For the past several years, I’ve been researching the song of the hermit thrush together with Bruno Gingras, Dominik Endres, and Tecumseh Fitch. We found that its songs follow the overtone series! Our resulting paper was published in the Procedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences on November 18. Some good press coverage of our research can be found in Smithsonian Magazine and Huffington Post, and on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.
I’m just back from London, where the English String/Symphony Orchestra and violinist Harriet Mackenzie, with Ken Woods conducting, gave a beautiful performance of falling still. The concert also featured a fantastic premiere of Wall of Water by Deborah Pritchard, and pieces By Thea Musgrave and Kaija Saariaho. (A detailed review of the concert can be found here.)
I’ve known Ken since the early 1990’s, when we were both students at Scotia Festival of Music, and it was great to have the chance to work with him again. (Ken is a very multi-talented musician. When we were at Scotia Festival, we performed Ancient Voices of Children by George Crumb together: Ken played both the mandolin and the musical saw parts!)
The Fung-Chiu Duo is including Sorex, which they commissioned from me in 2010, on their Prairie Debut 2014-2015 tour. They will be performing Sorex, as well as pieces by Stravinsky, Bernstein, and Prokofiev in 14 locations across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Details of the concerts can be found here.
