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January – February 2015 | Issue 4

WINNIPEG NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL2015

wnmf.caAre you ready?

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Alexander Mickelthwate Welcome Message

ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATEMusic Director, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

Welcome!The Winnipeg New Music Festival is a very special part of our city. It shines an international light on Winnipeg by bringing world-renowned artists together for a week of new musical collaborations.

In fact, the 2015 festival reflects the eclecticism of our time. We are constantly browsing through an extreme range of ideas, images and topics on the internet, on social media, or even on the evening news. The festival traverses these cultural extremes, which are often standing right next to each other. It features the Arditti Quartet, the most polished contemporary string quartet in the world, standing next to Sarah Neufeld from Arcade Fire who is next to John Zorn, one of New York’s most spirited independent composer /creators. This next to the lush, cinematic music of Giya Kancheli which is the polar opposite of Georg Friedrich Haas. Haas’ music functions almost more vertically than horizontally, with a new harmonic language full of a sophisticated beauty. Our own Andrew Balfour has created a powerful new work called Take the Indian, a meditation on the experiences of survivors of the residential school system.

One connection that runs throughout WNMF 2015 is James Tenney, a sort of godfather for many composers and linked to Georg Friedrich Haas and John Luther Adams. Tenney created a new way of looking at


WNMF2015

music which is largely outside the classical tradition. He inspired his acolytes to create completely new sound worlds that have not been heard before.

2015 is ultimately a trendsetting year. We go where other festivals have not gone before and draw connections between the many flavours of music today. In short, it is a cultural feast of new and a festival we won’t soon forget. Are you ready?

I hope so because we’re about to start!

Alexander Mickelthwate, Festival Co-curator & Music Director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

Matthew Patton Welcome Message

MATTHEW PATTONCo-Curator, Winnipeg New Music Festival

New music can be a strange animal and as with any art, it is important to sort through its own historical baggage. But I think it’s a good idea to keep these and other truths still to be discovered in mind as we begin an invigorating week of new music, art, and discussion. And most importantly of all, let there be the simple act of listening...

WNMF2015

As the New Music Festival begins, one thing that stuck with me was the following. Over ten years ago, music critic Kyle Gann wrote something about the state of new music. Here it is:

“There is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music; Beethoven’s sketchbooks show how hard he struggled to achieve simplicity. It occasionally happens that profound music is difficult to understand, but it does not follow from this that music that is difficult to understand is therefore profound. Most difficult-to-understand music is simply unclear. The value of music is not proportional to the quantity or intricacy of its technical apparatus. Like many great composers throughout the ages, Mozart believed in an ‘artless art’ in which the effort of composing is hidden beneath an effortless surface; this is as it should be. The audience wants to be delighted, inspired, and not reassured that the composer is highly educated and worked hard. There is nothing wrong with occasionally writing an ostentatiously technical piece for the delectation of one’s colleagues, but to do nothing but that is to pretend that composers have no obligation to society, and by extension that neither do doctors, politicians, generals, or any other profession. A piece of music is not good just because it is popular, nor is it bad just because it is popular.”

Matthew Patton, Co-curator of the Winnipeg New Music Festival

“There is nothing wrong with simplicity.” — Kyle Gann, Music Downtown

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2014–2015 Season Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

MUSIC DIRECTOR

Alexander Mickelthwate

RESIDENT CONDUCTOR

Julian Pellicano

FIRST VIOLINS

Gwen Hoebig, Concertmaster The Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté Memorial Chair, endowed by the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation Karl Stobbe, Associate Concertmaster Mary Lawton, Assistant ConcertmasterKarin Andreasen Chris Anstey Mona Coarda Hong Tian Jia Janet Liang Simon MacDonald Meredith McCallum Julie Savard Jun Shao

SECOND VIOLINS

Darryl Strain, PrincipalElation Pauls, Assistant PrincipalKaren Bauch Kristina Bauch Elizabeth Dyer Rodica Jeffrey Susan McCallum Takayo Noguchi Claudine St-Arnauld† Jane Pulford

VIOLAS

Daniel Scholz, PrincipalAnne Elise Lavallée, Assistant PrincipalLaszlo Baroczi Richard Bauch Greg Hay Suzanne McKegney Merrily Peters Mike Scholz

CELLOS

Yuri Hooker, PrincipalLeana Rutt, Assistant PrincipalAlex Adaman Margaret Askeland Arlene Dahl Carolyn Nagelberg Emma Quackenbush

BASSES

Meredith Johnson, PrincipalAndrew Goodlett, Assistant Principal Travis Harrison Paul Nagelberg Bruce Okrainec Daniel Perry

FLUTES

Jan Kocman, PrincipalMartha Durkin

PICCOLO Martha Durkin

OBOES

Beverly Wang, PrincipalRobin MacMillan

ENGLISH HORN Robin MacMillan

CLARINETS Micah Heilbrunn, PrincipalMichelle Goddard

BASSOONS Alex Eastley, PrincipalKathryn Brooks

HORNS Patricia Evans, PrincipalKen MacDonald, Associate Principal James Robertson The Hilda Schelberger Memorial ChairCaroline Oberheu Michiko Singh

TRUMPETS Brian Sykora, PrincipalPaul Jeffrey Isaac Pulford The Patty Kirk Memorial Chair

TROMBONES

Steven Dyer, PrincipalJohn Helmer

BASS TROMBONE

Julia McIntyre, Principal

TUBA Chris Lee, Principal

TIMPANI *Brendan Thompson, Acting Principal

PERCUSSION

Frederick Liessens, Principal

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

ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER

Chris Lee

PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN Raymond Chrunyk

ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN Laura MacDougall

*Temporary Position

†Dual Section Position

Please note: Non-titled (tutti) string players are listed alphabetically and are seated accordingly to a rotational system.

Fred Redekop is the official Piano Tuner and Technician of the WSO.


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WE TAKE PEOPLE PLACES. BUT IT’S MUSIC THAT TRULY MOVES THEM.

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WNMF2015 Saturday January 31 Centennial Concert Hall 8pm


Concert Sponsor

ARDITTI MEETS THE WSORihm, Haas, Neufeld & Norman

PROGRAM

Andrew Norman (US) UnstuckCanadian Premiere

Wolfgang Rihm (DE) Dithyrambe for string quartet and orchestra Canadian Premiere

Intermission

Sarah Neufeld (CA) (arr. Owen Pallett (CA))Breathing Black Ground

Georg Friedrich Haas (AT)Traum in des Sommers Nacht Canadian Premiere

ARTISTS

Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor

Arditti Quartet (Irvine Arditti, violin, Ashot Sarkissjan, violin, Ralf Ehlers, viola, Lucas Fels, cello)

Gwen Hoebig, solo violin

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

Panel 6:45pm HOW DO YOU JUDGE A PIECE OF NEW MUSIC IN THE 21ST CENTURY?Andrew Norman, Georg Friedrich Haas, Yuri Hooker, Meredith Johnson Moderator: Alexander Mickelthwate

Performance 7:15pmBrandon University New Music Ensemble, Megumi Masaki, director

Post-Concert Q+AAndrew Norman, Georg Friedrich Haas, Matthew Patton

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WNMF 2015 opens with a bang, oscillating between stasis and ecstasy. The Arditti Quartet, leaders of the musical avant-garde for the last 40 years, amaze in Wolfgang Rihm’s hedonistic Dithyrambe for string quartet and orchestra. Andrew Norman’s cathartic Unstuck will bring the stage alive with symphonic fireworks. George Friedrich Haas’s Traum in des Sommers Nacht will warp and stretch time as it breaks down sonic space, while Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire grounds it all with Breathing Black Ground (arr. Owen Pallet).

“Not everything can be put into words. That is why it has been made into music.” — Wolfgang Rihm

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ANDREW NORMAN Unstuck

“I have never been more stuck than I was in the winter of 2008. My writing came to a grinding halt in January and for a long time this piece languished on my desk, a mess of musical fragments that refused to cohere. The following May, I saw a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and remembered one of its iconic sentences, then I had a breakthrough realization. The sentence was this: ‘Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time,’ and the realization was that the lack of coherence in my ideas was to be embraced and explored, not overcome. Musical fragments become unstuck in that sections from the beginning, middle and end crop up in the wrong places like the flashbacks and flash-forwards that define the narrative structure of Vonnegut’s novel.”

— Andrew Norman

WOLFGANG RIHM Dithyrambe for string quartet and orchestra

Rihm describes his Dithyrambe as “fast, dense music,” in which the string quartet represents a “creature with four mouths – yes, four heads and four mouths, one beast!” This “beast” is surrounded by the orchestra as if by a “cage or a chamber with open windows; inside, the quartet plays, well, ‘chamber’ music. Or else: the orchestra is a body inside which the nerves (the quartet) dance.” Rihm further notes: “I usually write ‘nervous’ music for string quartet. I perceive this instrumental combination as ‘naked,’ with all the nerves exposed.” Yet by giving voice to both the “beast” and the “cage,” Rihm puts the “madness” in a “sane” perspective. The string quartet plays very fast notes in almost perpetual motion much of the time, but the orchestra often supplies long melodic lines to offset that hectic activity. The entire piece, then,

seems to be a representation of a nervous state of mind – a German critic called it

“motoric madness” – that is suddenly calmed, or sublimated, at the end.

SARAH NEUFELD (arr. Owen Pallett)Breathing Black Ground

Breathing Black Ground was originally written by Sarah Neufeld for solo violin and voice, accompanied by a low harmonium drone. The piece, part of the body of work that comprises “Hero Brother,” Neufeld’s debut solo album, weaves rhythmic minimalism through a patient, sorrowful sung melody. Originally recorded in a geodesic dome in Berlin with extreme acoustic properties, the piece has a haunting, otherworldly quality. Neufeld commissioned Owen Pallett to orchestrate a remix of Breathing Black Ground, for solo violin and orchestra. The orchestration plays on the extreme reverb in the geodesic dome where the original solo version was recorded; melodies cascading over one another, a rich tapestry of meditative drones lying darkly beneath a stark solo violin.

GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS Traum in des Sommers Nacht

The orchestral composition Traum in des Sommers Nacht fits perfectly into the Haas canon, both stylistically and conceptually. The title can be read as a distant reference to Mendelssohn: on one side it refers to what is perhaps the composer’s best known composition,

“Ein Sommernachtstraum” Op. 61, written as incidental music for the stage; but on the other hand, the title draws attention to the fundamental difference between a summer’s night and the Midsummer Night. The dark, troubled, twilight and ambiguous side of reality is here brought into the foreground.

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Applauding Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Panel 6:15pm

ART, ARCHITECTURE, SYSTEMS AND THEIR BREAKDOWNGeorg Friedrich Haas, Örjan Sandred, Frank Albo, Serena Keshavjee Moderator: Simone Mahrenholz

Performance 6:45pmGreg Hanec and field////

Post-Concert Q+AArditti Quartet, Georg Friedrich Haas

Sunday February 01 Centennial Concert Hall 7:30pm


Concert Sponsor Daniel Friedman & Rob Dalgliesh

DISSONANT FICTIONSArditti performs Zorn, Haas, Schnittke and Tenney

PROGRAM

John Zorn (US) Necronomicon

Alfred Schnittke (RU) String Quartet No. 3

Intermission

James Tenney (US) Arbor Vitae

Georg Friedrich Haas (AT) String Quartet No. 6

ARTISTS

Arditti Quartet (Irvine Arditti, violin, Ashot Sarkissjan, violin, Ralf Ehlers, viola, Lucas Fels, cello)

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The string quartet is often the crucible in which composers define their voices. Join the Arditti Quartet as they explore modern masterworks of four unique voices. Composer and MacArthur Fellow John Zorn is a true American iconoclast and a music scene unto himself. Alfred Schnittke leapt onto the international stage in the 80’s as a leading voice of the new Russian school. Haas is a crafter of microtonal jewels. And James Tenney, who subsumed all manners of style into his own musical language, left his final work in the form of a string quartet.

“a prophet among musicians” — Harrison Birtwistle on Irvine Arditti

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Interview with Georg Friedrich Haas

MATTHEW PATTON:What were some of your creative concerns or ideas in writing Traum In Des Sommers Nacht which will be performed by the orchestra at the festival?

GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS: Traum In Des Sommers Nacht is one of those pieces in which I do a kind of reflection or meditation about historical music. There are several pieces of mine in which I do that. This Mendelssohn piece is based on my admiration of this composer. I think he is the first composer in history who composed sound as sound, like colour. How he was composing with sound - and if you analyze it is amazing - every bar or two bars he creates a new world of sound, and I think he is opening the language of music in an intense way - in the same way as Richard Wagner opened music history for harmony, Mendelssohn opened it for sound.

MP: Another work of yours featured at the Festival is your String Quartet #6 performed by the Arditti Quartet. Can you speak about your ideas with this work?

GFH: This is a very virtuosic piece. It is very difficult. I have composed a series of string quartets, eight, and I am planning my ninth. In this String Quartet #6 there are moments of instability of pitches and instability of times. One of the techniques which I use is chains of trills which is extremely uncomfortable for the performers. They have to play trills or tremolos with their fingers for ten minutes without interruption and this is to create this extremely dense and uncertain world. I should also explain that some of the strings are tuned microtonally.

MP: We will also be hearing your work Open Spaces 2 in Memory of James Tenney as well as other Tenney related works. I was wondering if you could speak on his influence on you and your music and in particular on your piece Open Spaces?

GFH: My piece Open Spaces is based on my personal, let’s say, European post-romantic approach to music, which is not very different from the approach of Tenney. The string instruments are tuned in such ways that you get two overtone chords in just intonation and I compose, as he did, variations of the overtone chords. In addition to this, there is a second quotation of James Tenney at the end. I quoted Koan the violin solo piece for string quartet. When James Tenney makes a variation of this solo piece for string quartet he has only one instrument who play glissandi and tremolos. He composes as if there is a piano pedal around this in the strings and what I am doing is letting the whole string orchestra play the solo part of the first violin, which of course is something totally different from the world of James Tenney but there is still a relationship to it.

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Interview with Georg Friedrich Haas

MP: This leads me to my next question, a question of perception in music. At what point do you think pitch and sonority begin to separate?

GFH: Well that is a huge question. I think for me it is not possible to give a clear functional answer to that. I enjoy these moments by composing them. There have been things which are very beautiful and I am not absolutely sure what happens, why it is that they work. For example, I have always trusted in the full consonances of the overtone chords. But if we really look at what happens what we see are that the instruments themselves don’t have the exact overtones that they should have. That means that if the performers try to play, let’s say, a perfect fifth they have to decide which of these overtones

should be an exact unison and which will be a little bit different. And because this idea of a perfectly tuned overtone chord is not realistic, all these perfectly tuned overtones have a little bit of vibrations within themselves, all these sounds are so amazing.

This interview has been condensed from the original. Read the full interview at wnmf.ca/interviews

Program Notes


JOHN ZORN Necronomicon

“A five-movement tour de force of Black Magic and Alchemy, with perhaps the most intense ensemble writing I’ve yet achieved.”

— John Zorn

ALFRED SCHNITTKE String Quartet No. 3

Schnitkke’s Third String Quartet contains the pathos and irony typical of much of his work as well as the juxtaposition of material and quotations from a variety of sources. In fact this polystylistic technique is what defines Schnittke, a soviet composer who grew up in the shadow of Shostakovich before wrestling with the many musical languages that came forth throughout

the twentieth century. What makes this work standout is the choice of three very striking quotations from Lassus’ Stabat Mater, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Shostakovich’s personal DSCH theme – a transposition of the first four notes of the Grosse Fuge. These quotes setup a musical universe that includes allusions to many historical periods ranging from renaissance canons to fin-de-siecle scherzos.

JAMES TENNEY Arbor Vitae

Arbor Vitae, James Tenney’s last work, is both a culmination of many ideas from prior pieces as well as an unprecedented show of innovation. The title reflects Tenney’s attitude towards life and music as well as

the compositional process, which uses the image of a tree’s roots and branches as a metaphor for its harmonic scheme. Features that exemplify Tenney’s aesthetic include the use of harmonic series to determine the pitch set, and, on the macro-level, a single gestalt illuminated through many dimensions of the work (expanding then contracting pitch range, crescendo-plateau-decrescendo dynamic swell, and increasing and decreasing temporal density applied over the entire duration of the piece). The extended pitch vocabulary includes pitches derived from harmonics up to 1331st partial and the probabilistic scheme determining the evolving harmonies of the piece are incredibly dynamic. As the piece develops, sets of changing harmonic fields grow more expansive and complex. At first, the harmonies may be perceived in one tonality/harmonic field but later as branches of branches are used to determine the sounding tones, a more polytonal impression may be perceived.

This work was commissioned by the Bozzini Quartet with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Program note by Mike Winter who assisted James Tenney with the work.

Program Notes

GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS String Quartet No. 6

The fourth strings of the second violin and viola are microtonally retuned. The result is a range of unusual aural possibilities: complex chords in the sound of the open strings, abstract combinations of natural harmonics, the fifth can be double-stopped as a third or a sixth. It is still possible to play on the other strings as usual.

The harmony of the piece is unstable. The musical events are not based on chords but on gliding transitions. The vertical structures are thus veiled: by slow glissandi, trills and tremolos.

The fifths of the open strings must be tuned correctly: at certain points at the start of the piece they are integrated into the progress of the music, but later this is avoided, as it is very likely that the strings will go very slightly out of tune: not enough to spoil the piece, but enough to compromise the effect of the open fifths. The unusual tuning also helps the piece to move away from fixed points of reference. The idea is to alienate the listener, consistently destroying fixed points of reference within the piece – the goal is to glide freely through unknown aural landscapes.

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Panel 6:15pm

MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTSCaroline Shaw, Jenifer Papararo, Andrew Kear, Cliff Eyland Moderator: Robert Enright

Performance 6:45pmNATS Contemporary Vocal Music Competition WinnersChristina Thanisch-Smith, soprano Gaiete and Orior (M. Head)

Hannah Wigglesworth, soprano Who is Sylvia (G. Finzi)

Elliot Lazar, baritone I Carry your Heart (J. Duke)

Randall Buhler, tenor Just Another Hour (R.P. Thomas)

Julie Lumsden, soprano Steal me, sweet thief (G. Menotti)

Greg Myra, piano

Rosemarie van der Hooft, coordinator

Monday February 02 Westminster United Church 7:30pm


LUMINOUS CRYCamerata Nova & Prairie Voices

PROGRAM

The Gritty (CA) Norman Delicacy I

Andrew Balfour (CA) Take The Indian

John Luther Adams (US) Night Peace

Intermission

The Gritty (CA) Norman Delicacy II

Lubomyr Melnyk (CA) Dreams of You

Caroline Shaw (US) Partita for 8 Voices

ARTISTS

Prairie Voices, Vic Pankratz, director

Camerata Nova, Andrew Balfour, director

Richard Turner, harp

Yuri Hooker, cello

Victoria Sparks, percussion

The Gritty, electronics (Sarah Jo Kirsch & James Jansen)

Lubomyr Melnyk, piano

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An evening of virtuosic new choral music at times distinguished as much for what is not heard as what is. Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winners Caroline Shaw and John Luther Adams are featured alongside Winnipeg mavericks Lubomyr Melnyk and Andrew Balfour in a program whose beauty obscures a powerful dialectic between the natural world, the physical body and the human mind.

“a lode of the rarest commodity in contemporary music: joy” — New York Magazine on Caroline Shaw

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ANDREW BALFOUR Take The Indian

“Take the Indian is a work that has been on my mind for some time. The history of our nation’s treatment of the First Nations peoples of this land is a shocking and deeply disturbing legacy that is only now receiving study and daylight.

The most troubling aspect to many is the hunting, the preying upon First Nations children, in particular the hundreds of young Aboriginal women, who have gone missing, with no trace. Occasionally, we open the paper to hear that another body of young women is pulled out of a river, usually badly beaten and abused.

To many, including myself, this is an unacceptable state of affairs in a so-called civilized society. Since European settlers arrived, there has been a continual state of genocide of the First Nations peoples, particularly their children. Think of residential schools, diseased blankets, government sponsored ‘testing’ of aboriginal children that sent many young ones to their deaths in the 1930’s and 40’s. It’s a sad legacy that sounds more like what happened to Jews in the Holocaust rather than what Canadians do to fellow Canadians.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came to Winnipeg a few years ago, I witnessed an incredibly disturbing afternoon of testimony from the survivors of the Residential School legacy. I’m sure the hundreds of people there listening to the sadness, anger, frustration, loneliness of these people will never forget it. I know I never will.

The text for this work is taken from the words of an assortment of survivors that testified that afternoon. I have decided to keep them all anonymous. So much of what

Program Notes

they were sharing was so personal that I did not want to single out any one individual out of respect for their deep inner grief.

I make no apologies for the harshness of this work or these words. It enters into the deep discomfort of our collective society. It speaks of the darkness of our so-called nation building and the debris that it has created.

The First Nations of this land have been deeply wounded. It is time to sing, to talk, to heal.”

— Andrew Balfour

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Night Peace

“Night Peace is based entirely on a single melodic line which is heard only once in its full form, sung by the solo soprano at the end of the piece. This melody was conceived in the luminous stillness of a moonless winter night.”

— John Luther Adams

THE GRITTY Norman Delicacy I & II

The Gritty maps the ventricle of Westminster United Church with a/v representations, variations, and illuminations of the phenomenon of human phonation. Thick and rich, savoury and sweet; each surface sings with the simplicity of salted butter, with the ritual of Caneton à la rouennaise.

LUBOMYR MELNYK Dreams of You

Dreams Of You is an aria from his chamber-opera Paradise Costs. While this aria is quite typical of Lubomyr’s vocal style, this particular opera has many characteristics of older music from the 1600’s. The “singer” here is the opera’s hero, who has wandered from the beaten path of financial success

WNMF2015 | OVERTURE16

Program Notes

and traded it for the world of love, and is now searching for the woman he once saw sleeping in a forest. This particular version is especially made for choir.

CAROLINE SHAW Partita for 8 Voices

Composed over three summers from 2009-2011, in collaboration with Roomful of Teeth during their residencies at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music. It is the only Pulitzer awarded to an a cappella vocal work, and Shaw, a singer in the ensemble, is the youngest composer ever to have received the prize.

The score’s inscription reads: Partita is a simple piece. Born of a love of surface and structure, of the human voice, of dancing and tired ligaments, of music, and of our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another.

Each movement takes a cue from the traditional baroque suite in initial meter and tone, but the familiar historic framework is soon stretched and broken, through

“speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects” (Pulitzer jury citation). Roomful of Teeth’s utterly unique approach to singing and vocal timbre originally helped to inspire and shape the work during its creation, and the ensemble continues to refine and reconsider the colours and small details with every performance.

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Interview with Caroline Shaw

MATTHEW PATTON:Could you tell me a little about your creative process or what was on your mind when writing Partita for 8 Voices?

CAROLINE SHAW: I wrote bits of it over three different summers and each time it was a very intense, quick writing time because it was really just written for Roomful of Teeth, the vocal group I sing with. And as all composers know it is great to have a deadline because it makes you get something done. I guess I had certain kinds of shapes and images in mind. I thought about it for a very long time and then it came out very quickly in just a few days. It was initially inspired by the big colourful murals of Sol Lewitt. But also eventually the next summer I wrote one part that was more about dance and about dance form and kind of transforming the baroque dance suite into something totally different. And then Allemande which is the first movement but its the last one that I wrote, I was really thinking about large scale choreography. Imagining dancers in my mind helped me create the music.

MP: Can you tell me a little about Lewitt’s relation to your work?

CS: It initially came in the fourth movement Passacaglia, which is the first movement that I wrote, and there is all this speaking in the middle that is actually all these wall-drawing directions he wrote to create the murals basically just giving all the instructions. And then the vocalists do this thing where they just descend into what is really the essence of American speech, which is this really back in your throat sound and then it kind of explodes into a chord. The Sol Le Witt is from when I was in residence at Mass MOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) when I was writing and was surrounded by his work all the time.

MP: This will be the first time you have allowed your work Partita for 8 Voices to be performed by a non-Roomful of Teeth group.

CS: Yes, this is the first time I have ever let the little baby fly out of the nest. There are some extended techniques that are part of it but I am also open to finding other ways to create those colours. There is quite a lot in the piece. In the Courante there is Inuit throat singing, there is yodelling, there is Tuvan throat singing, so many different styles in there. And a lot of attention to vowel sounds for making colour including head and chest voice so it gets pretty particular pretty quickly.


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Panel 6:15pm

ARCHITECTURE AS ENERGYOliver Botar, Brent Bellamy, Patrick Harrop, Jayanne English Moderator: Sotirios Kotoulas

Performance 6:45pmUniversity of Manitoba Opera Theatre, Mel Braun and Katherine Twaddle, directors

Q+ALarysa Kuzmenko, Kati Agócs

WNMF2015 Tuesday February 03 Centennial Concert Hall 7:30pm

CROSSING GROUNDCanadian Symphonic Samplings

PROGRAM

Örjan Sandred (SE) Lament for HumanityWorld Premiere

Nova Pon (CA) Awakening World PremiereWinner of the Canadian Music Centre composition competition

Brian Eno (UK) (arr. Matthew Patton (CA)) Music for Apollo: An Ending (Ascent)

Intermission

Ann Southam (CA) Webster’s Spin

Larysa Kuzmenko (CA) Voice of Hope

Violet Archer (CA) Prelude-Incantation

Kati Agócs (CA) Requiem Fragments

ARTISTS


Julian Pellicano, conductor

Sarah Jo Kirsch, soprano


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The Canadian symphonic landscape continues to evolve rapidly. This evening takes the temperature of this landscape with works by two of Canada’s most influential women composers – Ann Southam and Violet Archer – and two modern voices of growing importance – Larysa Kuzmenko and Kati Agócs. Matthew Patton’s rendition of ambient music/ multimedia pioneer Brian Eno’s Music from Apollo and Winnipegger Örjan Sandred delivers a new commission from the WSO to complete the program.

“A profound experience that transcends any and all musical genres.” — The Toronto Star on Ann Southam

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ALEXSERIOUSLY FOCUSED / / GRADE 9

COLLEGIATE.UWINNIPEG.CAOPEN HOUSE | FEBRUARY 5TH

ÖRJAN SANDRED Lament for Humanity

“Lament for Humanity is a lament over humanity’s inability to recognize and learn from its mistakes, repeatedly creating disasters and suffering. The nature of this piece gradually disclosed itself while I was composing it. At times the musical discourse took unexpected turns, forcing me to re-evaluate my original ideas. The character of a lament spans through the entire piece.

The composition is intended as a pure musical expression, with no literal narrative program. The music is melodic, like an agitated voice, which extends into thicker textures that grow in intensity.”

— Örjan Sandred

NOVA PON Awakenings

Winner of the Canadian Music Centre composition competition

Awakenings was inspired by various abstractions and images: sunlight and cloud, flowers opening, shapes emerging from fog, hiking over a mountain pass, the mind struggling to grasp an idea. Throughout the work, two different musical themes ebb and flow, often appearing in fragments as they struggle to materialize, until they culminate in being presented together in their complete forms.

BRIAN ENO (Arr. Matthew Patton)Music for Apollo

“Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks is an album that was written, performed, produced, and recorded by Brian Eno, Roger Eno, and Daniel Lanois in 1983 at Daniel Lanois’ Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton. I, and many others, believe it is one the finest

and most important ambient music records ever recorded. It was originally recorded for a documentary on the Apollo moon missions.

I dislike transcriptions of existing music and so, for this project, I wanted to come up with something more interesting. I first contacted Brian Eno’s arranger Woojun Lee and we discussed my ideas for the piece, which he liked. I also got in touch with Roger Eno and in December spent a day with him at his home near Norwich, England. Roger also was excited about a new version of the work, told me about how the original recording came about, and how much he loved that whole time of making music with his brother Brian and Daniel in Hamilton. I myself spent a number of months recording at Daniel Lanois’ studio in Hamilton where Apollo was created and heard countless stories of this incredibly productive time for Eno and Lanois.

We hope to continue to expand the Apollo project with different artists in the future. For the current part of the work, I chose to work with the piece An Ending (Ascent), which is my favourite piece on Apollo. I have dedicated the piece to Douglas Rain, the great and mythical Winnipeg actor, voice of the HAL 9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

— Matthew Patton

ANN SOUTHAMWebster’s Spin

Ann Southam has always been a unique artist, one who found her own way and never worried about “schools” or

“movements” in composition. An avowed feminist, concerned with creating a music from femininity in response to the preponderance of male composers, Southam said of her music “in the very workings of the music, there’s a reflection of the work that women traditionally do, like



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weaving and mending and washing dishes — the kind of work you have to do over again,” Her music developed from an early “lyrical atonalism” to a minimalist style, showing the influences of the American minimalists, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Webster’s Spin demonstrates elements from both of these styles.

Webster’s Spin was commissioned by the CBC for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in 1993.

LARYSA KUZMENKO Voice of Hope

Voice of Hope for soprano and string orchestra is based on the great famine-genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine that claimed the lives of between 7-10 million people.

The work opens with a dark and ominous theme presented by the strings in the high register. The music creates an atmosphere of despair and sorrow when a child sees a little bird at her window begging for food. She asks the bird to tell the world that we are dying from starvation.

The music suddenly quickens and becomes rhythmic and intense, depicting Stalin’s police gathering up all the food from the villagers and leaving families to die from hunger.

The opening theme reappears in the last verse, but with a stronger sense of helplessness, as many have died. As the music intensifies, it reaches a dramatic climax with both soprano and full orchestra on the words “but we as a people will not give up, we have not died, we are still alive.”

This work is dedicated to my mother’s family who died during the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. She alone survived, orphaned

at age 9. I would like to dedicate tonight’s performance to the memory of my mother Paraskevia Kuzmenko, who recently passed away at the age of 91.

VIOLET ARCHER Prelude-Incantation

No literary figure has inspired more music from more composers than William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream alone contains at least twenty different passages that have been set to song. There are complete operas by Benjamin Britten, Carl Orff, Franz von Suppé and a dozen others, not to mention the incomparable incidental music of Mendelssohn. Shakespeare’s world of fairy enchantment has struck just the right poetic nerve in so many composers, among them Violet Archer. As part of the quadricentennial celebrations of the bard in 1964, Archer was commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra to write Prelude-Incantation, whose inspiration came from three of the fairies’ songs in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The twelve-minute work is in two distinct parts linked by a transition. Both parts are derived from the same melodic and harmonic material but are completely different in character. The Prelude is fast, loud, energetic, unsettled and employs the full orchestra most of the time. Transitional material features first the clarinet, then the bass clarinet, then the flute, eventually arriving at the Incantation, which is slow, quiet, and stately, with something of the character of a ritualistic procession.

Program Notes

Roger Eno: Notes on Apollo

I began working with Brian (Eno) and Dan (Lanois) due to a cassette tape I sent my brother some months before the ‘Apollo’ project came along.

This tape contained music of immovable stasis, an overall mood rather than series of events - an approach which, I think, Brian thought I could add to the project.

This was my first ‘writing’ event - hither to this I had been having a knees up, playing in late night drinking clubs/strip clubs and

restaurants in London and although I had composed for years had never considered that as being anything other than just another thing that I did.

Brian and I have always got along swimmingly. There are eleven years between us (he being the elder) and this project was the first time that we met to work together. Much of the period of the recording was spent in tears of laughter both in and out of the studio.

The four brothers - at my encouragement all with tobacco pipes - would sit around a long table which overlooked the lights of Hamilton, drink beer and enjoy each others company. It is a period I have treasured memories of.

What has lasted from this meeting is a recording which continues to enchant and, I hope, inspire. For myself, though I have this lucky ‘bonus track’ - recollections of fun, love and laughter.

It really was a hoot!

— Roger Eno, November 20, 2014


KATI AGÓCS Requiem Fragments

Requiem Fragments originated as a commission by the CBC Radio Orchestra for its Farewell Concert in Vancouver in November 2008. The work’s architecture - - both on the macro and micro levels - - reflects the impulse of an extended anacrusis (or upbeat) which leads gravitationally to a sustained melodic tone. What happens to this held note - - how and when it is allowed to bloom - -

is the work’s central question. The very opening phrase begins with this gesture, and the entire first half of the piece acts as a large upbeat to the second half, which contains an unexpected rupture. Requiem Fragments is seven minutes in duration, and is characteristic of Agócs’ compositional style in its colourful, exotic orchestration and the frequent presence of the yearning, almost vocal lyricism of its melodies.

— Excerpt from program note by Robert Kirzinger

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Panel 6:15pm

THE REST IS NOISEGeorg Friedrich Haas, John Luther Adams, Alex Ross, Matthew Patton Moderator: Alexander Mickelthwate

Performance 6:45pmUniversity of Manitoba and Brandon University Percussion Ensembles, Victoria Sparks, director

Q+AGeorg Friedrich Haas, John Luther Adams, Matthew Patton

Wednesday February 04 Centennial Concert Hall 7:30pm

TUNING THE VOIDThe Most Famous Unknown Composer in the World

PROGRAM

Zosha Di Castri (CA) Lineage

Matthew Patton (CA) 470 Million Years of Quiet (for James Tenney)

Georg Friedrich Haas (AT) Open Spaces II in memory of James Tenney Canadian Premiere

Intermission

Christopher Rouse (US) Symphony No. 3Canadian Premiere

ARTISTS


Viewing Method Group, video artists


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“No other composer is so revered by fellow composers, and so unknown to the public at large.” — Kyle Gann, American Music in the 20th Century

James Tenney – a composer’s composer – has had enormous influence in the 20th century yet is little known outside his own circle. This evening explores the music of Tenney through his acolytes – his student Matthew Patton, Georg Friedrich Haas on whom he had a major influence, and John Luther Adams who also studied with Tenney. Lineage by rising young Canadian Zosha Di Castri and Pulitzer Prize-winner Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3 complete the evening with video art by Viewing Method Group.

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ZOSHA DI CASTRI Lineage

“In Lineage, I was interested in exploring the idea of what is passed down. As a kid, I loved listening to my grandparents tell stories about “the-old-country” or of life in the village or on the farm. These tales were at once so real through their repetition, and yet at the same time were so foreign and removed from my own personal experience. Thinking of this, I hoped to create a piece in which certain elements are kept constant while others are continually altered, adopted, or are added on, creating an ever-evolving narrative.

In preparing for this piece, I also spent much time reflecting upon what it means to

“return” – to keep coming back to something (or someone) that serves as a grounding force. I was interested in the idea of a landmark or point of origin, which remains steadfast, yet also evolves subtly over time. The constant nature of this rootedness is what allows us to orient ourselves; it serves as a bearing when navigating the many branches of unchartered possibility. At the heart of the piece is a distant microtonal chorale played by the winds: two stark melodic lines form a closely-knit counterpoint, which sets up an intimate, almost haunting, atmosphere.

The resulting music is a combination of change and consistency, a re-imagining of places and traditions I’ve known only second-hand, the sound of a fictitious culture one dreams up to keep the memories of another generation alive.”

— Zosha Di Castri

MATTHEW PATTON 470 Million Years of Quiet (for James Tenney)

“I studied with composer James Tenney for several years on and off. He had a huge effect on me as a person and completely changed how I thought about music. He had countless ideas and one of them was a great interest in how music is perceived, he believed this was the future of music and I think he is right.

I wrote an early version of the current piece when I studied with Tenney but for some reason I was never quite happy with it, I felt I was trying to get at something that mattered as we went over the piece together but at the same time I always wanted to compose a more involved and hopefully clearer new work which has now become 470 Million Years of Quiet. I have written this new piece as a tribute to James Tenney with his work always in my mind.

In music, sounds are distinguished not by their actual sound but by their entrance out of silence. If you edit the entrance and exit of any sound from the body of that same sound, it becomes impossible to tell what source or instrument it is. With this in mind, I have worked to mask all entrances and most exits of sound by working with waves of colour.

I have a fascination with unisons; in a way unisons contain microtones that are so small in increments that they don’t separate into perceiveable harmonic entities, they are heard as colour. For this reason, I wanted to utilize colour or timbre as a unifying structure.”

— Matthew Patton

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GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS Open Spaces II in memory of James Tenney

Open Spaces is scored for twelve retuned string instruments and two percussion instruments. As in several of my earlier works (the operas Nacht and Melancholia, String Quartet No. 1, Piano Concerto Fremde Welten, etc.) the strings of the instruments are detuned microtonally. Microtonal chords can then be produced with the open strings alone, which yields two advantages: on the one hand, a greater certainty of precision in the intonation, and on the other, the fascination of the sound of open strings in a radically more complex harmonic context than would be possible with traditional tuning.

CHRISTOPHER ROUSE Symphony No. 3

“My third symphony is an attempt to take some central aspect of an already composed work, in this case Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2, and consider it anew. The unusual form of Symphony No. 2 furnished the old bottle into which I have tried to pour new wine. Among Prokofiev’s symphonies this one is, I believe, of especially high caliber, though it is rarely programmed. He called it his “symphony of iron and steel,” and it is unquestionably one of his more aggressive and uncompromising scores. Cast in two movements—an opening toccata-like allegro followed by a set of variations—Prokofiev’s own architecture was in turn influenced by that of Beethoven in his final piano sonata. I thus took this structure as my own and tried to maintain Prokofiev’s own proportions between the two movements.

The second movement of Beethoven’s sonata consists of a theme with four variations and the equivalent movement in Prokofiev’s symphony of a theme with six variations. I decided to split the difference and commit to a theme-with-five-variations form.

The work was completed in Baltimore, Maryland on February 3, 2011. It is dedicated to my high school music teacher, John Merrill; without his kindness and encouragement I might never have found the fortitude to persevere in my dream of being a composer.”

— Christopher Rouse

2014/15SEASON

Swan LakeMAR - / 20

rwb.org

Beethoven’s 9th

Friday, March 27 I 8:00 pmSaturday, March 28 I 8:00 pm

Beethoven: Symphony No.9 in D minorBruckner: Te Deum

Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir,Joni Henson, soprano Yuri Klaz, directorElizabeth Turnbell, soprano Canadian Mennonite Festival Chorus,Steven Tharp, tenor Rudy Schellenberg and Janet Stephen Hegedus, bass Brenneman, co-directors

Let the Ode to Joy enliven your spirit in Beethoven’s greatest masterwork

Call 204-949-3999 I www.wso.ca

Interview with Lauren Pratt, wife of James Tenney

MATTHEW PATTON:Just being around Jim, the way you felt in his presence made for a deeper experience than with most artists. So I wanted to ask you about your thoughts about Jim as a human being.

LAUREN PRATT: He was a great guy. He was fun to live with, extremely responsible, full of ideas, and full of life. Actually thrilling to live with and spend time with because of the intensity of his intellectual interests and his imagination. He was truly an all-round amazing person as far as I am concerned.

MP: I sought Jim out to study with him and I was amazed at the scope of his work and how fascinating each different piece was. So I was wondering what your thoughts on his music were.

LP: Actually my thoughts on his music are not actually as relevant as his own thoughts on his music. He repeatedly said he composed things and he composed music that he wanted to hear. And he was not interested in hearing the same thing over and over again. He wanted to explore new things and that’s why you get such a wide range of ideas and manifestations. He was not interested in composing the same work over and over again just for a commissioning fee. His primary goal was to compose something new for himself to hear. He was actually “dinged” on this more than once. I remember when he had three days of concerts in New York put on by Steve Reich and the Reich Foundation at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. He actually got a New York Times review, which criticized him for not having a particular musical style. Being too eclectic or not developing and not setting out a territory in which he was going to work and sticking with it. I don’t know if they actually used the word but the

charge of dilettantism was in the air. But he accepted that. He said “well not everybody is going to like it,” but he was composing for himself.

MP: I am wondering about Jim’s creative process. Would he think about it for a long time or would he write quickly.

LP: It varied on the kind of work it was. Some things came to him very quickly. I remember for instance the tunings for Critical Band came to him as series of numbers while he was driving. We were driving from Toronto to Minnesota and he said “write down these numbers.” And I wrote down the numbers and those were actually the notes that became available to the players in Critical Band over time. So we got to where we were going in Minnesota and he wrote out the piece. But he had been clearly thinking about it for a long time and trying to figure out how he was going to accomplish this. Other pieces he worked on for months and months and months, especially the ones which required algorithmic structures and editing. So I mean it varied from piece to piece and his methods of working were in some respects just as various as the pieces themselves. One thing that was pretty consistent in most of his composition, especially towards the end was that formal considerations were extremely important to him. He often would graph those out early on so he could see visually the formal structure. He did that over and over again. But again, different pieces require different kinds of preparation.



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Panel 6:15pm

THE POLITICAL FORCE OF MUSICAL BEAUTYUrsula Oppens, David Churchill, Noam Gonick Moderator: Bartley Kives

Performance 6:45pmJulia Ryckman, composer/musician

Q+AUrsula Oppens, Matthew Patton, Alexander Mickelthwate

Thursday February 05 Centennial Concert Hall 7:30pm

A FRENZY OF SOUNDUrsula Oppens, Rzewski & The Quay Brothers

PROGRAM

Nicole Lizée (CA) Hitchcock Études

Quay Brothers (US) / Karlheinz Stockhausen (DE) In Absentia

Intermission

Frederic Rzewski (US) The People United Will Never be Defeated

ARTISTS

Ursula Oppens, piano

Megumi Masaki, piano

Quay Brothers, film

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Light and sound come together in an eclectic program featuring the Quay Brother’s original film collaboration with Karlheinz Stockhausen, In Absentia, and grand-dame of modern piano Ursula Oppens’ heroic performance of Rzewski’s monumental tribute to the Chilean struggle against an oppressive dictator. Canada’s own “brilliant musical scientist” Nicole Lizée contributes a multimedia work that entwines electronic and acoustic sound with live video performance.

“It seemed to me there was no reason why the most difficult and complex formal structures could not be expressed in a form which could not be understood by a wide variety of listeners” — Frederic Rzewski

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WNMF2015 | OVERTURE

NICOLE LIZÉE Hitchcock Études for piano and glitch

“The premise for Hitchcock Études is centered around my ongoing preoccupation with the fallibility of media. Technology has the potential to fail and can fail in spectacular ways, creating fascinating sounds and visuals. How to capture and replicate those beautiful mistakes?

All of the soundtrack material and visuals are from middle period Hitchcock films: deconstructed, spliced and otherwise seriously damaged, resulting in layers of disjunct, erratic rhythmic material, twisted melodic lines and harmonies. These imperfections and errors are woven together and notated to create a new sonic landscape over which the accompanying acoustic material is performed live.

The living performers interact with the lost, forgotten or even dead icons, simultaneously breathing new life and emotion into the characters while bending, stretching, and hacking the original context, function and storyline. There is something sinister and terrifying when the performers infiltrate the scene and engage with the (often psychotic) character; at once becoming part of the mise-en-scène, while simultaneously guiding it into a new direction.”

— Nicole Lizée

QUAY BROTHERS / KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN In Absentia

In Absentia is a collaboration between the Quay Brothers and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and was commissioned by the BBC.

The subject is a depiction of the mental state of Emma Hauck (1878-1920). Diagnosed with dementia praecox, she was incarcerated in Heidelberg’s psychiatric clinic on her thirtieth birthday in 1909. There, she wrote obsessively to her long-absent husband, the letters consisting of barely legible scrawls rendered doubly incomprehensible by being layered on top of one another. The Quays had encountered her letters at an exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, Beyond Reason (1996-7), which showcased work from the Hans Prinzhorn collection of artworks and artifacts created by the inhabitants of mental institutions.

In Absentia is an unflinching depiction of psychosis on film, and one of the most unnervingly convincing. When Stockhausen saw the film at the premiere he was moved to tears. The Quay Brothers only later learned that his mother was imprisoned by the Nazis in an asylum, where she later died. For them this was a very moving moment, especially because the film was directed without knowing any of this.

FREDERIC RZEWSKI The People United Will Never be Defeated

The People United Will Never Be Defeated by American composer Frederic Rzewski is one of the great masterpieces of 20th century music. The work was commissioned and premiered by pianist Ursula Oppens, was named “Record of the Year,” and received a Grammy nomination. Rzewski composed this massive hour-long work, structured in the form of 36 variations on a Chilean folk song, as a tribute to the struggle of the Chilean people against the newly imposed repressive dictatorship, which followed the overthrow of Salvador Allende.

The song on which the variations are based was written by Sergio Ortega, a Chilean composer whose work was part

of the cultural movement inspired by the formation of the Unidad Popular in 1969 under Salvadore Allende’s Marxist/Socialist leadership.

The work is a rigorously structured set of variations. The theme contains thirty-six measures followed by thirty-six variations. Described by the composer as “six cycles, each of which consists of six stages, in which different musical relationships appear in order: 1. simple events; 2. rhythms; 3. melodies; 4. counterpoints; 5. harmonies; 6. combinations of all these. Each ‘cycle’ embodies a distinct, albeit flexible character or emotional quality linked to its corresponding ‘stage.’

Inon BarnatanThe London Evening Standard has described Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan as “a true poet of the keyboard, refined, searching (and) unfailingly communicative.” Barnatan will make his Winnipeg debut with the MCO and Beethoven’s rarely-performed Piano Concerto No. 2, in B Flat Major, Op. 19. Also on tap: Mozart’s 40th symphony, sans clarinets. (It’s the original version!)

7:30 pm, Wednesday, 18 February 2015 Westminster Church in WolseleyTickets available at McNally Robinson, West End Cultural Centre, Organic Planet, MCO Ticketline (204) 783-7377 or online atthemco.ca

Friday February 06 Centennial Concert Hall 8pm

BACK TO THE BEGINNINGGiya Kancheli & John Luther Adams

PROGRAM

John Luther Adams (US) Become OceanCanadian Premiere

Intermission

Mason Bates (US) The B-SidesCanadian Premiere

Giya Kancheli (GE) Dixi Canadian Premiere

ARTISTS


Canadian Mennonite University Chorus, Janet Brenneman and Rudy Schellenberg, co-directors


The final orchestra concert of the festival closes with John Luther Adams’s monumental Become Ocean, a work whose sheer scope cannot help but transform the listener. Partnered with Giya Kancheli’s massive Dixi for choir and orchestra and Mason Bates’s hypnotically upbeat The B-Sides, this evening will take the audience on a beautiful symphonic adventure.

“The loveliest apocalypse in musical history” — Alex Ross on John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean

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ART AND THE ENVIRONMENTALJohn Luther Adams, Mason Bates, Alex Ross Moderator: Ismaila Alfa

Performance 7:15pmUniversity of Manitoba eXperimental Improv Ensemble (XIE) Gordon Fitzell, director

Q+AJohn Luther Adams, Mason Bates

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Presenting Sponsor

WNMF2015

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Become Ocean

“Over the years my orchestral music has gradually become simpler and more expansive.

Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-95) contains four different musical textures. In the White Silence (1998) has three. For Lou Harrison (2002) reduces this to only two.

In Dark Waves (2007), I finally got to one. When I first heard that piece I began to wonder if I could sustain a similar sound for a longer span of time. The result is Become Ocean.

The title is borrowed from a mesostic poem that John Cage wrote in honor of Lou Harrison’s birthday. Likening Harrison’s music to a river in delta, Cage writes:

LiStening to it we becOme oceaN.

Become Ocean is a meditation on the deep and mysterious tides of existence. All life on this earth emerged from the sea. And as the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that we may once again quite literally become ocean.“

— John Luther Adams

MASON BATES The B-Sides

“Michael Tilson Thomas originally suggested the idea of a collection of pieces focusing on texture and sonority. I had often imagined a suite of concise, off-kilter symphonic pieces that would incorporate the grooves and theatrics of electronica in a highly focused manner. So, like the forgotten bands from the flipside of an old piece of vinyl, The B-Sides offers brief landings on a variety of peculiar planets, unified by a focus on

fluorescent orchestral sonorities and the morphing rhythms of electronica.

The first is entitled Broom of the System. The title is from a short-story collection by David Foster Wallace. The ensuing Aerosol Melody (Hanalei) is followed by Gemini in the Solar Wind, a re-imagination of the first American spacewalk, using actual communication samples from the 1965 Gemini IV voyage provided by NASA. In this re-telling, clips of words, phrases, and static from the original are rearranged. Temescal Noir unbothered by electronics, this movement receives some industrious help in the rhythm department by a typewriter and oil drum. At its end, the broom returns in a cameo, again altering the tempo, and this propels us into Warehouse Medicine. An homage to technos birthplace - the empty warehouses of Detroit - the final stop on The B-Sides gives no quarter.

The work is dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas, whose impromptu composition lessons informed the work to an enormous degree.”

— Mason Bates

GIYA KANCHELI Dixi

“The reason why I selected these Latin phrases was to remind our contemporaries how relevant, still today, are the age-old problems that have always existed. We are only entitled to remind ourselves that the gap between good and evil unfortunately continues to grow, despite the greatest advances in civilisation. Not even Beethoven succeeded in improving this world by writing his great hymn of joy and unity. And we ordinary mortals only have the right to offer advice and to warn.”

— Giya Kancheli

Program Notes

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Interview with John Luther Adams

MATTHEW PATTON:I am interested in your beginnings especially concerning a couple of people in your life that I know had a big effect, that being Frank Zappa and James Tenney.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: I was at a tender age when I got my first Zappa record which was Freak Out and which was soon followed by Absolutely Free. I had never heard anything like it. I was a huge Beatles fan, the more experimental the Beatles became the better I liked it. But there was a uniquely American voice that Zappa had that spoke to me as a young malcontent in the suburbs. So I fell head over heels for Frank. Frank really turned out to be the gateway drug to Edgard Varese who then lead me to a whole new world of music which pretty quickly lead to my realization that this was what I wanted to do.

MP: Among the works of yours that we will be doing is Night Peace. I am wondering about your creative process with that earlier work.

JLA: That is a very early piece. That was 1976, so I was twenty-three when I wrote that piece. And I still love it. It is evocative of something that still resonates for me. It grew out of an experience just being outdoors on a moonless perfectly clear night with a friend. And we just spontaneously started singing these long, sustained tones and then listening to the reverberations in the forest, and that’s where the music came from.

MP: With Become Ocean, I have to say the first time I heard it, it was astounding for a number of reasons, but as a listener one of the things that I thought was that it has an almost tectonic feel to it.

JLA: I really like that idea of tectonics. And if Become Ocean does apparently what it does for you as a listener then I am very happy. Earlier in my creative life I was obsessed with audible form and audible process in my music, which was partly a legacy of the process music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass but I think even more it was an influence from James Tenney and Jim’s idea of ergodic form, of an entire piece as a single form. And form, as Jim would have it, of form as an object of perception. Form as a kind of foreground element of a musical composition. In recent years I’ve become less interested in that foreground.

MP: I very much want to ask you about your experience of James Tenney and his connection with you.

JLA: Heavens, this is the subject of an interview in and of itself and a long essay!! I’ve written a short essay about Jim. I can’t imagine what might have become of me musically or personally had I not had the supreme dumb luck, the supreme fortune to stumble into Jim Tenney’s office at Cal Arts. He was absolutely the right teacher for me. I think like many people, I had to feel that it was my idea, that I had discovered fire. And Jim allowed me to do that and helped guide me in that process. But aside from that there was this stunning and inspiring model of his music.



WNMF2015

THE COLLAGE PARTY PAVILION Paul Butler

Centennial Concert Hall Lobby

The Collage Party Pavilion is an interactive, sculpture designed to accommodate The Collage Party - a nomadic, collective studio where Winnipeg artist Paul Butler invites the public to collage along side each other in a social setting. Since 1997, The Collage Party has travelled all over Canada, the United States and Europe and has been staged in a range of venues including museums, universities, elementary schools, galleries, department stores and centres for artists with mental and physical disabilities. Conceived by Butler and designed by Craig Alun Smith, the Collage Party Pavilion is equipped with everything required for the production and exhibition of collage. For the New Music Festival, Butler will provide vintage record sleeves along with a spectrum of magazines for participants to create fantasy album covers from.

Considered multi-disciplinary, Paul Butler’s practice is focused around community, collaboration and artist-run activity. He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; White Columns, New York City; Creative Growth Art Centre, Oakland; and La Maison Rouge, Paris.

theotherpaulbutler.com

LITTLE GIRLS WITH GLOBE HEADS Neil Farber

Centennial Concert Hall

Neil Farber shows 49 mannequin sculptures. They are child sized mannequins with globes for heads. They are the representation of a little girl with a big round head presented with a variety of eyeball, dress, and globe variations. They are part of a larger sculptural and photographic project Farber is working on called “Little girls/Globe heads” where the sculptures are photographed creating images that are similar to drawings he makes.

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Art Happenings and More

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PLUG IN PIANO NOBILE WALL INSTALLATION Rodney Graham Send Your Child to Art School (2015)Silk-screen posters, 18 x 24 in. ea.

Centennial Concert Hall Piano Nobile

Plug In ICA, in sponsorship of the Winnipeg New Music Festival, is pleased to present “Send Your Child to Art School” (2015) by world renowned Canadian artist Rodney Graham. This new commission is first presented at the WSO on the Piano Nobile Wall as part of the WNMF and will be distributed through out Winnipeg over the coming months. Graham’s sentiment flips common criticism of artists and the arts as being non-productive contributors to society. His straightforward directive inversely draws attention to the importance of cultural production as part of building complex and reflective citizens.

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WNMF LOUNGE WNMF Lounge Furniture provided by Art Upholstery

Centennial Concert Hall Piano Nobile

Art Upholstery’s tradition of quality workmanship began here in Winnipeg over 65 years ago. Our attention to detail and use of first class materials can be seen in many private residences and public places throughout the city. We bring this knowledge and experience to every piece we make today, be it a residential reupholstering project, custom built seating, or contract furniture for the hospitality sector. We also work with designers and architects to build contemporary furniture that is flexible enough to meet your needs at home or at work. Our modular Infinity Line does double duty as indoor/outdoor seating, can be mixed and matched and rearranged to fit your space, and even provides extra sleeping areas when needed. At Art Upholstery we work with you to find that perfect solution. Building on everything that made our business what it is, we strive to bring you modern furniture that works today. Let us update your home or workplace with a fresh look!

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ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE Music Director, Co-Curator

German conductor Alexander Mickelthwate is renowned for his “splendid, richly idiomatic readings” (LA Weekly), “fearless” approach and “first-rate

technique” (Los Angeles Times). Critics have noted Alexander’s extraordinary command over the Austro-Germanic repertoire, commenting on the “passion, profundity, emotional intensity, subtlety and degree of perfection achieved” in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 as “miraculous” (Anton Kuerti, 2011).

Following on from his tenure as assistant conductor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which he completed in 2004, Alexander Mickelthwate was associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for three years, under the direction of Essa-Pekka Salonen. Now in his eighth season as

MATTHEW PATTON Co-Curator

Composer Matthew Patton has been collaborating with such internationally acclaimed artists as choreographer Paul Taylor; artistic director, dancer

and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov; and most recently film director Guy Maddin.

Speaking in Tongues, his large scale Emmy Award-winning collaboration with American choreographer Paul Taylor has been mounted in new productions at the Paris Opera House, the La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It was called

“a masterpiece for our time” by the New York Times, has been released by Warner

Co-Curator BiographiesWNMF2015

music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Alexander has significantly developed the orchestra’s profile through active community engagement and innovative programming initiatives like the annual New Music Festival and the Indigenous Music Festival. Chosen to perform at the Carnegie Hall Spring For Music Festival in New York, May 2014, due to

“creative and innovative programming” (CBC Manitoba Scene), the orchestra was the only Canadian ensemble in the showcase. As well as significantly contributing to the New Music Festival and Indigenous Festival, Alexander lead the orchestra’s first out of province tour since 1979 to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, launched the International Conducting masterclasses, the New Music Festival 2012 film project and played a major part in the acoustic overhaul of the Centennial Concert Hall.

Brothers, and in 2013 a new production premiered at the Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York.

His work with Guy Maddin has been performed by Icelandic musicians with Sigur Ros, Mum, Bedroom Community, and actor Udo Kier at the National Arts Centre of Canada and Lincoln Center in New York. He is the co-curator of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival. He is currently working on a new evening- length project based on the true story of Winnipeg resident David Reimer, who has been called

“the most famous patient in medical history.”

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JOHN LUTHER ADAMS (US) Composer

John Luther Adams is a composer whose life and work are deeply rooted in the natural world. Adams was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music

for his symphonic work Become Ocean. Inuksuit, his outdoor work for up to 99 percussionists, is regularly performed all over the world.

A recipient of the Heinz Award for his contributions to raising environmental awareness, Adams has also been honoured with the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University “for melding the physical and musical worlds into a unique artistic vision that transcends stylistic boundaries.”

Born in 1953, Adams grew up in the South and in the suburbs of New York City. He studied composition with James Tenney at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was in the first graduating class (in 1973). In the mid-1970s he became active in the campaign for the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and subsequently served as executive director of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

The music of John Luther Adams is recorded on Cantaloupe Music, Cold Blue Records, New World Records, Mode Records, and New Albion Records, and his books are published by Wesleyan University Press.

KATI AGÓCS (CA) Composer

The music of Kati Agócs merges lapidary rigour with sensuous lyricism and is performed by leading musicians worldwide. The Boston Globe has called

it “music of fluidity and austere beauty…deep, elusive mystery…dispersing its energy in unexpected ways.” Commissioned and performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Albany Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and numerous other ensembles and soloists, Agócs has received the Arts and Letters Award in Music (the Lifetime Achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters); Guggenheim Fellowship; Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center; Fulbright Fellowship; and many other awards. Born in Canada of Hungarian and American background, she earned Doctoral and Masters degrees in Composition from The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was Milton Babbitt. She serves on the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

VIOLET ARCHER (CA) Composer

Dr. Violet Balestreri Archer, a seminal figure in Canadian composition, created a distinguished body of work during a career that spanned over six decades.

With a life-long commitment to music that left no room for marriage, her music

Artist & Composer Biographies


was heralded and performed around the world, and earned honours and awards for her both in Canada and abroad. Dr. Archer wrote more than 280 compositions. Her repertoire is wide and extensive, ranging from music for solo flute to electronic music, with an emphasis on chamber music, choral music and songs for solo voice and piano.

The guiding aesthetic force in Archer’s music is best described as neo-classic.

“The Norton-Grove Dictionary of Women Composers” describes her music thusly:

“Archer’s music is on the one hand dissonantly contrapuntal yet on the other refreshingly folksy.”

She was also a deeply religious person who credited her achievements to her faith:

“I believe we are guided in what we do. Without my faith I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing and, of course, I always feel that each new piece should be better than the last one.”

Dr. Violet Archer passed away on February 22, 2000.

ARDITTI QUARTET

The Arditti Quartet enjoys a worldwide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Many

hundreds of string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation. As well as tonight’s Dithyrambe by Wolfgang Rihm, ten other works that include orchestra have been written for the quartet. These works have left a permanent mark on 20th and 21st century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. Their performances and recordings set a unique standard of interpretation.

The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpretation. The list of composers they have personally worked with reads like a who’s who.

A substantial part of their repertoire is documented on more than 200 CDs featuring the quartet, released by various labels.

Over the past 25 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work, the most prestigious being the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, which was awarded in 1999 for

“lifetime achievement” in music. So far, the Arditti Quartet is the only ensemble to have received this award.

ANDREW BALFOUR (CA) Composer

Of Cree descent, Andrew Balfour has written a body of more than 40 choral, instrumental and orchestral works, including Empire Étrange: The Death of Louis

Riel, Migiis: Sound Scape of the Whiteshell, Vision Chant, Gregorio’s Nightmare, Raven Can Tango, Wa Wa Tey Wak (Northern Lights), Fantasia on a Poem by Rumi, Missa Brevis and Medieval Inuit. He has been commissioned by many organizations, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Singers, the Kingston Chamber Choir and Camerata Nova. His works have been performed and/or broadcast locally, nationally and internationally.

Andrew is also the founder, conceptual creator and Artistic Director of Camerata Nova where he specializes in creating

“concept concerts” (Wa Wa Tey Wak, Medieval Inuit, Chant!) exploring a theme through an eclectic choice of music,

Artist & Composer BiographiesWNMF2015

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including new works and innovative inter-genre and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Andrew has become increasingly passionate about music education and outreach, particularly in the north and inner city Winnipeg schools where he has worked on behalf of the National Arts Centre, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and various Winnipeg school divisions.

Andrew has been Curator and Composer-in-Residence of the WSO’s Indigenous Festivals, and in 2007 received the Mayor of Winnipeg’s Making a Mark Award, sponsored by the Winnipeg Arts Council to recognize the most promising midcareer artist in the city.

MASON BATES (US) Composer

Recently awarded the Heinz Medal in the Humanities, Mason Bates writes music that fuses innovative orchestral writing, imaginative narrative forms,

the harmonies of jazz and the rhythms of techno. Frequently performed by orchestras large and small, his symphonic music has been the first to receive widespread acceptance for its expanded palette of electronic sounds, and it is championed by leading conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Leonard Slatkin. He has become a visible advocate for bringing new music to new spaces, whether through institutional partnerships such as his residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or through his classical/DJ project Mercury Soul, which has transformed spaces ranging from commercial clubs to Frank Gehry-designed concert halls into exciting, hybrid musical events drawing over a thousand people. In awarding Bates the Heinz Medal, Teresa

Heinz Kerry remarked “his music has moved the orchestra into the digital age and dissolved the boundaries of classical music.”

CAMERATA NOVA

Camerata Nova is a vocal group without fear, performing Renaissance, Aboriginal-infused and contemporary music. Often singing a cappella, the group also enjoys accompaniment from didgeridoos, crystal bowls, all kinds of percussion, and/or early instruments. Since 1996, they continue to push the envelope, offering authentic early music performances, premieres of Manitoba compositions and an eclectic array in between. Camerata Nova has issued four CDs: Camerata Nova, Mystica, Nova Noël and Camerata Nova Live: Christmas in Early America, as well as a DVD Wa Wa Tey Wak (Northern Lights). Camerata Nova is led by a quartet of extraordinary individuals: Artistic Director and Composer-in-Residence Andrew Balfour, and Music Directors Mel Braun, Ross Brownlee and Michael McKay.

CANADIAN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY CHORUS Janet Brenneman and Rudy Schellenberg, co-directors

The Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) Chorus combine’s two of CMU’s premiere ensembles, the CMU Women’s Chorus (Janet Brenneman, conductor) and the CMU Men’s Chorus (Rudy Schellenberg, conductor). These auditioned choirs are comprised of students from a variety of academic programs at CMU and perform


regularly in worship and in concert across Manitoba. Known for their innovative programming, energy, and enthusiasm, these choirs perform demanding repertoire that represents their commitment to exploring a global context in close relation to the music of their Christian heritage and faith. Together, the CMU Women and Men’s choirs host the annual CMU Choral Connections and can be heard regularly on Golden West Broadcasting throughout southern Manitoba. Past performances with the WSO include the the world premiere of T. Patrick Carrabre’s Creation Stories, Alfred Schnittke’s Faust Cantata Seid Nuchtern und Wachet, Christos Hatzis’ Sepulcher of Life, Glen Buhr’s Symphony No. 3, John Tavener’s Requiem, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Seven Gates of Jerusalem, and Giya Kancheli’s Styx.

ZOSHA DI CASTRI (CA) Composer

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist living in New York. Her music extends beyond purely concert music, including electronics, sound-arts,

and collaborations with video and dance. Her piece Serafiniana for amplified violin, orchestra, and electronics was premiered by Esprit Orchestra in May 2014. Other recent compositions have been programmed by the San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony (co-commissioned by Boosey & Hawkes), TSO, and the OSM. Di Castri has made chamber music appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and L.A. Philharmonic, and has worked with leading ensembles including Ekmeles, Talea Ensemble, the NEM, and JACK Quartet. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 2012, and participated in Ircam’s Manifeste, writing an interactive work for the dance company ZOO. Upcoming


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projects include an interdisciplinary piece with David Adamcyk and ICE, and a piece for Yarn/Wire. Di Castri recently began teaching as an assistant professor of music at Columbia University in 2014.

BRIAN ENO (UK) Composer

Brian Eno is a producer, composer, and singer who helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and 1990s.

Brian Eno began experimenting with electronic music in the late 1960s. As a producer and musician, he helped define/revamp the sound of some blockbuster musical acts of the 1980s and 1990s, including U2, David Bowie, and the Talking Heads. Eno created the genre of ambient music, using it to define his sound as a solo artist and later to producer records for such bands as Coldplay.

THE GRITTY (CA) Sarah Jo Kirsch & jaymez savour

The Gritty is an electroacoustic audio/visual duo project conceived by Sarah Jo Kirsch and jaymez. These eager explorers of sound and light unite in the

intangible journey through space and time penetrating open ears, eyes, and minds. Live and interactive, The Gritty hinges itself inside instinctive interpretive spontaneity – each venue and audience inspiring a set of completely unique creative choices. Armed with their collective wit and a smattering of technology, Sarah Jo and jaymez savour the endless exploits extant in the sonic/optic spectra in which they swim.

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GWEN HOEBIG Violin

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

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

YURI HOOKER Cello

Principal cellist of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Yuri Hooker is well known for his passionate and soulful interpretations of a

wide range of repertoire. His frequent solo appearances have met with critical


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GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS (AT) Composer

“Two things were clear to me from an early age: the twelve tones that a piano can produce per octave are too few for me. I need smaller intervals,

finer nuances. And I want to compose expression, emotional music which moves and takes hold of people.”

Born in 1953, Georg Friedrich Haas grew up in the Vorarlberg region of western Austria. Since 2013, a Professor of Composition at Columbia University in New York, he now moves geographically between two poles: integrated in the traditions of the Viennese School through his studies, and at the same time inspired by the aesthetic freedom of American composers such as Charles Ives, John Cage and James Tenney.

The 2014/2015 season started in October with the world premiere of his String Quartet No. 8 in Basel performed by the JACK Quartet, followed by performances by the Arditti Quartet of all preceding string quartets as part of the Wien Modern festival, where he was composer-in-focus. His concerto grosso Nr. 1 was recently heard in Berlin and Vienna, and will be played in Zurich in April 2015.

Georg Friedrich Haas has received numerous composition awards and was honoured with the Grand Austrian State Prize in 2007. He has been a member of the Grand Austrian State Prize since May 2011.

and audience acclaim: his 2007 Rococo Variations with the WSO was lauded as one of the best classical performances of the decade by the Winnipeg Free Press, and in 2011 The Strad magazine spoke of his performance of Britten as being among the

“outstanding performances” of the inaugural International Cello Festival of Canada. An avid chamber musician, Hooker also appears regularly with the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society and GroundSwell.

As well as performing, Hooker is an inspiring and dedicated teacher whose students are regularly recognized locally and nationally with awards and scholarships. As well as maintaining a private teaching studio, he served as the Sessional Instructor of Cello at the University of Manitoba from 2004-2008, and in the summer of 2011 he launched the Rosamunde Summer Music Academy for young string players. He holds a Bachelor’s of Music degree from Brandon University, which he followed with graduate studies under Janos Starker at Indiana University.

GIYA KANCHELI (GE) Composer

Giya Kancheli studied at the Conservatorium of Tbilisi with Iona Tuskiya from 1959 until 1963. He has been a freelance composer since passing his examinations. In

1971 Kancheli became Music Director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi.

The composer moved to Berlin in 1991, where he received a stipend from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). In 1995 he was composer-in-residence of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp. Since then, Kancheli has been living in Belgium as a freelance composer. After

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Kancheli had started out as a composer of the “Soviet avant-garde” during the 1960s, he unceasingly worked out his own musical style in the years since then.

Kancheli’s sound world has something incredibly natural about it. His musical structures are orientated on emotional aspects such as intensification and tension; excitement and calm. He works with dynamic extremes and not infrequently demands extreme slowness. In terms of atmosphere, Kancheli’s music is closely connected with his homeland of Georgia

— without actually quoting Georgian folklore. Nostalgia and melancholy, as well as sadness over the political conditions in the former Soviet Union (“Life without Christmas”) and the destruction of the Georgian civil war mark his production.

SARAH JO KIRSCH Soprano

Sarah Jo Kirsch is a soprano/vocalist currently based in Winnipeg, Canada. She continues to make waves as a soloist with local ensembles – large and

small – and maintains a continuing presence at the Winnipeg New Music Festival, Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts Festival, and GroundSwell, Winnipeg’s new music concert series. Kirsch surfs the gamut of musical evolution, seeking the most harmonious alloys forged from text and music. More than anything, she aspires to be a worthy muse and an evocative interpreter.

Kirsch completed her undergraduate degree in voice at the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music and earned her Master’s at the University of Manitoba Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music.

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LARYSA KUZMENKO (CA) Composer

Larysa Kuzmenko is a Toronto-based composer, pianist, and JUNO nominee. Her works have been published by Boosey and Hawkes, commissioned,

performed, broadcast and recorded by many outstanding musicians all over the world. Some prominent ensemble and soloists who have performed her works include: the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, directed by Peter Oundjian and Jukka-Pekka Saraste; the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, directed by Bramwell Tovey; Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, directed by Jeffrey Moule; the Gryphon Trio; the Composer’s Orchestra, directed by Gary Kulesha; pianists Anton Kuerti and Christina Petrowska-Quilico; cellist Shauna Rolston and the New Hampshire Philharmonic, directed by Mark Latham.

Her works demonstrate a strong affinity towards the mainstream of classical music. She imbues her music with a strong melodic sense, and a firm rooting in traditional, albeit extended tonal processes.

She is currently on staff at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, where she teaches piano and composition.

NICOLE LIZÉE (CA) Composer

Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond

generations,” Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences

including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and 1960s psychedelia.

Lizée was awarded the 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow. Her commission list of over 40 works includes the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, NYC’s Kaufman Center, Eve Egoyan, and the San Francisco Symphony. Her music has been performed worldwide in venues including Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and Muziekgebouw — and in festivals including the BBC Proms (UK), Bang On a Can (USA), All Tomorrow’s Parties (UK), Luminato Festival (Canada), and Dark Music Days (Iceland).

Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus, two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine, and the Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition.

MEGUMI MASAKI Piano

Award-winning pianist Megumi Masaki is known not only for her dynamic temperament, “riveting and mind-expanding” (Fréttabladid 2013)

performances and warm rapport with audiences, but also for the breadth and innovation of her artistic activity. Masaki is a pianist who specializes in the performance of Canadian music and new works. She is especially interested in exploring how sound, image, text and movement can be integrated in live interactive multimedia performance. She frequently collaborates with leading composers, visual artists, choreographers


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WNMF2015 | OVERTURE

and writers on interdisciplinary works and projects with new technologies to enhance a dynamic interaction between creator and performer. Numerous piano, multimedia (with interactive and fixed electronics, interactive and fixed visuals, and gesture tracking), and chamber works have been composed specifically for and in collaboration with Masaki and she has premiered over 70 works worldwide.

Masaki is a member of the Noiseborder Ensemble which has presented more than 20 original multimedia pieces featuring a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments as well as live processing and mixing of sound and video. She is also a member of the Slingshot-Kidõ that explores the creation of works involving a theatrical-dance-gestural-electroacoustic interdisciplinary approach to piano

“shows” for traditional and non-traditional performance spaces.

Masaki is Professor of Piano at Brandon University in Canada and director of the Brandon University New Music Ensemble and annual New Music Festival. Her success in teaching was recognized with the 2010 Brandon University Alumni Association’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

LUBOMYR MELNYK (CA) Composer

Lubomyr Melnyk is a pianist and composer, who created a totally new “language” for the piano, called Continuous Music, where the pianist generates an unbroken

stream of harmony from the piano. He has a large body of compositions, mostly for piano, but also included are works for chamber groups, as well as orchestra, and voice. His music ranges from the abstract

and chaotic, to the most serene and melodic. He recorded extensively during the 1980s for CBC Radio, as well as radio performances throughout Europe. Lubomyr embraces the living sound of the piano, played with Continuous Music, as a marvelous experience of overtones and sound colours that must be heard “live”: and so he tours throughout the world performing his piano concerts. He has also recorded his music with several labels in North America and in Europe.

SARAH NEUFELD (CA) Composer

Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the

acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre. Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a more formal and focused sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Béla Bartók, Steve Reich, Iva Bittová and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work — in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music. Neufeld’s debut solo album Hero Brother, released August 20, 2013 on Constellation Records, indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. In 2015, Sarah Neufeld will release her sophomore solo album, with plans to tour extensively throughout 2015 in support of the release.

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ANDREW NORMAN (US) Composer

Andrew Norman has emerged in recent years as one of the most compelling musical voices of his generation. A native Midwesterner raised in

central California, Norman studied the piano and viola before attending the University of Southern California and Yale. His teachers and mentors include Martha Ashleigh, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Stewart Gordon, Aaron Kernis, Ingram Marshall, and Martin Bresnick.

Norman’s symphonic works have been performed by leading orchestras worldwide, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich. His music has been championed by some of the classical music’s eminent conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, John Adams, Marin Alsop, Simon Rattle, and David Robertson.

Norman is the recipient of the 2005 ASCAP Nissim Prize, the 2006 Rome Prize and the 2009 Berlin Prize. He joined the roster of Young Concert Artists as Composer-in-Residence in 2008, and held the title

“Komponist für Heidelberg” for the 2010/2011 season.

URSULA OPPENS Piano

Ursula Oppens, long recognized as the leading champion of contemporary American piano music, has just released two recordings: Bernard Rands

Piano Music (Bridge) and Meredith Monk Piano Songs (ECM). She has been nominated four times for a Grammy Award and has premiered works by Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, Laura Kaminsky, Tania León, György Ligeti, Witold Lutos!awski, Harold Meltzer, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, and Frederic Rzewski, among many others. As soloist Ms. Oppens has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee; the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, BBC Scotland, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. As chamber musician, Ms. Oppens has collaborated with the Arditti, Juilliard, Pacifica, and Rosetti quartets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

VIC PANKRATZ Director (Prairie Voices)

Victor Pankratz is well known in Manitoba for his singing, conducting and teaching. He was a frequent performer with the Manitoba Opera Association. As a tenor soloist he has appeared with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw and the Mennonite Festival Chorus, and many more groups. For three years he was co-artistic director of the Winnipeg Singers. He has also had the privilege of conducting the regional youth choirs in Manitoba. Currently, Victor is artistic director of Prairie Voices, and teaches music at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate.


while still remaining true to their Canadian roots. This past season, Prairie Voices released their new CD, Autumn.

THE QUAY BROTHERS (US)

The extraordinary Quay Brothers are two of the world’s most original filmmakers; identical twins who use animation, puppetry, stop motion

and miniatures to create unforgettable worlds. Music is always paramount to their art, it permeates everything they do; they have suggested they are in fact “failed composers.” The Quays create visualizations of musical space and have worked closely with ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, worked with original music by many important composers including Lutoslawski, Penderecki, and Leszek Jankowski, and have contributed to the work of musicians such as Sparklehorse and Peter Gabriel. They are currently shooting their new feature Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by novelist Bruno Schulz.

WOLFGANG RIHM (DE) Composer

Wolfgang Rihm was born on March 13, 1952 in Karlsruhe, a city near the French and Swiss borders, at a stone’s throw from Strasbourg and Basel, two of the many

places where he and his music are at home.

Rihm is a composer, professor of composition at the Music Academy of his native city (where his students included Vykintas Baltakas and Jörg Widmann), and a remarkable writer on music with several

NOVA PON (CA) Composer, Winner of the Canadian Music Centre composition competition

Nova Pon’s music has been performed on four continents, published by Frederick Harris, and recorded for Naxos. She has composed in major cities, a small island community,

and an isolated wooded acreage, in genres ranging from orchestral, chamber, wind band, and choral works, to collaborations with film and dance, to a wide range of professional, amateur, and educational music making. She enjoys embracing the unique challenges of each project as inspiration for new approaches to meaningful expression. She studied at the University of Calgary and University of British Columbia, and continues research on questions within music, psychology and philosophy. She is also a passionate music teacher and flutist.

PRAIRIE VOICES

Founded in 2000 by Elroy Friesen, Prairie Voices is an award-winning company of singers ages 18-25 dedicated to the performance of innovative contemporary choral music from all over the world. Placing an emphasis on Canadian and Manitoban composers, the choir uses energy, expressiveness and movement to connect avant-garde composition with a popular audience. Prairie Voices has performed around the world, bringing their unique touch to a diverse repertoire, from African spirituals to Broadway hits. Prairie Voices has managed to grow as an organization

CHRISTOPHER ROUSE (US) Composer

Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Trombone Concerto, Christopher Rouse is one of America’s most prominent composers of orchestral

music. The New York Times has called Rouse’s music “some of the most anguished, most memorable music around.”

Born in Baltimore in 1949, Rouse developed an early interest in both classical and popular music. He graduated from Oberlin Conservatory and Cornell University, numbering among his principal teachers George Crumb and Karel Husa. He taught composition at the Eastman School of Music for two decades and currently teaches composition at The Juilliard School.

His work has been performed by nearly every major U.S. orchestra, and by numerous ensembles overseas. Named the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic in 2012, his stay has been extended through the 2014–2015 season.

Christopher Rouse is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

FREDERIC RZEWSKI (US) Composer

I was born in Westfield, Mass., in 1938. Both of my parents were pharmacists, both of Polish background. My father, who arrived in America in 1920, earned

his way through Clark College in Worcester by working in my maternal grandfather’s

books to his name, including collections of his articles and interviews. He also sits on a number of influential committees in Germany and has a say in decisions affecting the working conditions of his fellow musicians.

Rihm has written ‘new music’ as it is commonly called and some of his titles have become signposts in the history of post-war music. Soloists, chamber groups and orchestras programme these works as a matter of course now, they have become an integral part of the repertoire (Jagden und Formen, Chiffre-cycle, Pol - Kolchis - Nucleus).

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the foremost song composers of our times; his string quartets (of which there are far more than the twelve numbered ones) are often presented in cycles by a wide range of groups.

ALEX ROSS

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won a National

Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His second book is the essay collection Listen to This. He is now at work on Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music. Ross has received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Belmont Prize in Germany, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is married to the filmmaker Jonathan Lisecki.


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drugstore. (He watched Dr. Goddard launch one of his first rockets in a nearby field.) He was proud to be able to put me (his eldest son) through Harvard without asking for a scholarship. My early memories growing up in the 1940s and early 50s: the war, the atomic bomb, my music teacher Mr. Mackey in Springfield, Shostakovich, the Rosenbergs, war again, apparently never-ending war and yet more war. This has continued on into adulthood and old age. My whole life has been framed by war, with (as Thomas Paine put it), occasional brief periods where they sat down, weary of bloodshed, and called it “peace.” In the middle of this I was able to carve out a career as a musician, something on which I am still busy.

ÖRJAN SANDRED (SE) Composer

Örjan Sandred is a Professor of Composition at the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba since 2005. He was teaching composition

at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm 1998-2005. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, McGill University (Montreal) and at IRCAM (Paris).

Sandred has established himself as a composer of both instrumental and computer music. His compositions have been performed by, for example, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble de Musique Interactive. In recent years he has composed a series of pieces with live electronics, including solo parts for violin, oboe, percussion, cello and guitar.

Sandred’s music is regularly performed all over the world. Recent examples include the Miller Theatre in New York (2012),

Auditorium Saint-Germain in Paris, the Nordic Music Festival in Helsinki (2013), Shanghai Concert Hall (2013), and the Mondavi Center in Davis, California (2014). Sandred’s music is available on the CD Cracks and Corrosion, released on the Navona label in 2009.

ALFRED SCHNITTKE (RU) Composer

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) embarked on a voyage of compositional discovery in the 1960s. His works from the period show him embracing the modernist

and avant-garde fascinations of the time. Outstanding among his pieces of this period are 2 violin sonatas (1964, 1968), and the String Quartet No. 1 and Violin Concerto No. 2 (both 1966).

In 1972, he finished the massive First Symphony, blending Soviet symphonic thought, often parodied, with highly experimental elements. This powerful work established him as a leader of Soviet modern music, loathed by the authorities and adored by the anti-Soviet ‘underground’. Later came the hauntingly simple Piano Quintet (1976), and the comically sinister Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977). All three pieces have taken his name all over the world.

In 1985, Schnittke suffered a stroke, which left him in bad health for the rest of his life. Far from impeding him, however, sickness seems to have released an inner torrent and in later years he became prolific, answering each successive brush with death with a further flood of music.


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CAROLINE SHAW (US) Composer

Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician appearing in different guises. She is a Grammy-winning singer in Roomful of Teeth and a busy freelance violinist,

and in 2013 Caroline became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices. She will make her solo violin debut in 2015 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (MusicNOW), and she is the inaugural musician in residence at Dumbarton Oaks (fall 2014) as well as the Composer-in-Residence with Vancouver’s Music on Main (2014-16). Shaw has also performed with ACME, Signal, the Trinity Wall Street Choir, Alarm Will Sound, the Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble, the Knights, and many others. Recent commissioned projects include new works for Carnegie Hall, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Guggenheim Museum (FLUX Quartet), The Crossing, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Other personal projects include the development of an evening-length theater work, Ritornello, and a slowly-evolving ambient electronic album. Caroline loves the colour yellow, avocados, otters, salted chocolate, kayaking, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.

ANN SOUTHAM (CA) Composer

Ann Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1937 but lived most of her life in Toronto. After completing musical

studies at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music in the early 1960’s, Southam began a teaching and composing career, which included a long and productive association with modern dance. As well as creating music for some of Canada’s major modern dance companies and choreographers including the Toronto Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman, Dancemakers, Patricia Beatty, Christopher House and Rachel Browne, she was an instructor in electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and also participated in many

“composer-in-the-classroom” programs in elementary and high schools. While a great deal of her work was electroacoustic music on tape, in her later years she became increasingly interested in music for acoustic instruments. She composed concert music for a variety of acoustic instruments and instrumental ensembles, working with such artists and ensembles as Eve Egoyan, Christina Petrowska Quilico and Arraymusic. Ann Southam’s work was commissioned through the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the CBC, and has been performed in Canada, Europe and the U.S. She was a member of the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian League of Composers and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. Ann Southam passed away November 25, 2010.

VICTORIA SPARKS Percussion

Victoria Sparks holds a bachelor of Music and Education from the University of Manitoba, where her teachers included Jauvon Gilliam

and Rob Gardner. In 2010, Sparks graduated from Butler University, where


she had the opportunity to study under Jon Crabiel, completing a Masters in Percussion Performance. Sparks has also had instruction from Craig Hentrich, Julie Spencer, Johnny Lee Lane and Jack Van Geem. She has had the honour of performing with many wonderful colleagues including Beverly Johnston, Dr. Catherine Wood, Dr. Laura Loewen & Eric Platz and has worked as a technical consultant for Dame Evelyn Glennie on several occasions.

Sparks has been an active performer and music educator in Winnipeg and during her studies at Butler University. In 2010, Sparks was appointed the Coordinator of Percussion Studies at Brandon University where she currently teaches percussion techniques, directs the percussion ensemble, and runs a private studio. She also runs the percussion studio at the University of Manitoba and directs their percussion ensemble, as well as teaching at the Canadian Mennonite University. She is the founder and director of the Prairie Percussion Workshop, an education and performance based event for percussion students in middle and high school. Sparks performs regularly with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Brandon Chamber Players, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the GroundSwell New Music Series.

JAMES TENNEY (US) Composer

James Tenney was born in Silver City, New Mexico, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado, where he received his early training as a pianist and composer. A performer

as well as a composer and theorist, he was co-founder and conductor of the Tone

Roads Chamber Ensemble in New York City. He was a pioneer in the field of electronic and computer music, working with Max Mathews and others at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s to develop programs for computer sound-generation and composition. He has written works for a variety of media, both instrumental and electronic, many of them using alternative tuning systems. He was the author of two books: META / HODOS: A Phenomenology of 20th-Century Musical Materials and An Approach to the Study of Form (1961; Frog Peak, 1988) and A History of ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’ (Excelsior, 1988).

Tenney received grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Jean A. Chalmers Foundation. He taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, the University of California, and at York University in Toronto, where he was named Distinguished Research Professor in 1994.

RICHARD TURNER Harp

Principal harpist of the WSO since 1977, Richard Turner began his musical studies under the guidance of his father, a violinist with the Chicago Symphony. He was

principal harpist with the Civic orchestra in Chicago while studying with Alberto Salvi and Edward Druzinsky. He continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Upon graduating he was immediately appointed to the position he

JOHN ZORN (US) Composer

John Zorn has drawn upon his experience in classical jazz, rock, hardcore punk, klezmer, film, cartoon, popular, world, and improvised music to create

an influential body of work that defies academic categories. Born and raised in New York City, Zorn is a central figure in the downtown scene, incorporating a wide variety of creative musicians into various compositional formats. His remarkably diverse work draws inspiration from art, literature, film, theater, philosophy, alchemy, and mysticism, as well as music. He founded the Tzadik label in 1995; runs the East Village performance space, The Stone; and has edited and published six volumes of musician’s writings under the title Arcana. Zorn’s honours include the Cultural Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the William Schuman Prize for composition from Columbia University. He was inducted into the Long Island Hall of Fame by Lou Reed in 2010 and is a MacArthur Fellow. In 2012 he was honoured by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received honourary doctorates from the University of Ghent, SUNY Purchase and New England Conservatory.

currently holds with the WSO. In addition, he has performed with the Lyric Opera of Philadelphia, Baltimore Symphony, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As well, he has appeared as soloist with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, CBC Winnipeg Orchestra and at the Banff Festival. He has been featured on CBC TV and Radio.

In addition to his performance accomplishments, he is recognized internationally for his innovations in harp regulation and adjustment. Along with his musical responsibilities Turner has been the chairman of the WSO Members Association for many years. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the WSO.

VIEWING METHOD GROUP Visual Artists

Viewing Method Group (VMG) is a Winnipeg-based experimental video art collective that uses simultaneity, chance operations and detailed, regimented shooting procedures to create organic, stream of conscious moving image collages, that produce startling visual and auditory textures, illusions, and revelations.

Begun in 2014 by Thor Aitkenhead, Greg Hanec, and Brian Longfield, VMG’s main goal is to apply these methods to as wide a diversity of subjects as possible, addressing issues surrounding perception and consciousness, as well as surveillance, private property, and societal rituals.


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ARDITTI MEETS THE WSO Raymond Chrunyk, first violinBoyd MacKenzie, second violin Barbara Hamilton, violaDesiree Abbey, celloAvalon Lee, bassLaurel Ridd, fluteCaitlin Broms-Jacobs, oboeErin Fung, clarinetCathy Wood, clarinetJim Ewen, bassoonAllen Harrington, bassoonDale Sorenson, tromboneTony Cyre, percussionVictoria Sparks, percussionJanice Lindskoog, harpDonna Laube, pianoEarl Stafford, celeste

CROSSING GROUNDLaurel Ridd, fluteErin Fung, clarinetJim Ewen, bassoonDale Sorenson, tromboneTony Cyre, percussionDonna Laube, piano

TUNING THE VOIDLaurel Ridd, fluteCaitlin Broms-Jacobs, oboeErin Fung, clarinetJim Ewen, bassoonMike Plummer, trumpetDale Sorenson, tromboneTony Cyre, percussionVictoria Sparks, percussionJanice Lindskoog, harpDonna Laube, pianoEarl Stafford, piano

BACK TO THE BEGINNING Laurel Ridd, fluteLaura MacDougall, fluteCaitlin Broms-Jacobs, oboeErin Fung, clarinetJim Ewen, bassoonMike Plummer, trumpetDale Sorenson, tromboneTony Cyre, percussionVictoria Sparks, percussionJanice Lindskoog, harpDonna Laube, pianoEarl Stafford, celesteJulian Pelicano, accordianTravis Harrison, bass guitar

ADDITIONAL MUSICIAN LISTINGS

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OUR DISTINGUISHED PATRONS

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Mr. W.H. Loewen & Mrs. S.E. Loewen,WSO Directors Emeritus

EXECUTIVE OFFICE

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Bramwell Tovey, Conductor LaureateJulian Pellicano, Resident Conductor

ARTISTIC OPERATIONS

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Timothy E. Burt, CFA President Richard Turner,1st Vice PresidentTerry Sargeant, 2nd Vice PresidentRob Kowalchuk, TreasurerMichael D. Kay, Corporate SecretarySandra AltnerJohn Balsillie Lucienne Blouw Sylvia Cassie Michael Cox Arlene Dahl Marten Duhoux

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Alan Freeman Daniel Freidman Dr. Daya GuptaGregory Hay Micah Heilbrunn Robin Hildebrand Peter Jessiman Maureen Kilgour Sotirios Kotoulas Dr. Eleanor MacDougall Alexander Mickelthwate, Ex-officio Dr. Michael Nelson Trudy Schroeder, Ex-officioDr. Ian Thomson Curt Vossen

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