The New Year is off to a busy start, with several premières coming up and a variety of new projects in the works.
- On 25 Jan 2010, Brazilian-Canadian pianist Luciane Cardassi premières my new piece, Hockey Story, on the Happening 2010 New Music Festival in Calgary. This piece, on the theme of hockey, is for speaking pianist and electronics.
- Shortly thereafter, on 19 Feb 2010, I’m off to Holland for the première of a piece commissioned by orkest de erepris. This piece, Elegy of Others, is a collage, with quotations ranging from Vivaldi to R.E.M. and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
- Finally, February wraps up with the orchestral reading (28 Feb 2010) of a section from the opera, Oksana G., that librettist Colleen Murphy and I have been developing for several years. We conducted a successful piano-vocal workshop with Tapestry New Opera at the Banff Centre in August and now the Canadian Opera Company is doing a reading, as part of the long-term development process for this piece.
These events mark the culmination of several projects from 2009. Several other projects, including some unconventional ensembles and the use of unusual media, are under development for 2010. Additional details will be posted when available.
Classical-music-themed social network Dilettante has selected me as one of three finalists for their inaugural Digital Composer-in-Residence competition (press release). This is a people’s choice award, so I would encourage you to vote for me! As part of the competition, the London Sinfonietta has recorded my submitted piece, Sensational Revolution in Medicine, which they will also perform live at a concert on 5 Nov at London’s Wilton’s Music Hall. You can get tickets for the concert here. Also Dilettante’s house blog will feature interview podcasts of the finalists, as well as other goodies.
Canadian Trio Toca Loca recently launched their debut album, which includes a fantastic version of my piece, Culture no.2 (or, Shoot Like a Film Star), which they commissioned in 2007. The album is available through CenterDiscs and can also be ordered through iTunes and Amazon. Also check out details about their CD launches in Berlin and Vancouver.
I’m quite happy to announce that I won another SOCAN Award this year, my fifth so far (press release). I was awarded first prize in the vocal category for Sensational Revolution in Medicine, a piece for soprano and speaking pianist, premièred by Xin Wang and Gregory Oh at the SHIFT Festival in Toronto this year. For those not familiar, the SOCAN Awards is the major Canadian competition for composers under 30, and I’ve been fortunate to have received several awards, beginning in 2004. Radio-Canada’s Michel Charron also interviewed me about the prize this year.
Regular readers will recall the ‘80s collage piece I was working on in 2008. I’ve since put together a promotional website for the project, and have started planning a West Coast tour of North America, tentatively slotted for late 2010. More information as it becomes available, posted here and at recycled80slive.com.
I was asked to be the Composition Fellow for this year’s Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East in Bennington, Vermont this Jul. As the Composition Fellow, I will be working with composers Lisa Bielawa and Donald Crockett, take part in rehearsals, and première a new adaptation of one of my works, to be written for the conference participants.
A long-term project of mine is moving forward this year. Tapestry New Opera applied for and received funding from Opera.ca to produce the first act of the opera I have been developing with librettist, Colleen Murphy. We’ll be involved in roundtable discussions on the opera in Toronto this spring, and I will be composing the music for one act of the opera, to be workshopped at the Banff Centre in August of this year. The act will then be fully produced in the first part of 2010. More details to follow as they become available.
I was commissioned this year by New Works Calgary to write a piece for their resident group, Ensemble Resonance. The piece—for soprano, violin, bass clarinet, and piano—will be premièred in Nov, and I’ll post specific performance details closer to then, in the Performances section. In terms of theme, I’m planning on putting together a multilingual text that looks at the nuances of the word kiss in cultures from around the world.
I’m pleased and excited to announce that I was declared the winner of this year’s annual Young Composers Meeting in the Netherlands, hosted by renowned Dutch ensemble, orkest de ereprijs. The jurors chose between 16 pieces that the invited composers wrote for the ensemble. My piece, Love in the Time of Connectivity, was a collage of approximately a dozen other pieces, with sources ranging from Claude Debussy to Pizzicato Five. I’ll be writing another piece for the ensemble, to be performed in 2010.
American composer Charlie Wilmoth wrote an article on me and my music, which appeared today in Dusted Magazine. It’s always fascinating for me to see how other people interpret what I do. Charlie does a great job of encapsulating several of the themes that are important to my work with his insightful commentary. Thanks, Charlie!