Two SOCAN wins

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I am super excited to finally announce that I received two prizes in this year’s SOCAN Awards for Young Composers. My chamber opera On the Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which was my master’s thesis project, received a shared first prize in the Godfrey Ridout vocal category. Congratulations also to Marie-Claire Saindon, who is sharing the win with me.

The solo cello piece The Child, Bringer of Light, which I wrote for a workshop with Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunen at Carnegie Hall, received the third prize in the Pierre Mercure category for solo and duo compositions. The Child will be performed by Rachel Mercer as part of Toronto’s New Music Concerts on November 1, 2013. Excerpts of the score will also appear in the summer issue of Manor House Quarterly.

Congratulations also to a super talented friend of mine, James O’Callaghan, for his first prize win in the Hugh Le Caine category for works with live or prerecorded electroacoustics.

Soundstreams post-mortem

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It’s been about a month since I returned from Toronto and I’m just waking up from my post-masters hibernation. I’ve done no composing since the Soundstreams workshop, and after deadening my brain with hundred-year-old dust and pain fumes at a heritage house reno over the last four weeks, I feel ready to jump back into creative activities.

I had a fantastic time at the Soundstreams Emerging Composers’ Workshop with the Gryphon Trio, and our mentors R. Murray Schafer and Juliet Palmer (see this entry and this one). As mentioned earlier, we were to bring sketches for a new piece for piano trio to be completed after the workshop. I am primarily working with combining fragments from a folksong I recorded in Ukraine with the more timbral ideas and extended techniques I started exploring in The Child, Bringer of Light.

There is a loose narrative in this piece inspired by a group of folksongs dealing with the subject of young women growing old prematurely from hard labour and abusive marriages. One of these songs explores a beautiful metaphor for this idea. A lonely young woman throws a flower into a river hoping that it will reach her people. When her mother finds it floating in a still pool, she wonders why it has wilted despite being in water, why her daughter has aged before her time. My piece will follow the progression of this flower on the river starting with the woman’s excited anticipation of a new marriage, going through the rapids of all the hardships she encounters, and ending in that dark and still pool.

Soundstreams: Piano Trio, Sketch 1

The rough beginning exploring the nervous excitement of a new marriage.

Soundstreams: Piano Trio, Sketch 2

The rough ending, the wilted flower arriving in the still pool. I am exploring ideas similar to the opening, but cast in a darker light.

Soundstreams: Piano Trio, Sketch 3

This material was meant to go in the middle section of the piece, but it became apparent that the overall feel of the sketch doesn’t really fit in the soundworld I am exploring in Sketch 1 and 2. I will probably extract certain gestures from this sketch and reshape them into something more consistent with the opening and closing of the piece. 

During the first two sessions I had with the trio, I started to suspect that the traditional notational system was not really doing a great job capturing the feel I was looking for in this piece. It was too confining. I figured out that the performers needed more room for spontaneous reactions to each other and time to engage all the timbral effects I was asking them to perform. The music needed room for stretching. After rewriting one of the sketches without measures and will less rhythmic precision, I was amazed at how the music magically locked into itself. Considering the freedom that my notation implied, it was remarkable how close the performers’ interpretation came to what I had imagined. I felt like I tapped into their natural tendencies and allowed them to simply play.

Thank you so much to the Gryphon Trio for being so amazing to work with and to the workshop organizers for creating this amazing opportunity.

The first six days of Soundstreams

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It’s been a crazy week here at the Soundstreams Emerging Composers’ Workshop in Toronto. The days have been packed with composing seminars with R. Murray Schafer and Juliet Palmer, reading sessions with the Gryphon Trio, various professional development talks, and reunions with many friends. My jetlag combined with overexcited insomnia means that I have mostly been running on adrenalin and copious amounts if tea.

Despite the sleep deprivation, I’ve been having a really wonderful time. I am really enjoying working with the Gryphon Trio. Jamie, Roman and Annalee have been extremely supportive and patient as we try to communicate and explore our ideas. They have a great sense of humour, which makes the whole process fun rather than stressful. It turns out that scordatura (funky tuning) can be a little annoying (to put it lightly) for string players with perfect pitch; they expect to hear a certain note and something else comes out. Annalee is being a very good sport about it though (thank you!). I am enjoying the pulsating, shimmering textures I’m getting from the strings, but finding that I need to go even further into that world, away from the very solid sound of traditional playing. I’m still struggling with fitting the piano into this soundworld.

There has been no drama among the participants, but, since everything is being recorded, we feel like we are on reality radio of some sort (or should I say podcast?). It would be a pretty borring reality show for the average viewer since we all get along…We all have very different aesthetics, so it’s an interesting learning experience. Adam Scime has these crazy dense textures and very detailed string writing. Gabriel Dharmoo is working with Carnatic material from India, with lots of heterophonic unison playing and quiet noisy textures in the strings. Caitlin Smith is incorporating jazz and Turkish traditions. Graham Flett is doing some trippy things with Schumann and string harmonics. Emilie LeBel is combining her gradual, shimmering textures with very broad melodic lines.

Juliet has already asked us what we are planning to steal from each other (Adam Scime, I WILL have your trilly-glissy figures!). I am very curious to see where these pieces will end up. Will there be any cross influences creeping in?

We had a very special treat today: a visit to Murray Schafer’s farm! We got a tour of his current work in progress – a massive theatrical, musical and spatial experience – that’s being erected on his property. He also very generously gave us some of his scores and books as gifts after showing us his publishing house located in his basement. I am now the happy owner of two of his beautifully hand-drawn scores: a chamber opera Loving, and The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos from the Patria cycle. He even gave me the LP recording of the opera! I am very pleased and excited.

Excerpts from the score The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos by R. Murray Schafer

Excerpt from "The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos" by R. Murray Schafer

Excerpt from "The Black Theatre of Hermes Trismegistos" by R. Murray SchaferI love how the lines of the staves turn into waves in the second one. If you like what you see here, get yourself to your nearest CMC library and check out these gorgeous scores. You can also buy them from Arcana, Schafer’s very own publishing label.

Off to Toronto!

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After successfully defending my masters thesis a couple of weeks ago, I’m happily on my way to the next adventure. I’m off to Toronto for the Soundstreams emerging composers’ workshop, which starts tomorrow. I am super excited about this opportunity to work with R. Murray Schafer, Juliet Palmer and the Gryphon Trio, and to meet the other participants. In addition to composing and reading sessions, there will also be some professional development seminars covering topics such as “From emerging to emerged,” “The art of artistic directing” and “Marketing and PR.” There will also be a visit to Mr. Schafer’s farm!

The format of this workshop will be a little different from the other two I’ve participated in (Carnegie Hall and NAC). Instead of coming in with a completed piece to rehearse and tweak, we were asked to bring sketches to try out with the ensemble. The piece will be completed after the workshop.

I’ve spent the last four weeks trying to wrap my brain around a new tuning on both violin and cello. I tried to keep the tuning unchanged at first, but the open strings are so familiar and predictable. And, with the strings being turned in open fifths, the harmonics pretty much form a D major scale.

The moment I started fidgeting with the tuning pegs, the sound assumed a new darkness and mystery. The new tuning also opened up some interesting possibilities for natural harmonics and double stops. I think the pain of keeping track of how everything is notated vs. how it really sounds is well worth the effect. We’ll see what the ensemble has to say.

My primary goal for this piece is to fuse several directions in my composing, which up to now have mostly be confined to different pieces. I am trying to integrate my fascination with Ukrainian folksong with the kind of colour manipulations I was exploring in my solo cello piece, The child, bringer of light. I am taking snippets of a folksong I recorded in the village Kozats’ke, Kalyna Malyna, which has really touched me both in terms of its musical content and meaning, and making them emerge out of and dissolve into various harmonic trills.

A sketch for an upcoming piano trio

I rented a cello and a violin to experiment with these ideas and get a feel for the tuning, but the challenge has been imagining what it will all sound like together. Being so preoccupied with the strings, I’ve also been a little neglectful of the piano, a shortcoming I am hoping to fix by and by. Anyway, I’m excited to hear it all at my first session on Tuesday. Keep tuned for further updates!

Life after thesis and productivity guilt

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Six months ago I promised myself that when I finally hand in my thesis, I would not compose for a month or two, that I would just lay around and do absolutely nothing. So what have I been doing since the day after I sent off my thesis to my defense jury? Working on a construction site and writing a new piece.

I’m very quickly transitioning out of my scholarship-cushioned grad school life and into that nebulous world of ‘freelancing.’ I’m clumsily swinging a hammer, destroying old walls and learning to install insulation. I come home sore in every place imaginable, itchy from the insulation fibers and aching slightly in the right hip area (am I that old already??). On my days off, I am trying to be a composer.

Most importantly, I am learning how to manage a flexible work schedule, how to get the most out of my composing days and at the same time how to not feel guilty about not composing ‘enough’.

This great article here talks about the idea that creative work doesn’t happen on a 9-5 schedule and that accomplishment in the arts (or in any field) shouldn’t be measured by the hours worked but rather by tasks accomplished, art made. One of the comments mentions that when working as a freelancer, “the biggest hurdle was getting over ‘the guilt’ of not being tethered to the office for 8-10 hours a day.”

The guilt is something that I’ve been struggling with since I left Calgary and started working on my thesis long distance. I have been trying to force myself to work for a certain number of hours each day and then beating myself up for not succeeding. I have been unable to enjoy my weekends or holidays because I’ve felt that I didn’t deserve them. In my mind I’ve turned myself into the laziest slob who is going nowhere in life. And then when I looked back at everything I’ve done in the past 18 months, I couldn’t understand where this absurd self-assessment was coming from. I remembered the hours I couldn’t work better than the hours when I accomplished all this great stuff. 

There is something to be said for the work discipline that everyone always talks about (get up early every day, have a work schedule, don’t get distracted by making yourself tea or getting snacks, etc). But how much of that strictly scheduled time is actually spent on meaningful work? How much of it is just you starring at a blank page, getting frustrated with yourself and then beating yourself up for not being productive? In the article above, the author suggests that “most of us, artists or not, do excellent work for no more than two to four hours of [our] working day.” Yes, you can develop techniques for getting yourself going, but sometimes it’s just not your hour or your day. Sometimes you just need to relax, go for a walk, wash the dishes, do some exercise, get distracted.

So I’m trying to keep my old anxieties at bay, to rewire my brain, so that, in the midst of all the guilty worrying, I don’t miss the 2-4 hours of excellent work I could be doing today.

First official CD appearance

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I just got the latest ISCM Canadian Section demo CDs in the mail!!! The CD includes works selected by the Canadian Section for submission to the ISCM World New Music Days 2013 and my piece for solo accordion Light-play through curtain holes is among them! I am calling this my first official CD appearance. You can also find works by Brian Harman, Derek Charke, Anna Hostman, Patrick Saint-Denis and Alice Ho on this demo release. Check it out! I believe the CDs are available from the Canadian League of Composers. A big thank you to the German accordionist Olivia Steimel for the wonderful recording featured on this album.

Light-play through curtain holes will be performed at the ISCM World New Music Days festival in November 2013.

ISCM Canadian Section 2013 Selected Works demo CD

A humble composer’s tribute to Stalin

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For me, one of the most fascinating subjects in music history is the life and work of composers in the Soviet Union. It is close to my family history and always forces me to imagine my life had I been born 60 years earlier.

When I was in Ukraine last fall, my grandfather showed me a fascinating document: a torn up issue of the Ukrainian Pravda, an affiliate of the most important Soviet newspaper, dated from 1944. He had torn up and burned most of it before realizing what he was holding. What makes this issue special is that it is dedicated to the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from German occupation. It also contains an article by the Soviet composer Konstantyn Dankevych. What he has to say is an incredible glimpse into the kind of political and psychological environment that Soviet composers lived in.

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“…our dearest and wisest father and chief. Now and forever our Soviet land is cleansed of German occupiers. The Red Army is preparing to fulfill a historic mission – to raise the emblem of our victory over Berlin!

“In this bright hour we are all thinking about Stalin. There is no challenge more enlightening and absorbing for an artist than to recreate the image of Stalin as he really is: the image of a person, chief of the nation and the party, military leader, man of learning. Perhaps this would only be possible for a whole collective of writers, composers, artists and scientists. Perhaps this image can only be created by a generation of masters of the arts – a whole generation.

“Most likely that is the case. Because Stalin is an epoch.

“But we live today and today our chest is tearing open in song and gratitude. Today our hearts yearn towards the Kremlin, and today we want to sing what is in our souls.

“I open my eyes and look out the window. A bright, sunny morning has come. I tell myself:

“‘This is Stalin!’

“I walk down the street. I see people. They hurry to work. They rebuild their city. They innovate. They write new books. They learn. They truly live. I tell myself:

“‘This is Stalin!’

“In the heart of this great and simple man…[the newspaper is torn here]…the hands of all peoples of the Soviet Union in great, unbreakable friendship? Who raised our country before the whole world, forcing them to deeply respect and love her? Who lives in everything that is dear to us, in the very thing we breath?

“I recently completed a symphonic choral work, setting the poem “The wreath of glory to the great Stalin,” which was performed on the 6th of November at the triumphant parliamentary session in Kiev. The poem was written for the 27th anniversary of the Great October Revolution and the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from German attackers. It is dedicated to the great Stalin.

“An immense challenge was before me, an ordinary Soviet composer. Is my poem worthy in the smallest degree of the image of the one, to whom it belongs with its every note? I know only one thing: never before have I written with such passion. And I would have never been able to write it had I not felt on my breast the warm hand, to which I cling like a son, the hand of Stalin.

“The people sing about the greatest triumph of the Russian, Ukrainian and all the people of the brother nations of the Soviet Union! It was Stalin’s friendship of the nations that won today!

“The trumpet-like voice of the victors sings, it rises high above the earth, and in this voice I hear the praise to the man, whose name has given glory to our age and whose image will forever live among the people.”

Thin Edge on the Bridal Train

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I would like to invite all those who live in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto or Montreal to attend one of the concerts given by the Thin Edge New Music Collective in the next couple of weeks. Thin Edge is touring with a very unique combination of instruments – flute, violin, accordion and piano – and will be performing my newest piece, Bridal Train.

Bridal Train was the result of some very intense work at the Banff Centre and draws heavily on a folksong I recorded in Ukraine.

Village Kozats’ke, Ensemble Berehynja: “Vesil’naja maty” (“Весільная мати”)

This folksong is part of the traditional wedding rite in the village Kozats’ke, which I visited last September (see the post here). It accompanies the baking of special wedding bread known as karavaj. The song has an interesting formal structure, primarily reserved for this kind of ritualistic repertoire, where six-beat cells go through various subdivisions to accommodate an irregular text. The six-beat cells can sometimes be replaced by shorter or longer cells (commonly four beats); I play with this tendency a little in my piece. These particular performers also do what we know as metric modulation, suddenly going into triplets and letting them become the new quarter-note pulse. This is something that I pushed further in Bridal Train. I think Thin Edge particularly enjoyed rehearsing those bits.

Here’s a list of all the concerts where you can hear this piece as well as music by Juan de Dios Magdaleno, Georg Katzer, Toshio Hosokawa, Uros Rojko, Hope Lee and a brand new piece for the full quartet by Solomiya Moroz.

VANCOUVER – February 1, 8 pm, CMC Vancouver, 837 Davie Street, $15-20

VICTORIA – February 3, 7:30 pm, Wood Hall, The Victoria Conservatory of Music, 900 Johnson St, $10-$15 (Presented by Open Space Arts Society)

TORONTO – February 10, 3 pm, Gallery 345, 345 Sorauren Ave, $15-$20

MONTRÉAL – February 11, 8 pm, Sala Rosa, 4848 boul. Saint-Laurent, $10-15

They are also doing a second show in Vancouver focusing on repertoire with open instrumentation, including some wonderful Cage pieces for violin and keyboard (performed by accordion in this case):

VANCOUVER- January 31, 9 pm, 1067 EAST, 1115b East Hastings, $5 (with guitarist/composer Jeff Younger)

I hope you come out to one of these shows and enjoy this unique ensemble. I’m super excited to hear my piece this Friday!

Rediscovering hope at the Banff Centre

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I just returned to Vancouver from a three-week creative residency at the Banff Centre. The 15-hour bus ride through Beautiful British Columbia gave me some time to take stock of the last 18 months of my life. Since August 2011, I have moved between Canada’s coasts three times, officially held three addresses plus four transient ones, attended two composition workshops, gave three public talks, and wrote 39 minutes of music in addition to completing a 36-minute chamber opera. My three-months’ stay in Ukraine last fall, though offering some incredible opportunities to hear authentic performances of folk music, was a psychological nightmare from which I came back feeling broken and depressed.

In that mind state, the Banff Centre, despite everything it has to offer, seemed like yet another place to travel to, yet another place to have to work very hard at. I was still trying to finish my chamber opera. I was terribly behind on a piece I was supposed to be workshopping with the Thin Edge New Music Collective and was absolutely dreading having to face them. I was too worn out to enjoy the prospect of yet another three weeks away from home.

But I went. And it ended up being exactly what I needed.

In Ukraine, there’s a saying that without your piece of paper, you are just a piece of poop. This idea infects almost every aspect of life. Going from that to the Banff Centre, I suddenly found myself in an environment where everything and everyone makes you feel supremely important. You have incredible facilities at your disposal and, most importantly, you are surrounded by an intense concentration of talent and energy. It’s absolutely infectious. The residency takes you away from the daily grind and reminds you why you work so hard at this ephemeral idea of music. And it makes you want to work even harder to reach your ultimate goal.

I came to the centre totally exhausted, but managed to write a 5-minute chamber piece amidst constant trips to Calgary for opera rehearsals. I worked like mad, but there is no way I could have done that at home. Somehow I came back to Vancouver feeling more rested and energized than I did when I left three weeks ago. Then, my only goal was to finish my current projects and hibernate indefinitely. Now I am looking forward to facing new challenges and new pieces.

The Banff Centre is truly a magical place and I very much hope that the current restructuring it’s going through will not take these residencies away from us. The centre is not just “inspiring creativity,” as all the signs on campus proclaim. It inspires a kind of radiantly innocent hope for the rest of your life as an artist.

In my hut with the lovely ladies from the Canadian Federation of University Women, the organization that generously funded part of my Banff Centre experience.