I recently spent a week in Russell, a small town smack in the middle of Kansas, and almost in the very center of America. This is my second visit to this community which hosts an annual three-week music festival called Ad Astra. The festival, with the participation of the whole community, is commissioning a full-length chamber opera from me and my writer sister Maria Reva, which will premiere at Prairiesta 2021, a giant town fair that happens once every ten years. It’s been an incredible experience getting to know this fascinating, art-filled community while researching the story of local art teacher Trudy Furney. While last year Maria and I conducted a bunch of interviews who knew this remarkable lady, this year we introduced the community to some of my music and Maria’s writing. Can’t wait to get going on this project!

Also, I got to see an albino donkey. How cool is that? He’s hiding in the little donkey house. You can see him peaking out shyly…

I was lucky enough to spend four weeks of June at the I-Park artists’ residency in East Haddam, Connecticut along with six other incredible artists: Sarah E. Brook, Gina Kamentsky, Sharon Koelblinger, Brenna K. Murphy, Clarisse Baleja Saidi and Hui-Ying Tsa. The place is like adult summer camp and we were a fun crew enjoying happy hours on the Floating Living Room on the pond, swimming at various local beaches, sweating in the sauna and improvising an endless stream of songs ranging from the heartfelt to the comedic (or both). In between the merriment, we also got a little work done. I made many recordings of the local soundscape (the frog choruses here are incredible!) and worked on a commission for the Wild Shore Festival in Homer, Alaska. This set of lullabies explores my maternal feelings and draws poetic imagery from my visit to Homer in March during a residency at the Bunnell Street Arts Centre.

My music is going to Carnegie Hall next week! Boston-based Trio Klaritas will perform Like doves with grey wings embracing at the Weill Recital Hall on January 25 at 8 pm. This is going to be my second Carnegie Hall appearance. The first was the 2012 premiere of my solo cello work, The child, bringer of light, performed by Paul Dwyer as part of the week-long workshop with Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunen. For more information about the upcoming concert, please visit the Carnegie Hall website.

Last weekend, Princeton University celebrated the opening of the new Lewis Centre arts complex with a big multi-day festival. The door-score for the violin duo Through closed doors and the set of prints that make up the illustrated score for Mirror, mirror were on display at the Co-lab located on the forum level of the new complex. Through closed doors received its US premiere as part of two sound walks, which took visitors through a series of performances located throughout the three buildings. I thoroughly enjoyed working with violinists Andie Springer and Olivia De Prato at this event.

Andie Spring and Olivia de Prato performing Through closed doors

Me with my artwork

Flipping the door

This week, Princeton University will celebrate the opening of its new multi-building centre for the arts, the new Lewis Centre. As part of this festival, the music department is hosting various performances and sound events. The ‘door score’ for my violin duo Through closed doors is making its premiere appearance in the US as part of this festival. The piece will be performed by Andie Springer and Olivia De Prato as part of two walkthrough tours of the New Music building starting at 12:00 pm and at 1:30 pm.

My hand-crafted illustrated score for the mini-opera Mirror, mirror will also be on display during the walkthrough. For more info about the performances, click here.

I am so honoured that the wonderful violist Marina Thibeault will perform the viola version of my piece The Child, Bringer of Light in Duhamel, QC tomorrow, September 23. For more information, please visit this site. I heard Marina play at a new music showcase at the IAMA conference which took place in Toronto last year. Her playing was sensitive and intense, and I am really looking forward to hearing her take on a piece that has been so important in my artistic and personal development.

I composed this piece for solo cello back in 2011/2012 for a workshop with Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunen which took place at Carnegie Hall. The piece was premiered by cellist Paul Dwyer at Carnegie Hall, and has since been performed by cellists Rachel Mercer, Dobrochna Zubek and Ian Woodman, as well as violist Claire Poillion who brought the piece to Uruguay. Here’s a recording of the piece performed by Paul Dwyer.

For the last three years I have been involved in the production of a new opera Wild Dogs based on a novel of the same name by Helen Humphreys. This project is being produced by Vancouver’s start-up opera company black bachx opera lab in collaboration with Standing Wave and Music on Main. Producer Robert Carey and librettist Val Brandt brought me into the project in the libretto writing stage so that I could have some artistic input into the text I am setting. This has been a long, but fascinating process and I thank Val Brandt for her flexibility and openness. It is no easy task to stay faithful to the spirit of the novel, while at the same time creating a text that the composer is excited to work with. I started work on the music just over a year ago.

At the end of May, Vancouver’s contemporary music ensemble Standing Wave presented three scenes from the opera with soprano Carla Huhtanen singing the role of Lily. In these scenes, Lily, a twenty-something-year-old woman who suffered brain damage as a child, goes into the woods to find her beloved dog, Dog. She is instead found by the feral dog pack that Dog has joined. The pack takes her in as one of their own, and Lily begins a new life free of the prejudices and fears which have haunted her in the human world. Here are some excerpts from this performance.

The opera will continue going through a series of workshops over the next year or so. Keep tuned for more updates and performances!

I am exited to participate in the Mise-En Festival 2017 taking place June 20-25 in New York City. The festival will feature works by several dozen composers from around the world with concerts, workshops and presentations happening in different locations throughout the city. My piece Weeping, originally commissioned and premiered by New Music Concerts in Toronto, will be performed as part of the 7:30 pm set of the multi-hour marathon taking place on June 24. I am excited to share the program with Nick Omiccioli, whom I met in Ottawa at the NAC Emerging Composers Workshop back in 2012.

For more information about the festival, click here.

Weeping is my exploration of the nearly extinct tradition of weeping or keeping songs sung by women in rural Ukraine to mourn those they lost. I transcribed a number of recordings matching them with specific instruments based on timbral similarities. I endeavored to capture the idiosyncratic qualities of each voice using the idiosyncratic qualities of each instrument, often asking them to play against their classical training. The overall structure of the work is inspired by an archival recording made at a cemetery on a prescribed day of mass mourning. Here is an excerpt of the piece performed by the New Music Concerts ensemble.

For more information on Weeping and my composing practice in general, I invite you to listen to this podcast produced by Paul Steenhuisen before the work’s premiere.

Tonight Ensemble Paramirabo will be premiering my piece Waiting as part of their joint tour with my long time collaborators Thin Edge New Music Collective. The concert, titled Raging Against the Machine: Coming Together, is presented by Music on Main and will take place at the Fox Cabaret. It’s a very special honour for me to finally be presented by this much beloved music series, which my family has been frequenting for many years. This is also my first time working with Paramirabo and I am super excited about tonight’s performance. More info can be found here.

The piece was inspired by a Ukrainian folksong I found in a printed anthology, which so elegantly and succinctly explores the state of waiting for someone much longed for. It is a complex mixture of conflicting emotions, which gives a great sense of meaning and poignancy to the simplest elements of one’s life. It is a state characterized by obsessive creation of many scenarios, both positive and negative, but always extreme. The image of weeping willows swaying in the wind inspired the structure of the piece. Thoughts of wind and breath were very much on my mind. Fragments of the folksong melody are constantly replayed and reworked, and the first four lines of poetry are obsessively repeated in three languages. 

Here’s my rendition of the song.

“Хилітеся, густі лози,
Звіткіль вітер віє!…
Дивітеся, карі очі,
Звіткіль милий (мила) їде!…

Хилилися густі лози,
Та вже й перестали…
Дивилися, карі очі,
Та й плакати стали.”

“Bend, O, bend, you thick willows,
From where does the wind blow?
Watch, O, watch, you brown eyes,
From where will your beloved come?

Bent, and bent, the thick willows,
And then fell still…
Watched, and watched, the brown eyes,
And began to weep. “

Tomorrow (Saturday, May 28) I will be premiering my new piece Drown in the depth at the 21C Festival in Toronto, along with Andréa Tyniec (violin), Amahl Arulanandam (cello) and Chung-Ling Lo (percussion). This ‘invented folksong’ borrows familiar formulas and structures from Ukrainian folk music, subverting them and pushing them beyond their traditional limits.

My text explores the richness of the female erotic imagination, contradicting the common myth that female sexuality is naturally dormant and passive until ignited by the more sexual and aggressive male.

The piece will be performed, along with my older work Bridal train, on Saturday, May 28 (5 pm) at the Conservatory Theatre at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.