Shattering the Silence 2011Breaking the Sound Barrier: Electroacoustic Focus

January 19–23, 2011

Acadia UniversityWolfville, Nova Scotia

Hildegard Westerkamp Composer-in-ResidenceSOCAN Foundation Guest Composer

Derek Charke & Mark Hopkins Co-directors

Steven Naylor EA Advisor and Co-curator

www.shatteringthesilence.ca

The Acadia New

Music Society Presents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Acadia New Music Society is a non-profit organization with a mandate to foster the promotion and presentation of new and experimental types of concert music in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. The 2010-2011 board members are Derek Charke, Mark Hopkins, Pauline Dong, Sally Benevides

Hopkins and Jeff Hennessy.

The Acadia New Music Society gratefully acknowledges financial support from:

School of Music, Jeff Hennessy, Director

http://music.acadiau.ca

This year we are thrilled to host Hildegard Westerkamp as our composer-in-residence / SOCAN Foundation composer. Hildegard Westerkamp brings years  of experience as an electroacoustic composer working in the fields of acoustic communication, soundscape composition and acoustic ecology.  In keeping with these themes we've aptly subtitled our festival 'Breaking the Sound Barrier'. Hildegard Westerkamp is one of the original members of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University and will be in attendance for the entire festival. Don’t miss your chance to meet and hear one of Canada’s most unique voices. Centred around the concerts are a series of workshops and lectures with Hildegard Westerkamp. Be sure to check out all of the events listed on the next page. 

Our first evening, Wed. Jan. 19, presents an array of ecology inspired works. This Opening Night Gala Concert with the NBG (Nothin' but Gnarly) Ensemble, hand-picked from top artists in  the Maritimes and led by Mark Hopkins, features five unique Canadian composers including: Andrew Staniland, Claude  Vivier, Vincent Ho, Derek Charke, and  a very special solo performance of Hildegard Westerkamp's 'Liebes-Lied/Love Song' with cellist Norman Adams. Andrew Staniland is joining us this evening to perform live electronics. This is one show not to miss!

On Thursday you can hear brand-new works by our student composers and performers at Acadia University’s School of Music.This is always a highlight of the festival. On Friday, be sure to check out Jennifer King and Simon Docking, our dueling pianists, playing some incredible music, including works by Stockhausen, Messiaen and, of course, Hildegard Westerkamp! On the same evening hear the Atlantic premiere of David Maslanka's seminal wind ensemble work ‘A Child's Garden  of Dreams’ performed by the Acadia Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Mark Hopkins.

Each year we've hosted a New Music in New Places event, sponsored by the Canadian Music Centre, and this year is no exception. On  Sat. 22 morning, join us at the Halifax Market for an unforgettable soundscape and new music busking experience. This event includes works by Hildegard Westerkamp and other EA composers, and performers Paula Rockwell, Jack Chen and the Acadia Saxophone Quartet. As special bonus we’re holding a live processing event with vegetables. You’ll need to see this to believe it!

Back in Wolfville, at 3 pm in the Al Whittle Theatre, there is a showing of 'Soundtracker' by Nick Sherman, a documentary of the career of  Emmy Award-winning nature sound recordist, Gordon Hempton. And Saturday is not over yet! At 8 pm is an Electroacoustic concert, co-curated with Halifax composer and sound-artist Steven Naylor, who we've also commissioned to write a new work for this concert. This thrilling concert features EA works by Lorne Altman, Bob Bauer, Derek Charke and two seminal pieces by Hildegard Westerkamp. This concert is unique in that soundscapes are projected on 8 speakers surrounding the hall. 

Barbara Pritchard will wrap up the festival with a solo piano recital on Sunday January 23 at 3 pm, in the KC Irving Garden Room, featuring  the music of Atlantic Composers Clark Ross and Richard Gibson. Before this, at 11 am Hildegard Westerkamp will lead us on a sound-walk.

As you can see we’ve prepared a fabulous line-up for you this year. We welcome you to our 5th Annual Festival. Enjoy!

Derek Charke & Mark Hopkins,Co-Directors, Shattering the Silence Festival

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Welcome! to our 5th annual Acadia New Music Festival Biographies: performersPaula Rockwell, mezzo-soprano has been acclaimed for her “astonishing clarity and musical intelligence.” Her career has taken her across Canada to England, Japan and the United States, performing with orchestras, giving recitals and instructing.Paula has an affinity for contemporary music and has released a solo CD, which she co-produced, featuring 20th century Art Songs entitled Fleeting Melodies. The Halifax Herald said...“ a repertoire such as this is both unusual and challenging and Rockwell with her beautiful, clear, ringing voice meets their technical demands with assurance and precision.” She also has been featured on several recordings and has had compositions written for her. One of England’s foremost composers, Jonathon Willcocks, wrote a piece for Paula that she debuted at the Green Lake Festival of Music in Wisconsin.

Susan Sayle, viola received her musical training in her hometown of Victoria and at McGill University. A violist in Symphony Nova Scotia since 1986, Susan was appointed Principal Viola in 1994. During her time in Halifax, Susan has made her mark as a performer playing with the Dalhousie Chamber Players, Artemis (a women’s chamber ensemble in Toronto), the St. Cecilia Concert Series, the Indian River Festival, at Concerts aux Isle du Bic, the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival and many times as soloist with Symphony Nova Scotia. She is also a founder of the new Halifax chamber group The Talisman Ensemble. Frequently heard on CBC Radio, Susan can also be heard on many recordings and film scores.

Eileen Walsh, clarinet has been thrilled to play Second Clarinet and Bass Clarinet with Symphony Nova Scotia since October 2007. Formerly the associate principal and E-flat clarinet with the South Bend Symphony, Eileen earned her master of music degree and performer diploma from Indiana University in the studio of Eli Eban. Eileen grew up in Vancouver, where she completed her bachelor’s degree at UBC in the studio of Wesley Foster, and she was the recipient of the Aspen Music Scholarship and Mathilda Heck Woodwind Award at the WAMSO Young Artist Competition in 2006. She has been a semifinalist at the International Clarinet Association’s Young Artist Competition twice.

Acadia University Wind EnsembleMark Hopkins, Conductor

TrumpetsKatrina Grandy Barss Corners, NS*Kevin Barnes Belmont, NSMarianne Greene New Glasgow, NSNicole Stanson Winnipeg, MB

French horns*Duncan Greene Centre Burlington, NSKris Koenig Vernon, BCLauren Purdy Truro, NS

Trombones*Shauna DeGruchy Antigonish, NSRod MacGillvray Bridgewater, NSJim Sotvedt Kingston, NS Tuba Ethan McNutt Truro, NS

String BassCailun Campbell Windsor, NS

PianoMegan Thibeault Gander, NL

OrganStephen Gallant Sydney, NS

Percussion Andrew Johnson Berwick,NSAnthony Savidge Fredericton, NBChristopher Eagles Fredericton, NBJeff Kingsbury Kentville, NS*Nathan Petitpas D`Escousse, NSTom Allen Fredericton, NB

Anthony Savidge, ConcertmasterLauren Park, Ensembles Assistant

* denotes section leader

Flutes Jacqueline Edwards Guelph, ONKaytea Glen Lunenberg, NS*Kimberley North Halifax, NSLyndsey Mitchell Glace Bay, NSKatie Titus Dartmouth, NS

Oboes Jennifer King Fall River, NS *Kay Greene Centre Burlington, NS

Clarinets*Ashley Miller Red Deer, ABJohn Rowe Cole Harbour, NSMichael Nelson Falmouth, NSSarah Padovani Wolfville, NSShannon Wolf Calgary, AB

Bassoons *Lauren Park Oakville, ON

SaxophonesAmanda Morris Centre Burlington, NSDanielle Dove Halifax, NSLucas Oickle Bridgewater, NSKelly Ells Wolfville, NS

Mark Adam, percussion has made a versatile career across Canada and around the world as one of Canada's strong creative musical voices and has leant his support to a diverse array of the best musicians this country has to offer. Receiving his Bachelor of Music with distinction in Percussion Performance in Calgary and a Master's Degree from the University of Toronto, Mr. Adam has played with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, plays regularly with Symphony Nova Scotia, has been an ensemble member and guest soloist in the New Works Calgary Ensemble, principal percussionist of the Banff Center for the Arts Orchestra under Krysztof Penderecki and a frequent performer on CBC.

Norman Adams, cello is principal cellist of Symphony Nova Scotia, and the Artistic Director of suddenlyLISTEN music. A student of Hans Jørgen Jensen, the American master Bernard Greenhouse, and American new music pioneer Pauline Oliveros, Norman has been a soloist with SNS, and Les Jeunes Virtuoses de Montréal and has performed chamber, and improvised music throughout the US, Canada, and in the UK. His performances have also been heard across Canada on CBC Radio One and Two.

Tim Borton, percussion is quickly establishing himself as one of the top up-and-coming musicians in Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Tim's principal teachers were John Rudolph, Bev Johnston, Russell Hartenberger, and David Kent, with further studies with Robin Engelman and Bob Becker. Tim's performance credits include the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Ballet of Canada Orchestra,  Auckland Philharmonia (New Zealand), Windsor Symphony, Symphony Nova  Scotia, Toronto Wind Orchestra, Forte Chorus, MusicaNoir, National  Youth Orchestra of Canada, Scotia Festival of Music, and the Regina Symphony.  Since coming to Halifax he has had the pleasure of performing with the East Coast Music Award-winning celtic fusion group Squid.

Jack Chen, flute Having shared the stage and camera with artists such as Amy Grant, Bobby McFerrin and Doc Severinsen, Jack appears in 13 PBS television music specials in 2010 and tours with musicians Tim Janis, Finnouala Gill, EMI vocalists Giorgia Fumanti, Ryland Angel and “Siren.” Jack can be heard on the recent albums “Horizons” and “Awakening.” Jack now calls Halifax his home, and while not learning how to do more crazy things with his beloved flute, Manheim, Jack loves to chase his cat up and down the house; Toby, possibly the first ever 28-lb cat to own a flutist! Simon Docking, piano has performed as both solo and collaborative pianist in Australia, Canada, the United States, Mexico and Europe. In 1998 he completed a doctorate in piano performance at SUNY Stony Brook working with Gilbert Kalish, and on graduation was awarded the prestigious Thayer Fellowship for the Arts. Simon’s performances have appeared on CD and have been broadcast in Australia by the ABC and in Canada by the CBC, including solo recitals broadcast on Two New Hours.

Nadia Francavilla, violin is an accomplished recitalist and chamber musician. She was a member of both Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc and Quatuor Bozzini with which she made frequent tours in Canada, the United States Europe and Japan. A graduate of McGill University, she received solid musical training under the direction of Mauricio Fuks, Raphael Druian and Joseph Silverstein. She is a member of Motion Ensemble and Moineaux d'Entendre where she explores new horizons in improvisation, electronics, aleatory music and multimedia.  Diversified, the journey of this artist reflects her commitment towards many different forms of musical creativity. Her participation in different contemporary music ensembles also demonstrates her great interest towards music of our time.  During the 2010-2011 season, Mrs. Francavilla will be Musician in Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where she will teach, perform recitals, give lectures and masterclasses. She also teaches violin at the Université de Moncton.

Jennifer King, piano holds degrees from McGill University (M. Mus. in solo piano) and Acadia University. While living in England for eight years, she also received a diploma with distinction in Music Teaching in Private Practice from the University of Reading’s International Centre for Research in Music Education, and a postgraduate diploma in Piano Accompaniment from the Royal Academy of Music in London. Jennifer attended the Britten Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies; the Hereford International Music School (UK) and Kneisal Hall Chamber Music School (USA). A winner of many scholarships, including two Nova Scotia Talent Trust Awards, Jennifer was recently given an award of appreciation from Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant Governor in recognition of her contribution to musical life in the province.

Barbara Pritchard, piano is active in Halifax as an accompanist, chamber musician and solo pianist. She enjoys playing a wide range of repertoire, but specializes in performing music from the 20th and 21st centuries. She studied music at  the University of British Columbia, Ljungskile Folkhogskola (Sweden), The Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Eastman School of Music. For several years she was a faculty member in the Banff Centre's New Music Residency program, and she has taught courses in 20th century piano music for the Dalhousie University Department of Music. 

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Biographies: performers Schedule of Events

CONCERTSWednesday January 19, 8 pmOpening Night Gala with Nothin’ But Gnarly EnsembleDenton Hall AuditoriumAdmission: $20 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)

Thursday January 20, 8 pmStudent Composers and Performers Denton Hall AuditoriumAdmission: Free

Friday January 21, 8 pmFaculty, Friends and Ensembles Denton Hall AuditoriumAdmission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)

Saturday January 22, 9 am–NoonCanadian Music CentreNew Music in New Places EventNew Halifax Market1209 Marginal Road / Pier20, HalifaxAdmission: Free

Saturday January 22, 3 pmSoundtracker by Nick ShermanAl Whittle TheatreAdmission: $10 (general) / $5 Students (with valid I.D.)

Saturday January 22, 8 pmElectroacoustic Evening Denton Hall AuditoriumAdmission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)

Sunday January 23, 3 pmBarbara Pritchard, solo piano recitalKC Irving Garden RoomAdmission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)

LECTURES / MASTERCLASSES

Wednesday January 19, 2:30 pmHildegard Westerkamp presents, “Ways of Listening - Ways of Composing with Environmental Sound”Denton Hall Room 234Admission: Free, Note: limited admission - Acadia Music Students Only

Thursday January 20, 11:30 am Thursday School of Music Lecture Series: Hildegard Westerkamp presents, “The Composers’ Ear and the Soundscape” Denton Hall AuditoriumAdmission: Free. All welcome.

Friday January 21, 1:30 – 2:30 pmComposer Masterclass with Hildegard WesterkampDenton Hall Room 236Admission: Free Note: limited admission - Acadia Music Students Only

Sunday January 23, 11 amSound-walk with Hildegard Westerkamp Location will be posted on the website www.shatteringthesilence.caAdmission: Free. All welcome.

Gala Concert Opening Night Gala with Nothin’ But Gnarly Ensemble

8 pm Denton Hall Auditorium

Admission: $20 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)Tickets at the door

Funding for this concert graciously provided by Nova Scotia Tourism Culture and Heritage.

PROGRAMME

Andrew Staniland / Talking Down the Tiger (2009)Mark Adam, percussionAndrew Staniland, live electronics

Claude Vivier / Paramirabo (1978)Jack Chen, fluteNadia Francavilla, violin Norman Adams, violoncelloSimon Docking, piano

Hildegard Westerkamp / Liebes-Lied/Love Song (2005)Norman Adams, violoncello

Intermission

Vincent Ho / Shattering the Ethereal Resonance (2001)Mark Hopkins, conductor Eileen Walsh, clarinetNadia Francavilla, violin Susan Sayle, violaNorman Adams, violoncello Tim Borton, percussion

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Wednesday January 19 Biographies: composersLinda George-Wegner Intermediate and Senior Band Director at Sacred Heart High School

Scott Godin is visiting Assistant Professor (2010-11) in Theory and Composition at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. began his musical training on piano, completing a Bachelor of Music Degree in 1993 with Helmut Brauss. By winning the Johann Strauss competition in 1993, Scott was able to study in Vienna, Austria with internationally renowned pianist Paul Badura-Skoda in 1993 and 1994. Completing a Doctoral Degree in Musical Composition in June 2003 with John Rea at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, his music has been performed throughout Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Vincent Ho Winner of numerous awards and prizes, Vincent Ho has emerged as a much sought-after composer. During his academic studies, his works were already being performed by many prestigious ensembles and orchestras, including The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie canadienne. His music has also been featured at numerous festivals such as The Winnipeg New Music Festival, New York’s MATA New Music Festival, Parry Sound’s Festival of the Sound, The Markham Music Festival, Toronto’s Massey Hall New Music Festival, Ottawa’s Strings of the Future Festival, and Bakersfield’s New Directions Series. In addition to North America, his works have been performed in China, France and Italy. He is currently the Composer-In-Residence to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Daryl Jamieson was born in 1980 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts under Jo Kondo, the University of York (UK) under Nicola LeFanu, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (UK) under Diana Burrell and Wilfrid Laurier University (Can) under Glenn Buhr, Linda Caitlin Smith and Peter Hatch. He currently makes his home in central Tokyo, where he spends his time composing, researching, and teaching.

Laura Hoffman Born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Lived in Iowa, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Nova Scotia.

Steven Naylor, see EA advisor (page 23)

Clark Ross is a Canadian composer, guitarist, and music educator of Venezuelan birth. A composer of mainly works for  orchestra  and  chamber music. His compositions have been performed throughout North America and in Europe. In 1988 he was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and held the same title at Stanford University  in 1989. In 2003 he was composer-in-residence at the Waterford New Music Festival in Ireland. While a graduate student, he taught on the music faculties of the Royal Conservatory from 1987–1992 and McMaster University  in 1990–1991. Since 1992 he has been a professor of electronic music, guitar, music composition, music theory, and orchestration at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He was notably the recipient of Memorial University's President's Award for Outstanding Research in 1999. From 1997–2002 he was director of evening services at St. Thomas' Anglican Church in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Andrew Staniland has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. The New Yorker magazine has described his work as “an alternately beautiful and terrifying instrumental meditation”. His music is regularly heard on CBC Radio 2 and has been broadcast internationally in over 35 countries. His work has received numerous accolades, including the 2009 National Grand Prize in EVOLUTION, a contemporary music competition presented by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre, top prizes in the SOCAN young composers competition, and the 2004 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music. His music has represented Canada at both the UNESCO International Rostrum (Paris, 2007) of Composers and the ISCM World Music Days (Hong Kong, 2006).

Claude Vivier (1948-83) Considered by many to be the greatest composer Canada has yet produced . He left behind 49 compositions in a variety of genres, including opera, orchestral works, and chamber pieces. In early 1970s, studied composition with Stockhausen in Cologne. A visit to Bali in 1976 proved pivotal, causing him to re-evaluate his ideas on the role of the artist in society * Visionary works that followed featured texts in an invented language, modal melodies harmonized by a complex overtone series, and shimmering orchestration. Called by György Ligeti “the greatest French composer of his generation”. Other advocates include Mauricio Kagel, Reinbert de Leeuw, David Robertson, and Dawn Upshaw.

John Abram was born in England in 1959. He moved to Canada in 1984 to complete a PhD at the University of Victoria with Rudolf Komorous (composition) and Doug Collinge (electroacoustic music). From 1986 to 1988 he was Associate Director and Conductor of the Open Space New Music Series at the Open Space Gallery. He co-founded The Drystone Orchestra and was a member of ARCANA, also performing with ARRAYMUSIC, Strange Companions and others. Previously on the teaching staff at Mount Royal University. He now lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

W. Lorne Altman completed his Bachelor of Music in theory and composition in 1986, for which he received the Murray Adaskin Composition Award. In 2000, under the supervision of Randall Snyder, he went on to complete a Master of Music in composition at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln where he was bestowed the Vreeland Award for outstanding graduate student in Fine Arts. Since 1996, he has produced over 20 works, including music for the Timaeus Ensemble and the Third Chair Chamber Players. Recent performances include the work Miramachi in Fredericton by the Motion Ensemble and is it because? in St. John's at Sound Symposium XI. Since 2000, W.L. Altman has been teaching composition at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB.

Robert (Bob) Bauer is a Canadian composer, broadcaster, performer, arts administrator and educator. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for 30 years as a recording engineer and music producer in Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax, doing a mixture of national and regional programming. As an electroacoustic composer, Bauer is self-taught. His early works from the 1970’s were realized at the University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio. Subsequently he has produced pieces in his home studios in Ottawa and now in Bedford Nova Scotia. His early works were created using sound on sound analog techniques. During the 1990’s Bauer took a hiatus from electroacoustic music and only picked it up again using digital technology in the early 2000’s.

Jerome Blais completed his doctoral studies in composition at University of Montreal in 2004. His works, featuring a unique encounter between traditional composition and improvisation, have been performed by several professional ensembles, among which are Symphony Nova Scotia, Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, Bozzini String Quartet, Bradyworks, Array Music and Continuum. Since 2004, he is Professor of Composition and Music Theory at Dalhousie University, in Halifax (www.music.dal.ca). In 2010, he was invited as featured composer by the new music festival Shattering the Silence in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and as keynote speaker by the Canadian University Music Society (CUMS) for their annual conference in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Derek Charke, see co-director (page 23)

Ian Crutchley A recipient of numerous prizes and commissions. He has enjoyed collaborations with ensembles and soloists in Europe, the United States and throughout Canada. The recent CD by Chenoa Anderson, Big Flutes: Canadian Music for Alto and Bass Flutes includes Six Pieces for Alto Flute and Slide for bass flute, both by Ian Crutchley. This CD is available in the CMC Boutique.

Dennis Farrell has been supported to large extent by an active music scene in Halifax, and certainly at Dalhousie University (under David Wilson, Walter Kemp, Lynn Stodola, current chair, Gregory Servant); also helpful were the Nova Scotia Department of Culture, the CBC, locally (Adrian Hoffman), regionally (Richard Gibson) and nationally (David Jaeger, Larry Lake, David Quinny, James Montgomery), the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and funding provided from various other commissions and organizations, the Elmer Eisler Singers, Canadian Federation of Piano Teachers and Scotia Festival of Music.

Richard Gibson (b. Charlottetown, 1953) has composed for every instrumental and vocal genre, from compositions for solo guitar to large-scale pieces for multiple chorus and orchestra. A recipient of numerous awards, such as the SOCAN Young Canadian Composer of the Year Award (1983), the Robert Fleming prize, and the NB Leiutenant Governor's Excellence in Arts Award, Richard Gibson has studied with Steve Tittle, Peter Paul Koprowski and, more recently,  David Lumsdaine, with whom he completed doctoral studies at King's College in London. He teaches theory and composition at the music department of the  université de Moncton and is currently a member of the teaching faculty (trumpet) of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra. Other musical interests include playing jazz bass, producing recordings of classical music and providing assistance to classroom music specialists in the area of curriculum development.

Anthony Genge Currently, he divides his time between Antigonish, Nova Scotia on the East Coast of Canada, where he is Professor of Music at St. Francis Xavier University, and Victoria, B.C., on the CanadianWest Coast. In addition to his work as a composer, Genge continues to perform and record as a jazz pianist and can be heard on his critically acclaimed jazz trio recording Blues Walk.

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Biographies: composers Wednesday January 19

Derek Charke / What do the Birds Think? (2002)1. Places soon remembered2. What do the birds think?3. (attacca)4. Isolated places (off-stage)5. Nostalgia - goodbye - we are going6. Migration

Mark Hopkins, conductorDerek Charke, fluteEileen Walsh, clarinetNadia Francavilla, violin Norman Adams, violoncelloSimon Docking, pianoMark Adam, percussionTim Borton, percussion

Program Notes

Composing Talking Down the Tiger was one of the rare times where the both the title for the piece and the musical ideas came at the same time. For me, percussion is a metaphorical tiger: possessing all at once ferociousness, beauty, and mystery. Many percussion instruments (and percussionists) exhibit their most interesting and expressive sounds at the pianissimo dynamic register, which is at odds with the type or blustering heavy handed writing often associated with percussion, particularly in a historical context. In this piece I wanted to explore a journey from a wild and ferocious sound world that gradually recedes into a mystical and beautiful sound world lying beneath. It is in one continuous movement with two large divisions, the first marked “Crazy!” and the second marked “Beautiful”.The work involves live electronics in the form of looping. Looping is a fairly standard electroacoustic practice that essentially involves sound capture and repeating playback. I took these basic parameters and expanded them to reflect the compositional logic of the piece. The looper I designed, dubbed the stanilooper,   is capable of a number of unusual looping functions that match the pitch and rhythmic material of the percussion. The electronics extend the sound of the percussionist in both space and time, diffusing over multiple speakers. Talking Down the Tiger was commissioned by virtuoso percussionist Ryan Scott, with assistance from the Toronto Arts Council. Program note by the composer.

Claude Vivier wrote Paramirabo  for flute, violin, cello, and piano in 1978. It is one of many pieces that were inspired by exotic places. The composer traveled a great deal in the 1970s, and wrote music to reflect the joy that certain places gave him. Paramirabo's title was originally intended to be the name of the capital of Surinam, Paramaribo. When Vivier discovered the spelling error, he let it stand. With the current spelling intact, the name can also be read as a combination of "Paris" and "Mirabeau," an important bridge in the French capital. The work was commissioned be flautist André--Gilles Duchemin for the Mosaïc Ensemble. It is about fourteen minutes in duration and is less intense than much of his other work. Tuneful and languid,  Paramirabo  explores the color combinations of the four instruments at a consistently interesting rate without the persistent soul searching one normally finds in Vivier's writing. A sedate playfulness permeates it, suggesting that the composer was enjoying his travels. It was not long after this work was completed that he began being preoccupied with death and isolation. Paramirabo  is more playful  than earth shattering. Its innovations and uniqueness hum along contentedly, even happily, and with great clarity. Program note by John Keillor.

Hildegard Westerkamp  / Liebes-Lied/Love Song  (2005) is based on the poem Liebes-Lied by Rainer Maria Rilke and its newest translation into English, Love Song, by Canadian poet and writer Norbert Ruebsaat. (Another work, based on the same poem Für Dich - For You had its world premier at trans-canada, a festival for Canadian electroacoustic music at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologien (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, in February 2005.)Liebes-Lied/Love Song is a collaboration between Hildegard who recorded the sound materials and composed the sound track, and Anne who created all cello sounds for the electroacoustic portion and completes the piece through cello improvisation in live performances. Liebes-Lied/Love Song is a meditation on Love, and takes the Rilke poem and its English translation as its starting point. Readings of the text combine with recordings of environmental sounds and Anne's improvised explorations on the cello to create the soundscape of the piece. Over this composed soundtrack Anne performs her own free improvisations live. The piece uses the resulting dialogue between recorded/live and composed/improvised to explore the meanings of the poem.The original German poem is spoken by Hildegard Westerkamp, the English translation by Anne Bourne. In addition small excerpts of the poem are spoken by Wendelin Bartley, Susan Benson, Louie Ettling, Peter Grant, Andra McCartney, and R. Murray Schafer. Liebes-Lied/Love Song was commissioned by the Open Ears Festival with the financial assistance of the Canada Council. The soundtrack portion of the composition was completed in Westerkamp's own studio in Vancouver. An 8-track version of it was created by Darren Copeland.

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Wednesday January 19 Biographies: directorsDerek Charke (co-director) is a composer, a flutist, and a professor of music at Acadia University. His music is commissioned by world renowned artists such as the Kronos and St. Lawrence String Quartets, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Katona Twins and the National Flute Association, and has been performed in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Ecological sound, field recordings and electronic sound play an important role in many works. As a flutist he holds a masters degree in performance and specializes in contemporary music. Dr. Charke is an associate professor of music at Acadia University, Co-director of the

Annual Acadia New Music Festival Shattering the Silence, an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers. Visit www.charke.com for more information

Mark Hopkins (co-director) A native of Toronto, Dr. Hopkins earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the New England Conservatory, and was awarded the Gunther Schuller Medal at graduation.  His professional work as a Conductor spans the full range of ensembles and genres. He is Founding Music Director (Emeritus) of the Toronto Wind Orchestra and the Alberta Winds, freelance professional wind ensembles in Toronto and Calgary.  He was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Land’s End Chamber Ensemble, Calgary’s premiere new music ensemble.  This virtuosic group  earned 2  Western Canada Music Awards under his direction.  Since 2003 he is Associate Conductor of the Denis Wick Canadian Wind Orchestra, a role he shares with Dr. Gillian MacKay.  Dr. Hopkins is an Associate Professor in the School of Music at Acadia

University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.  He is responsible for teaching undergraduate and graduate Conducting, and is Director of Wind Studies at Acadia University.  He is Co-Director of Shattering the Silence, Acadia University’s innovative new music festival. In Canada, he has guest-conducted bands and orchestras in British Columbia, Alberta Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec.     In September 2010 he  led his debut performance as Guest Conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, leading a performance of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1947).  

Steven Naylor (EA advisor and co-curator) composes electroacoustic and instrumental concert music, performs on piano, electronics, and seljefløyte, and creates scores and sound designs for theatre, film, television and radio. His concert works have been performed and broadcast in Canada, UK, France, Brazil, Australia, and USA; his original scores for Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia have been performed throughout North America and Asia for nearly three decades. Performances in 2010 include a work for voice and clarinet (Aboiteau) in Shattering the Silence 2010; a long-form electroacoustic work, The Thermal Properties of Concrete, in ISCM World New Music Days in Sydney Australia; Horns of Plenty, a radiophonic commission for CBC-Radio and the Deep Wireless Festival in Toronto; and

touring by Mermaid Theatre to Canada, USA, Hong Kong, Macau, and Ireland. Steven is a past-president of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and a founding co-director of the Oscillations Festival of Electroacoustic Music. He is presently an Adjunct Professor (non-remunerated) in the School of Music, Acadia University.

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daßsie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich siehinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwasVerlorenem im Dunkel unterbringenan einer fremden stillen Stelle, dienicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich, der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?O süßes Lied.

How shall I hold my soul so that itdoes not touch yours? How shall I lift itup over you so it reaches other things?

Oh, how I long to store my soulwith something dark and lost

in a foreign becalmed place that does notvibrate when your depths vibrate.

But all that touches you and touches mecontracts us like a bow

that from two strings draws forth a single voice.Upon which instrument are we two strung?

And who, pray, is the fiddler who holds us in his hand?Oh sweetful song.

*Source: Rainer Maria Rilke / Der ausgewählten Gedichte erster Teil / Insel Bücherei Nr. 400 / Insel Verlag Wiesbaden 1951 - Page 61 **Reprinted with permission.

LOVE SONG** Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Norbert Ruebsaat

LIEBES-LIED*Rainer Maria Rilke

Hildegard Westerkamp emigrated to Canada in 1968 and gave birth to her daughter in 1977. After completing her music studies in the early seventies her ears were drawn beyond music to the acoustic environment as a broader cultural context or place for intense listening. Whether as a composer, educator, or radio artist most of her work since the mid-seventies has centred around environmental sound and acoustic ecology.

She has taught courses in Acoustic Communication at Simon Fraser University (1981-91) in Vancouver (BC) and is giving lectures and conducting soundscape workshops internationally. She is a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE, 1993) and was the editor of The Soundscape Newsletter between 1991 and ’95 and is now on the editorial committee of Soundscape—The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, a new publication of the WFAE.

Her compositions have been performed and broadcast in many parts of the world. The majority of her compositions deal with aspects of the acoustic environment: with urban, rural or wilderness soundscapes, with the voices of children, men and women, with noise or silence, music and media sounds, or with the sounds of different cultures, and so on. She has composed film soundtracks, sound documents for radio and has produced and hosted radio programs such as Soundwalking and Musica Nova on Vancouver Co-operative Radio.

In a number of compositions she has combined her treatment of environmental sounds extensively with the poetry of Canadian writer Norbert Ruebsaat. More recently she has written her own texts for a series of performance pieces for spoken text and tape. In addition to her electroacoustic compositions, she has created pieces for specific ‘sites,’ such as the Harbour Symphony (1986) and École polytechnique (1990). In pieces like Into India, she explores the deeper implications of transferring environmental sounds from a foreign place into the North American context of electroacoustic composition and audio art culture.

Most recently she collaborated with her Indian colleagues Mona Madan, Savinder Anand, and Veena Sharma on a sound installation in New Delhi entitled Nada — an Experience in Sound, sponsored by the New Delhi Goethe Institut (Max Mueller Bhavan) and the Indira Ghandi National Centre for the Arts. By focusing the ears’ attention to details both familiar and foreign in the acoustic environment, Hildegard Westerkamp draws attention to the inner, hidden spaces of the environment we inhabit. On the edge between real and processed sounds she creates sonic journeys in her compositions that reveal both the contradictions and visions of beauty in todays’ world.

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Biographies: composer-in-residence Wednesday January 19Vincent Ho  / Shattering the Ethereal Resonance (2001) "During the summer of 2001, I was introduced to the concept of synesthesia – a neurological condition where stimulation of one sense will automatically create a second one (ie. hearing one particular sound may make one “see” a certain color). After researching the condition, I was inspired to compose a work that would be so kinetically-charged with timbral colors and textures that one would almost “see,” “taste,” or even “feel” them when heard in performance." Program note by the composer.

Derek Charke / What do the Birds Think? (2002) The seed of inspiration for this composition comes from the poem by Al Purdy. The composition does not quote the poem in any absolute form but rather embraces an abstract concept of nostalgia, remembrance, migration, birdcalls and isolated place. This poem has a resonance for the composer through the experience of living in the arctic (Inuvik) and a migration of sorts to the southern reaches of Canada (Fort Erie) where he was studying at SUNY Buffalo. The overall form of the composition is like an arch. Originally there was to be 7 movements; the 1st and 7th, the 2nd and 6th, and the 3rd and 5th having some relationship to one another. This would then leave a lone 4th movement. The 7th movement was dropped leaving the arch incomplete. The first movement was doubled in length, and the ending of the 6th movement leaves a lone cello hanging in space waiting for the elusive 7th movement. All 6 movements are also connected by a series of proportions 3/4, 1/2, 3/2, 4/5, 4/3 (if there had been a 7th movement, 2/1).Program note by the composer.

WHAT DO THE BIRDS THINK?Al Purdy

Are they exiles here from the rest of the world?Déjà vu past egg and atom from the yellow Sahara-oceanor farmlands in Ontarioa witness hanging painted in the rural blue While a plowman half a mile down in the dark field with a snoring tractor moves in circular sleep?Or exiles from the apple country where Macs and Spies plop soft On wet ground in slow autumn dayswith the rotten tangy odour of cider rising on moon-wept nights?Have they lists and a summary of things elsewhere and remember the crimson racketencountering tropic strangers or nests of an old absence lined with a downy part of themselves far south?And being south do they think sometimes of the rain and mists of Baffin and long migrations wingtip to wingtipa mile highand mate to mate in the lift and tremble of windy muscles pushing themAnd do they ever an arrow leader pointing the waytouch wearily down on ships passing?

the flight plans sent the log book sand is scribbled on“Goodbye – we are going – Hurry” and mounting a shaft of sunlight or the mizzen mast of the sky the climb and goAnd that is the way it is?Except perhaps I wonder do they ever remember down there in the southland Cumberland Sound and the white places of Baffin that I will remember soon?

Al Purdy, Pangnirtung Nunavut Reprinted by permission of

“Rest here a while and go on!” pushing them where?(Forgotten in the hurry of their streaming generations another captain called Noah & Bjarni Herjolfssonin horned helmet and the sweeps’ silver lifting to a luring Hyperborean ocean or whaling ships” myopic stumbling from dull wave to dull wave and the paint of the bright over-the-horizon-gazingwoman flaked with salt)How we are kept here by what bonds are we always exiles a chirping roar in the silence of foxes and watery romp of walrusin the long sea lands or perched on rubbery muskeg like blue teacups or lost brown mittens by what agency of restlessness in the driftwood heart?Until on a day the eggs hatch and the young are trained to endurance ice rattles the shroud of summer

Student Composers and Performers8 pm Denton Hall Auditorium

Admission: Free

The music on this concert is by student composers and performers from Acadia's School of Music.

PROGRAMME

Lucas Oickle / Tyrannosaurs in F14s, Op.au6 (2010)Text by Bill Watterson1. Stars2. The Adventures of Spaceman Spiff3. Questions4. Wagon Rides5. RepriseKate Corrigan, sopranoAstryd Ward, piano

Elizabeth Fox / Trio (2010)Kaytea Glen, fluteShannon Wolf, clarinetDavid Potvin, piano 

Marianna Chapman / A Leaf Falls on Loneliness (2010)Kara Palmer, piano 

Kevin Barnes / Spiral (2010)Kaytea Glen, flute

Chris Eagles / Thoughts from the Well (2010)Sarah Padavoni, clarinet(Special thanks to Kate Corrigan)

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Thursday January 20 Sunday January 23

Barbara Pritchard, solo piano recital3 pm KC Irving Garden Room

Admission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)Tickets at the door

Our last concert of Shattering the Silence 2011. Featuring the works of Atlantic composers Richard Gibson and Clark Ross.

PROGRAMME

Daryl Jamieson / bee in the only rose... (2001)Robert Bauer / Dear David (2007)Scott Godin / #4 (2004)J.S. Bach / Aria (1742)Clark Ross / Broken Glass (1991)*John Abram / errh (1995)Anthony Genge / Variation (1995)John Rumsey / Variation (1996)Linda George-Wegner / Once in a Dream (2005)Lorne Altman / Utter Variation (2005)Jerome Blais / Inventio (2005)Ian Crutchley / Opening and Variations (2005)Laura Hoffman / Variation (2005)Richard Gibson / Twenty-four Notes (2005)Dennis Farrell / Riet Vinck teaches... (2004)IntermissionRichard Gibson / Lepidoptera (2002)Clark Ross / Last Dance (1999)

*commissioned through the Canada Council for the ArtsFunding for this concert graciously provided by Nova Scotia Tourism Culture and Heritage.

In composing this piece, I was challenging my own compositional process as it has developed over the last 25 years: just as India has challenged many of my Western Eurocentric values and turned them upside-down, so has this piece challenged my preconceived notions of the creative process. From the start I had the image of entering a labyrinth of a multitude of sounds and sonic experiences. I had made no plans for the piece other than letting the recorded sounds move me through a compositional journey into an unknown sonic labyrinth. Obviously my experiences of travelling in India and of recording the sounds played a significant role in the formation of this piece. But I could never be sure of where I was going and where I would end up. I worked on it continuously as if on a 15-day journey, where the journey itself became the centre of experience. The composition simply is a result of that experience.

Into the Labyrinth was commissioned by "New Adventures in Sound" with the assistance of the Canada Council and was realized in the Electronic Music Studio of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Many thanks to Darren Copeland for giving me this opportunity to explore composition for 8-channel diffusion. I would also like to thank Savinder Anand, Mona Madan, Arun Patak, Veena Sharma and her mother Mrs. Goyal, Situ Singh-Bühler and Virinder Singh for taking me to the places where the sounds and soundscapes for this composition were recorded. Without their help and local knowledge I would have had a difficult time gathering them on tape. Many thanks go to Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institut Delhi) for inviting me to India in the first place and giving me the opportunity to meet and work with those who have become my Indian friends. Listening to India together has deepened our understanding of each other and our cultures' differences.

Into the Labyrinth is dedicated to my daughter Sonja, who courageously travelled through India by herself and emerged enriched from a labyrinth of new and complex experiences.

SOUND SOURCESVoices and MusiciansGroup of Rajasthani musicians, camel fair, PushkarKamal Kothari's group of Rajasthani musicians, JodhpurSitar, played by Arun Patak in music shop, Old DelhiSitu Singh-Bühler, mezzo soprano, DelhiSnake Charmer, Lodi Gardens, DelhiSarangi player, Madore Park, JodhpurVendor, Janak Puri, DelhiYoung boy singing, camel fair, Pushkar, RajasthanOther Sounds:Bicycle Bell, Tilak Nagar, DelhiCrickets, Palolem, Goa.Film music from loudspeaker near vegetable market, Tilak Nagar, DelhiFootsteps, Shivananda Ashram, RishikeshGate, Shivananda Ashram, RishikeshStone cutters working on restaurations, Jodhpur Fort, RajasthanToy vendor's trumpet, Delhi Traffic, Connaught Place, DelhiTraffic near vegetable market, Tilak Nagar, DelhiTrain with trainhorn as it is approaching DelhiTrainhorn as heard from the elevated grounds of the Bahai temple, Delhi

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Saturday January 22 Thursday January 20

Brian Topp / The Places We End Up (2010) Chris Eagles, Marimba

Intermission

Carolann DeYoung / Everyone I Have Ever Met (2010)Kyla Cook, sopranoLukas Oickle, alto saxophoneJessica LaRonde, pianoAlex Kall, double bassChris Eagles, drum kit

Ronald L. Caravan / ExcursionsAshley Miller, clarinet

Russell Peck / Drastic Measures (1976)Acadia Saxophone Quartetdirector: Dr. Stanley Fishersoprano: Danielle Dovealto: Lauren Parktenor: Nick Fisherbaritone: Lucas Oickle

Leigh Howard Stevens / Great WallAnthony Savidge, marimba

~ ~ ~

For more information on the School of Music at Acadia Universityplease visit:

http://music.acadiau.ca

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Program note by the composer.

Faculty, Friends and Ensembles8 pm Denton Hall Auditorium

Admission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)Tickets at the door

PROGRAMME

Allen Strange / Velocity Study III: Rip (1991)Jennifer King, piano

Olivier Messiaen / Catalogue d’Oiseaux, No. 9. La Bouscarle (Cetti's Warbler) (1958)

Karlhienz Stockhausen / Klavierstück XIV (1984)

Hildegard Westerkamp / Like a Memory (2002)Simon Docking, piano

Intermission

David Maslanka / A Child’s Garden of Dreams (1981) I. There is a desert on the moon...II. A Drunken woman falls into the water...III. A horde of small animals frightens the dreamer....IV. A drop of water...V. An ascent into heaven...

Acadia Wind EnsembleMark Hopkins, conductor

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Friday January 21 Saturday January 22Hildegard Westerkamp / Für Dich-For You (2005) is based on the poem Liebes-Lied by Rainer Maria Rilke and its newest translation into English, Love Song, by Canadian poet and writer Norbert Ruebsaat.

The compositional process of Für Dich – For You was an intense encounter with Rilke’s words, not unlike an encounter with the experience of love itself and all its unsettling, complex emotional states. Love, like birth or death, tears us out of the routine of daily life, wakes us up, alerts us to what is, creates moments of truth, often stirs us to make changes, to take new risks. The poem speaks of one person’s love to another, but also and perhaps more importantly about love as an inner state towards life and the world as a whole. In the face of ecological disasters and global economic imbalances, as well as widespread practices of terror, war, and hate, it suddenly seemed to me to be a matter of survival to learn more about love and about how to act from the heart. Composing this piece was part of this process of learning.

On another level the composition explores a sense of place and belonging, of home and love. To underscore this context, the sound sources for the piece consist of specific sounds from two places that have created a sense of belonging in me: North Germany where I was born and grew up and Vancouver and the westcoast of Canada where I have lived for over thirty years as an immigrant. These sounds form the sonic/musical language of the piece together with the recorded voices (male and female) of people close to me, speaking the poem, both in German and English.

To open oneself to one’s original language and culture again, after having lived as an immigrant in the country of one’s choice for a long time, is like opening oneself to an almost forgotten deep love and connection to that past place. At the same time, one has lived and functioned in the country of one’s choice for many years, one has established one’s very own home, one’s family, one feels at home here, it is the right place to be. It also is a place of belonging and love. Thus, the piece is an exploration of the heart, an exploration of where the heart is located in connection to culture, language and people. In a globalized world where millions of us are on the move, whether as refugees, immigrants or just as travelers, this has emerged as a wide-spread and relevant theme, as we are all in some way searching for home and connectedness.

All sounds and voices were recorded by myself. Many thanks to all who spent valuable hours with me exploring and reading the poem. Readers of the poem are: Wendelin Bartley, Susan Benson, Anne Bourne, Louie Ettling, Peter Grant, Andra McCartney, Norbert Ruebsaat, Sonja Ruebsaat, Susanna Ruebsaat, R. Murray Schafer, Agnes Westerkamp and Hildegard Westerkamp. Für Dich – For You was commissioned by the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany. The composition was started during a residency at the ZKM, and was continued and completed in the Sonic Studio at Simon Fraser University and in the composer’s own studio in Vancouver.

Hildegard Westerkamp  / Into the Labyrinth (2000) is a sonic journey into aspects of India's culture. It occurs on the edge between dream and reality, in the same way in which many visitors, myself included, experience this country. Nothing ever happens according to pre-determined plans or expectations. Although travellers usually do reach their destination somehow, the journey itself - full of continuous surprises and unexpected turns - becomes the real place of experience.

Program note by the composer.

Program NotesBob Bauer / Returning to his old home (2010) This work is a setting of a Japanese poem by Otomo no Tabito (662-731). It is the story of an old man who returns to his home after many years only to find it in ruin. He is saddened as he remembers the wonderful garden that he and his wife shared. I originally scored this as an acoustic work for soprano, flute, clarinet, string bass and percussion. Samples of the acoustic version are used in this recreation featuring the Motion ensemble with vocalist Helen Pridmore. I have used my own voice for the principal narration and the ghostly Japanese voice of the wife is that of my daughter-in-law Sachiko Akikawa-Bauer. Finally, I would like to thank the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for financial support of this project. The world premiere of this work was given at the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium August 2010.

Derek Charke  / Deliquescence (2011) The ability of a substance to attract and hold water molecules from the surrounding environment, such as coffee grounds. Deliquescence uses sound-sources that were originally created for 10 EA studies I created in 2010. Sounds are used for their gestural qualities alone; a certain tessitura, density, velocity etc... that create relationships between dissimilar sound sources, such as boiling water, pins in a plastic box, the low hum of an air-exchange unit, swirling of plastic bowls and others. Source-bonding; finding sounds that imitate certain gestures, becomes a central focus, as does as spectral approach; removing certain frequencies, or working with the envelope of sound; splicing the attack and decay, for example, leaving only the sustain. My working process reminded me of the effect of deliquescence, absorbing material through the surrounding sonic environment.

Steven Naylor / Simeonovo (2011) is the most recent piece in Imaginary Places, a series of electroacoustic compositions concerned with the interplay between memory and imagination. The pieces in the series merge soundscape, radiophonic, and acousmatic elements—both recorded and created—into abstracted musical portraits of times and places. In late 1991, I attended an international composers’ workshop near Sofia, Bulgaria. One of the many highlights of the week was an evening in the Simeonovo village cultural centre. There, in a bar named ‘Disco City’, we were warmly welcomed with an astonishing performance of traditional Bulgarian vocal harmony by local amateurs. Simeonovo (Imaginary Places 6) is a response to memories of that remarkable time. It is dedicated to Dimiter Christoff, Nikos Xanthoulis, and Nicole Carignan. This work was commissioned by the Acadia New Music Society for Shattering The Silence 2011, generously funded by Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture & Heritage.

Program notes on this page by the composers.

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Saturday January 22 Friday January 21Program Notes

Allen Strange  / Velocity Studies III: RIP is the third in a series of semi-virtuosic compositions for solo instruments and electronic sound accompaniment. Commissioned by the American Music Librarian Association, this work had a rather serendipitous genesis. The request was for a short work to be premiered on a  concert of new works by California composers. I have never been able to write short works-perhaps it just takes me time to get to the to make the point. I decided the solution was to write a rather traditional cadenza and  I could then later come back and write the rest of the concerto at another time. I also thought that I would use accompanying pre-recorded sounds so, even if the work were to be short, it could be very thick ( more notes to make the point!). In researching cadenzi I came across a recording of what was titled "Concerto in the Hungarian Style" attributed to the 19th century piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt. Being very impressed with the sweeping gestures of the music I decided to compose a musical caricature of the cadenza. The music, being very virtuosic, automatically suggested the third Velocity Study. Program note by the composer.

Olivier Messiaen / Catalogue d’Oiseaux, No. 9. La Bouscarle (Cetti's Warbler) (1958) Not until French composer Olivier Messiaen was in his mid-40s did his lifelong passion for ornithology manifest itself in his compositions with startling originality. Over the course of the mammoth, seven-book cycle Catalogue d'oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds), the songs of 77 distinct birds unfold in a series of 13 movements totaling nearly three hours of solo piano music. Messiaen's love of nature, as displayed in the cycle (each movement not only has a title bird but also an actual French geographic region assigned to it), is nearly matched by his love of musical arch form. Both within movements and across books, Messiaen inscribes a rough symmetry: occasionally passages reoccur palindromically; more often blocks of sound mirror one another over a central axis. The first and last books both contain three movements, the third and fifth two apiece, and the second, fourth, and six books a single movement each. The fourth book contains the seventh and central movement, "La rousserolle effarvatte" (the reed warbler), at over half an hour the longest movement. Like the fourth movement and like Messiaen's earlier Reveil des oiseaux, it outlines more than a day of birdsong, with dozens of birds heard. The shortest movement, "L'alouette calandrelle" (the short-toed lark) follows, recalling "Le loriot" with its simple evocation of the songs of larks. "La bouscarle" (Cetti's warbler) closes the fifth book with an evocation of a river as well as the bird.

Karlhienz Stockhausen  / Klavierstück XIV (1984) also called Geburtstags-Formel (Birthday Formula), was composed from 7–8 August 1984 in Kürten as a 60th-birthday gift for Pierre Boulez, to whom the score is dedicated. The premiere was played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a birthday concert for Boulez on 31 March 1985 in Baden-Baden. With the addition in 1987 of a part for girls' choir, it became act 2, scene 2 of Montag aus Licht (Stockhausen 1998a, 306) and 633). Two months before composing this first component part of Montag aus Licht, Stockhausen said: “I have had the feeling for some time that Monday will be very different—very new for me too, because I have the feeling Monday is the reverse, because it's the birth. So it's the reverse of everything that I have done up to now. Most probably all the formulas will be upside-down, will be mirrored: like The Woman is in respect to the men. I think all the structural material all of a sudden is going to change drastically in the detail. (Stockhausen & Kohl 1984, 33)”

Hildegard Westerkamp  / Like a Memory (2002) for piano and two digital soundtracks, explores that area of aural perception in which we hear music in sounds and sounds in music, where scrap metal structures become musical instruments and the piano becomes a strange sound sculpture.

Many things came together in this composition. In 1985 I took my tape recorder and microphone and walked along Slocan Lake in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, to an abandoned old house I had discovered some days before. Among the few remains inside was a piano. Many strings had broken, pieces of wood, some rusty nails and wires were lying among the strings, and rats had nested in its sounding board. Some keys were missing and of the remaining ones, not all keys were working. I had found a "prepared piano" in the deepest Cagian sense and delighted in improvising on this "instrument" and recording the sounds that emerged. I also played and recorded snippets of classical music that I remembered from piano lessons years ago. They sounded delightfully out of tune and "off".

In 2000 I went back to the same region with photographer Florence Debeugny to collect sounds and images for a project on ghosttowns called At the Edge of Wilderness. Fallen down buildings and rusty metal structures became soundmaking devices as I moved through the abandoned industrial sites, "playing" on anything and everything and finding the most fascinating resonances. Whether the sounds came from on an old steam engine or an out-of-tune piano with broken strings, they have become the musical instruments for Like A Memory. The majority of the sounds for the piece-the natural sounds, soundmaking on the rusty structures, of our footsteps and spoken voices- were recorded on the ghosttown sites themselves. Recordings of steam trains and of old machinery come from the environmental sound archives of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University.

A short time after I had completed At the Edge of Wilderness pianist Jamie Syer contacted me to see whether I was interested in composing a piece for piano and environmental sounds. I told him that I had never really composed for live piano, but that perhaps one could do something with my old recordings from the abandoned house with the piano and from the ghosttowns. It turned out that Jamie knew this area of B.C. very well and that he teaches every summer in the recently established Valhalla Summer School of Music in Silverton, B.C. a small community right in the middle of this area. How could we not do a piece together after discovering so many strands that were coming together around piano composition.

Some of the other excerpts of classical piano music that appear on the digital soundtrack of the piece were played by Jamie Syer and recorded by myself at his home near Calgary, Alberta, in May of 2002.

Like A Memory was commissioned by Jamie Syer and the Valhalla Summer School of Music and was composed with financial assistance from the Vancouver Foundation. It was premiered in Silverton, B.C.-in the area from where all sound materials originated-on August 16, 2002

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Friday January 21 Saturday January 22

Electroacoustic EveningCo-Curated with Steven Naylor

8 pm Denton Hall Auditorium

Admission: $10 (general) / Students free (with valid I.D.)Tickets at the door

Join us for an exploration of sound. You’ve seen the 3D films... now hear 3D music! Works are projected on 8 speakers surrounding the hall.

PROGRAMME

Lorne Altman / New Work (2011)Bob Bauer / Returning to his old home (2010)Derek Charke / Deliquescence (2011)Steven Naylor / Simeonovo (2011) * 

Intermission

Hildegard Westerkamp / Für Dich-For You (2005)Hildegard Westerkamp / Into the Labyrinth (2000)

* Funding for Steven Naylor’s new work generously provided by Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture and Heritage

Program note by the composer.

Soundtrackerby Nick Sherman

3 pm Al Whittle Theatre

Admission: $10 (general) / $5 Students (with valid I.D.)Tickets at the door

There are very few places of quiet left in the United States.  

For the past thirty years, Emmy Award-winning nature sound recordist, Gordon Hempton, has made it his life’s mission to find and record these places before they are gone completely.

SOUNDTRACKER follows Gordon on the road and into the wilderness as he travels throughout America’s West in search of these quiet places.  Unwilling to give up when the noise of civilization intrudes upon his every recording, his quest takes on new dimensions as he begins to search for a different kind of sound that captures his imagination and the spirit of America.

Shot throughout the Pacific Northwest and sound-mixed to incorporate Gordon’s own pristine binaural recordings, SOUNDTRACKER explores the sounds and the soul of an uncompromising artist.

“This is a remarkable journey: a quest for imperiled Nature by an artist who never stopped listening.” 

– Ken Burns

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Saturday January 22 Friday January 21

This evening's performance of A Child's Garden of Dreams by the Acadia University Wind Ensemble is the first performance of A Child's Garden of Dreams in Eastern Canada.  A Child's Garden of Dreams was commissioned by John and Marietta Paynter for the Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble. It was composed in the summer of 1981 and premiered by Northwestern in 1982. The following is from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung: “A very important case came to me from a man who was himself a psychiatrist. One day he brought me a handwritten booklet he had received as a Christmas present from his 10-year-old daughter. It contained a whole series of dreams she had had when she was 8. They made up the weirdest series of dreams I have ever seen, and I could well understand why her father was more than just puzzled by them. Though childlike, they were uncanny, and they contained images whose origin was wholly incomprehensible to the father...In the unabridged German original, each dream begins with the words of the old fairy tale: ‘Once upon a time.’ By these words the little dreamer suggests that she feels as if each dream were a sort of fairy tale, which she wants to tell her father as a Christmas present. The father tried to explain the dreams in terms of their context. But he could not do so because there appeared to be no personal associations to them...The little girl died of an infectious disease about a year after that Christmas... The dreams were a preparation for death, expressed through short stories, like the tales told at primitive initiations... The little girl was approaching puberty, and at the same time, the end of her life. Little or nothing in the symbolism of her dreams points to the beginning of a normal adult life. When I first read her dreams, I had the uncanny feeling that they suggested impending disaster.These dreams open up a new and rather terrifying aspect of life and death. One would expect to find such images in an aging person who looks back on life, rather than to be given them by a child. Their atmosphere recalls the old Roman saying, 'Life is a short dream,' rather than the joy and exuberance of its springtime. Experience shows that the unknown approach of death casts an ‘adumbratio’ (an anticipatory shadow) over the life and dreams of the victim. Even the altar in Christian churches represents, on one hand, a tomb and, on the other, a place of resurrection – the transformation of death into eternal life.” I selected five of the twelve dreams as motifs for the movements of this composition:

I. There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell. II. A Drunken woman falls into the water and comes out renewed and sober. III. A horde of small animals frightens the dreamer. The animals increase to a tremendous size, and one of them devours the little girl. IV. A drop of water is seen as it appears when looked at through a microscope. The girl sees that the drop is full of tree branches. This portrays the origin of the world. V. An ascent into heaven, where pagan dances are being celebrated; and a descent into hell, where angels are doing good deeds

Program note by the composer.

Canadian Music Centre, New Music in New Places

9 am to Noon Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market1209 Marginal Road Pier20, Halifax

Admission: Free

PROGRAMME 

To be selected from:

(1) Stationary Events

Hildegard Westerkamp / Streetmusic / Türen der Wahrnehmung / Gently Penetrating and Attending to Sacred Matters “from Into India”

Plus various other EA works / TBA

(2) Food Processing

A sonic approach to food. Live processing event featuring your fruits and vegetables. Bring a fruit or vegetable and hear the myriad of ways it can be converted to sound!

(3) Busking for 21st Century Ears Announcements will be made during the morning informing patrons of the following live performances:

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Saturday January 22 Saturday January 22

Paula Rockwell, mezzo-sopranoHildegard Westerkamp / Moments of Laughter 

Jack Chen, fluteDerek Charke / WARNING! Gustnadoes Ahead

Russell Peck / Drastic Measures (1976)Acadia Saxophone QuartetDr. Stanley Fisher (director)Danielle Dove, Lauren Park, Nick Fisher, Lucas Oickle

Ronald L. Caravan / ExcursionsAshley Miller, clarinet

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About the CMC and NMNP:The Canadian Music Centre is excited to present the New Music in New Places festival for a fifth year. This program offers the general public an incredible opportunity to experience first-hand the creativity of our Associate Composers. This festival is designed to bring Canadian contemporary music out of the concert halls and into the lives of Canadians. From Atlantic Canada to the shores of British Columbia, Canadian composers will be bringing their music to a community venue near you.

Long a unique resource for conductors, choreographers, performers, broadcasters and students, the CMC's mission is to promote the music of its Associate Composers. But contemporary music has traditionally been the domain of a relatively select audience, and the CMC's New Music in New Places festival aims to change that. Performances highlight contemporary composers from regions across the country bringing to beaches, malls, brewpubs, wineries, museums and airports, the sounds and music that are an integral part of the Canadian character.

New Music in New Places is supported by The SOCAN Foundation and the Government of Canada through the Canada Music Fund.

Canadian Music CentreAtlantic Region134 Main StreetSackville NBE4L 1A6

PHONE (506) 536-4263Regional Director:Shawn Bostickatlantic@musiccentre.ca