Last year Sarah Hopfinger, Stuart MacRae and I received RSE Research Workshop funding to organize a series of talks, discussion, and a concert entitled “Art-Making in the Anthropocene”. Our initial plans for three days of in-person events were scuppered by covid, but we eventually figured out an online format that is just as exciting. For more information about the talks and concert (to be performed by Katherine Wren and Nordic Viola) and for free tickets, please check out our website.
Madrigirls is a fantastic women’s choir in Glasgow, founded and directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper, and really enjoyed having the opportunity to write a new piece for their 2020 Advent Concert, to help celebrate their 20th anniversary. Due to covid the concert couldn’t take place in person, but I am so pleased that they were able to find a beautiful way to present it online! (You should really watch the whole thing, but if you are looking for my piece specifically, it’s at 1:02:40ish.)
Programme note:
My Wren-King uses lyrics from the St Stephen’s Day tradition of hunting the wren, which is celebrated in various different ways in Ireland, the UK and other Celtic-influenced parts of Europe, and even in some parts of Canada, including Nova Scotia where I am from (though I have never seen it). Traditionally people would kill a wren and bring it from door to door asking for change, though people now use toy wrens, fortunately! There are a variety of theories about the origin of the custom, but it is thought to date from pre-Christian times, or to be a Christianization of Celtic and/or Norse
customs, perhaps replacing a solstice sacrifice. I myself come from a mixed religious background, and although I’m an enthusiastic celebrator of Christmas, I’m not Christian: I thus find myself particularly interested in these customs of somewhat mysterious, mixed origins, associated with the
celebration of Christmas, but not actually connected to the Christmas story itself. I feel a further connection with wren mythology because many folk stories that are told about the wren in Europe have been transposed onto one of my favourite birds, the hermit thrush, when told in North America.
Last year I was commissioned to write a piece for the Kapten Trio by Chamber Music Scotland. It was a fantastic experience from start to finish, with lots of discussions and rehearsals with the Kapten Trio throughout the creative process, and two amazing Creative Scotland residencies at Hospitalfield in Arbroath. My piece, called Bowheads, is based on songs of the Bowhead Whale. (Thanks to biologists Catherine Berchok and Stephanie Grassia for sharing recordings with me!) The Kapten Trio took Boweads (along with pieces by Shiori Usui, Mozart, Debussy, and Brahms) on a 6-concert tour of Scotland. This video (made by Anne Milne) is from the premiere, at the Barn in Banchory, as part of the Sound Festival.
I’ve just finished my first wind quintet, Woodwings, for Fifth Wind Quintet, of Halifax, NS, as part of their Forecasting the Canadian Wind project. Woodwings will be premiered in September by Fifth Wind, as well as Choros (Montreal), Blythwood Winds (Toronto), Mistral 5 (Saskatoon), and Ventos (Vancouver), along with premieres by Carmen Braden, Cris Derksen, Daniel Janke, and Cameron Wilson. (If you play in a wind quintet and would like to have access to these and other new works after their premiere, you can sign up at Wind Quintet International!)
Woodwings is based on the songs and calls of a number of birds that are fairly widespread in Canada – the Bobolink, Hermit Thrush, Snow Goose, Winter Wren, and a selction of owls (Boreal Owl, Northern Pygmy Owl, Hawk Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, and Western Screech Owl). It’s been a great pleasure to write this piece, both because I’m a (mostly former) oboist myself, and because the musicians in Fifth Wind are long-time friends, and in some cases my former teachers. (Oh dear – I’ve just calculated and realize I have known several of them for more than 30 years! Am I really that old?) I’m really looking forward to the rehearsals and workshops in May, and to the performance in September!
The premiere of Conversation, based on the howls of grey seals and poetry by Eleonore Schoenmaier, will take place on February 21 at St Salvatore’s Chapel in St Andrews, Scotland. Conversation was commissioned by Bede Williams for the St Andrews New Music Ensemble, with funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and researched with funding from the Culture and Animals Foundation. You can find out more about the ideas behind this piece and the process of writing it here. Please come along on February 25 as well, to hear James Turnbull and Eddy Hackett perform a program of new music for oboe and percussion, which includes my piece Social sounds from whales at night.
The Sunday Mail/Daily Record did a story about my research on seal vocalizations! Thank you Sunday Mail and Heather Greenaway for the lovely coverage of my work!
My piece Seal Songs, based on the Selkie legend, was originally written for the Voice Factory Youth Choir and the Paragon Ensemble, conducted by Mark Evans, and premiered in Glasgow and Skye in 2011. Seal Songs received its US premiere by the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Trinity Youth Chorus in June, 2017. I’m currently conducting research on seal vocalizations with Prof Vincent Janik and Alex Carroll at St Andrews University, and will be writing a new piece based on my research, to be performed by the St Andrews New Music Ensemble, conducted by Bede Williams, in February 2018.
The San Francisco Girls Chorus and Trinity Youth Chorus are performing the US premiere of Seal Songs on June 4 at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. This is really exciting for me, not only because they are fantastic choirs, but because I sang in SFGC for a year when I was 13 (my family was on sabbatical in Palo Alto), and it was such a wonderful and formative musical experience for me. It’s always been a dream of mine to have something performed by them! Here’s a little letter I wrote to the choristers, as part of their ongoing Postcards series.
I’m looking forward to the Beaverton Symphony Orchestra‘s performance of green/blue on May 19 and 21 at the Village Baptist Church in Beaverton, OR. Also on the program are Robert Schumann’s Symphony #1, and the winners of the Young Artist Concerto Competition, Kaylee Jeong, Alison Mills, and Rachel Oh. I wish I could be there to hear the concert in person!
One of the happiest moments as a composer is discovering an orchestral piece is going to have a new performance. I was thrilled to learn that Carissa Klopoushak, who I first met at Scotia Festival of Music in 2005, is going to be performing Sapling with the Saskatoon Symphony, conducted by Eric Petkau, on March 25 at the Sid Buckwold Theatre in Saskatoon, SK. Sapling was commissioned by Calvin Dyck and the Vancouver Island Symphony in 2014, and has also been performed in an arrangement for solo violin and seven strings by Annette-Barbara Vogel and Magisterra. It’s such a delight to hear different musicians’ interpretations, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Carissa’s performance in March.
An enormous thanks to Ensemble Thing, conducted by Tom Butler, with Alan McHugh, Catherine Backhouse, and Brian McBride, directed by Stasi Schaeffer, for a fantastic premiere of the fully-staged version of Jan Tait and the Bear on October 6 and 8 at the CCA in Glasgow. We received some lovely reviews from The Tempohouse, The Cusp, and Opera Scotland. We’re hoping to take it on tour next year. In the meantime, here’s a photo of Catherine Backhouse as Jan Tait and Brian MacBride as the bear, with costumes by Vicki Brown!
