philharmonique de Liège (Belgium) for 22 seasons, he conducted athome and on tour (USA, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, China, Japan), collaborated with many great soloists and developed asubstantial discography. He taught musical analysis at the Brussels Conservatory. He is teacher emeritus at the CatholicUniversity of Louvain (Leuven), where he was the first composer in residence. He is currently a member of the Royal Academyof Belgium.

Pierre Bartholomée - Chant de route “À la mémoire de Henri Pousseur” (2011)

Henri Pousseur died as I was preparing a concert of his works to celebrate his 80th birthday. His disappearance leftthe music world orphaned of one of its most significant composers and thinkers. A year later, given a commissionfrom the Belgian Ensemble ON, I composed this piece, Chant de route, to his memory. It was premiered at theBrussels Conservatory, in the great concert hall.

Henri Pousseur wrote several poems towards the end of his life and the title of one these was used for my ownpiece. I wanted to write a vocal piece. Anyone familiar with Pousseur knew how a magnificent and very movingpraxis he had of popular singing. I therefore borrowed some verses from his poem Chant de route, along with someothers taken from a long text written by Michel Butor after Henri’s death. I linked these fragments with my someof my own words, words of calling. Chant de route is a piece about death, about time that flees, about noise andagitation, about solitude also, the solitude of a voice, which longs to be heard from a whirling desert. It is a violentand rapid music, a kind of hasty walking, of a rondo type, from which music seems to dwindle, after some last jolts.The voice of Henri Pousseur is here omnipresent, even in some melodic inflexions. — Pierre Bartholomée

! Karel Goeyvaerts

A fter studies at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, Karel Goeyvaerts (Antwerp, 1923-1993) continuedin composition under Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen at the National Conservatory in Paris. TheSonata for Two Pianos (1950-51), can be seen as a synthesis of certain of Messiaen’s ideas with Webern’s application

of dodecaphony, of which Goeyvaerts made detailed analyses. This sonata was to have a major influence on the younggeneration of avant-gardists, particularly on Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1953, Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen, together withseveral other composers, realised the first music produced by means of electronic generators. In 1957, Goeyvaertstemporarily withdrew from the musical world, although he continued to compose. In 1970, he was appointed by the BelgianRadio and Television (BRT) as producer at the Institute for Psycho-Acoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent, and lateron, head producer for New Music at Belgian Radio 3 in Brussels. In 1985, he was chosen Chairperson of the UNESCOInternational Composers’ Rostrum. Goeyvaerts was a member of the Royal Academy for Science, Letters and Fine Arts ofBelgium. In 1992, he was named as first holder of the KBC Chair for New Music in the department of Musicology at theCatholic University of Louvain (Leuven). His residency was interrupted by his sudden death in 1993.

After being a pioneer of the generalization of serial technique and of pure or mixed electronic music in the 50s and 60s,Goeyvaerts thereafter developed a very personal style of experimental, aleatoric and finally repetitive and neo-tonal music.Keeping his bent for abstraction since the strictly serial music of the 1950s, Goeyvaerts remained an innovative artist to theend of his life, despite the many changes in style and apparently restorative movements he went through. In his opusultimum, the large-scale opera Aquarius (1983-93), all these elements flow together.

Karel Goeyvaerts - Aquarius-Tango (1984) and Pas à pas (1985)

These two works exemplify the style of Goeyvaerts’ later period, extending from 1975 to the composer’s death in1993 and stamped with a minimalism / evolutive repetitivism label. Although the works of this period (often associatedwith the use of consonances and of modal or neo-tonal harmonic contents) would appear to be in completeopposition with the “integral serialism” and experimentalism characteristic of Goeyvaerts’ preceding 25 years, a moreattentive audition and analysis will show a remarkable constancy of attitude: similar construction techniques lead tosimilarly well controlled, almost austere formal behaviours.

Both piano pieces are based upon materials taken from the “opera” Aquarius, a large-scale opus that would occupythe composer until his death. Scored for 8 sopranos and 8 baritones (mostly heard in groups rather than as soloists)and orchestra, with no real libretto and no precise plot or staging instructions, invoking an apocalyptic harmonioussocietal form, the work was bound to arouse admiration in his colleague and compatriot Henri Pousseur, becauseof its stylistic eclectism, of its integrative qualities and its sociological thematic concerns, enough to want to honourthe memory of Goeyvaerts through an equally large-scaled Aquarius-Mémorial, composed between 1994 and 1999.

If the Aquarius-Tango is to be played “avec une élégance sophistiquée et généreuse,” Pas à pas will be perceivedas more violent and direct. — Michel Gonneville

!Michel Gonneville

A fter composition studies with Gilles Tremblay at the Montréal Conservatory, and then with Karlheinz Stockhausenand Henri Pousseur in Europe, Michel Gonneville (born in Montréal in 1950) returned to his native city in 1978, startinga professional life dedicated mostly to composing and teaching. He later completed a PhD in composition at the

Université de Montréal (under Serge Garant, John Rea and Marcelle Deschênes).

He has composed works for and has been played by numerous groups and soloists, including the Société de MusiqueContemporaine du Québec, the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Orchestresymphonique de Montréal under Charles Dutoit, the the Quatuors Molinari and Bozzini, the Trio Fibonacci, pianists LouiseBessette, Bruce Mather, and Marc Couroux, New Music Concerts and Arraymusic (Toronto), the Aventa! Ensemble (Victoria),the Crash Ensemble (Dublin),!the Camerata de las Americas (México), the Hilliard Ensemble (London), etc. His works havebeen performed in Montréal, Québec, Toronto, Vancouver, New-York, Metz, London, Paris, Liège, Mons, Bonn, Köln, Mexico,Victoria, Winnipeg, Calgary, and have received numerous broadcasts.

Michel Gonneville received the prestigious Prix Serge-Garant 1994 (awarded by la Fondation Émile-Nelligan) in recognitionfor the overall quality of his work. His piece Chute/Parachute (1989)!has been broadcast in more than 27 countries. He alsocreated several works in collaboration with visual artists and choreographers, or in collective works with fellow composers.He headed or collaborated in the organization of a number of music events (around Henri Pousseur, Pierre Bartholomée,other Belgian or Mexican composers, etc), wrote many specialized or general articles on music creation, took part in manycomposition juries, etc. Michel Gonneville has taught composition and analysis at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréalsince 1997. In March 2008, New Music Concerts of Toronto dedicated the Gonneville and his protégés concert to his musicand that of his former students.

Michel Gonneville - Henricare’s Flight (2015)

Henricare’s Flight is dedicated to the memory of Henri Pousseur (1929-2009). As a composer of the post-wargeneration, along with Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Goeyvaerts, etc., Pousseur had been profoundly involvedin the musical avant-garde adventure of that period (development of new serial techniques, of electroacoustic andaleatoric music, etc.), until he felt, at the turn of the 1960s, the need to go beyond the collectively self-imposedlimits of this adventure. His effort, his “refus du refus,” led him to reintegrate in his musical language elements thatwere temporarily discarded by his generation (consonance, thematism, periodicity, repetition, etc) and to furtherdevelop techniques allowing this reintegration. Works like Votre Faust, Couleurs croisées, Vue sur les jardins interditsand La seconde apothéose de Rameau are accomplished examples of this almost “pre-postmodern” reorientation.

A well respected composer, pedagogue and theoretician, Henri Pousseur was also a politically committed man.Highly sensitive to the injustices of our world, he often expressed in his own works his profound desire of a betterfuture for humanity, notably inspired by the writings of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch. In Pousseur, the

konkrete Utopie of the latter took the form of a new version of the myth of Icarus, where the hero could comecloser to the sun because of heat resisting wings he had build for himself; a metaphor of the quest for an idealhumanity for which we are responsible to work patiently.

As a gift for Pousseur’s 70th birthday, I composed in 1999 a short piano piece whose title, Henricare, parti lécherles étoiles, associated a fragment of a poem by Michel Butor to a composite name now reused for Henricare’sFlight. A unique movement from the lowest register to the highest notes is common to both works, here expandedover 20 minutes. This movement is heard in the solo flute part as well as in the accompanying ensemble.

While composing this elegy, a strange image took shape : that of a group of shamans or priests — “impersonated”by the instrumentalists — who accompany a dying person or commemorate his death. The solo flute would thenbe the voice of that person, closely embraced by the microtonal synthesizer playing an accordion sound (thisomnipresent shining shadow could very well evoke the acouphens associated with the hyperacousia suffered byPousseur in his last years). I also imagined a group of these shamans (the instrumental ensemble) imitating thetaking-off, the flight, the movement of the gigantically large wings of this departing Icarus, with the percussionpunctuating hieratically the processional ceremony.

Composed as an homage to a man with whom I studied and worked between 1976 and 1978, and whose ideas andworks have been of profound influence on my own, Henricare’s Flight is also thankfully dedicated to flutist,composer and artistic director Robert Aitken, who offered me the occasion of this project, as well as to themusicians and collaborators of New Music Concerts. It was funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts.

— Michel Gonneville, March 8th, 2015

followed without interruption by the reprise of:

Henri Pousseur - Sur le Qui-Vive: 3rd Movement (1985)