Volume 9 Issue 3 - November 2003

COVER STORY
Jennifer Waring & Continuum
by David Perlman
The date is November 1719'J9;
the place is Walter Hall on the U of
T campus; the occasion a composers'
forum midway through the
week-long Massey Festival of New
Music. Composers Paul Dolden,
Scott Irvine, Jeffrey Ryan, John
Weinzweig, and Pascal Dusapin are
on stage, about two thirds of the
way into an hour-long panel discussion,
moderated by fellow composer
Paul Steenhuisen.
The discussion has covered some
usual ground: where the individual
composers get their ideas; their compositional
tecinriques and interests;
the extent to which composers cater
to their audiences.
Suddenly the discussion takes a
turn, the tone becomes a bit querulous.
The panelists are deep into a
discussion of whether European audiences
care about Canadian new
music, and, conversely, whether
Canadian composers' should care
what European audiences think.
"The BBC ill London has no interest
in the art of ex-colonials ... we
should have no interest in the music
of Europe" .... "Our biggest problem
is that we' re trying to impress
Europeans .... " "Are you just going
to stay home forever?" "I'll go to
Europe, I like the pastries ... , but I'm
not going to attend those boring· festivals
anymore." "To accept feeling
insecure is just ridiculous. .. . I go
into the comers with my elbows
up."
The moderator attempts to restore
order. "You know," he says, "my
feeling is, I don't even care if we
pursue this question any further, I
Clarinetist Peter
Stoll rehearsing
ektenes III [1995-1]
for clarinet, tape _ ·
and live electronics
by alcides Lanza.
Left to right in the
backgound are Paul
Hodge, audio
engineer at the
Music .Gallery, Scott
Wilson, composer
and Continuum's
technical coordinator,
and
Jennifer Waring.
(Nov. 2002)
PHOTO: MICHAEL MITCHELL
6 WWW, THEWtjOLENOTE.COM
think it's a waste of tiine." An audience
member who has so far been silent
intervenes.
"No!" calls out Jennifer Waring,
founder and artistic director of Continuum
Contemporary Music Ensemble.
"We want to!" And for a little
while the discussion continues.
***
Flash forward four years. The
Massey Hall new music festival is a
thing of the past, but Europe is still
very much on Jennifer Waring's
mind.
I caught her in the throes of preparing
for Continuum's first international
tour - two and a half
weeks; Amsterdam and Leeuwarden
in the Netherlands, then London and
Huddersfield in the UK, back to
Holland to Den Bosch, and finally
on to Ghent, in Belgium.
"Setting up a tour is much like
putting on concerts - at least that's
what I told myself at the outset, to allay
my fears" she said. "You make a
list, do everything on it and solve
problems as they come up."
But the list is longer, the problems
bigger, the stakes higher. "It's a different
context, a different opportunity
for our composers and for us - concerts
in places like the ljsbreker in
Amsterdam and the Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival, and
radio exposure from the BBC and
VPRO."
"What stands out so far is the
ready interest of European presenters,
and their willingness to go with
us based on our work rather than our
reputation, which is insignificant internationally.
Conversely, the experience
of getting support from the Canadian
government for the tour has
been horrendous. I won't go into
the details because our specific situation
is not the issue. The real problem
is the general indifference to and
lack of understanding of the value of
eX1J9rting our cultural product - participating
internationally. There
needs to be real change in this area."
I show her the little anecdote from
Massey Hall 1999 that I'm planning
to use as an intro. She reflects on it.
"The situation vis a vis Canadian
music has changed (I.think that panelist's
comments were out of date
even at that time). A Canadian
,group touring Europe today doesn't
go for validation of its ensemble, or
Canadian repertoire, or the fragile
Canadian ego. In fact, quite a few
of the composers we are touring - .
Michael Oesterle, Allison Cameron
Scott Wilson - have international '
reputations already. We are recognized
sources of interesting work in
an international 'musical culture. The
time has passed, when we needed to
defiantly proclaim our independence
through disdain."
Defiant proclamation of a different
sort attended Continuum's birth in
the musical hotbed of mid-eighties
University of Toronto. As the story .
goes, composition students could
count on one official concert a year
to showcase their work. But in
1985 it was cancelled. A number of
composition majors, along with the
performance majors most supportive
of new work, decided the concert
would go a,head anyway, and Continuum
was born.
"Sasha Rapoport, Omar Daniel,
Ron Smith, Clark Ross, Michael
Bloss, George Thurgood, Colin Eatock,
Martin Vandeven, James
Rolfe, Tim Knight, Wendy Prezament"
are names that come readily to
Jennifer's mind. "I was a flutist, one
of the performance majors," she
says, "not a composer. I arrived at
university having discovered Stravinsky
at ten, ahd having grown up (in
Gatineau) surrounded by people
with strong artistic interestS in modernism
if not music. I was interested
in both. The two grew together."
The name Continuum, she recalls
"was Colin Eatock's idea, named for
a work by Gyorgy Ligeti, an expression
of the desire for the contin­
. uation of composition."
The group has evolved from thos~
early collective beginnings, with a
structure now similar to other established
new music ensembles in town
- New Music Concerts, for example,
or Esprit, or Arraymusic-an ar-
tistic director, a core ensemble (flute,
oboe, violin, cello, piano, percussion),
other artists added as needed,
and a mandate to commission and· ·
perform new works by emerging and
established composers, mainly Canadian.
"There are always things that
make groups distinct from one another"
she says. "There is the history
and culture of the group, for one.
As a collectively run organization
turned hierarchical, we have retained
the idea of consultation (consulting
with and picking the brains of many
far-flung colleagues). But because of
early frustration with the slow pace
of consensual decision making,
there's now a certain dictatorial quality
to the operation - but only in the
best sense, I hope."
The interests and predilections of
the artistic director are obviously also
significant. "The fact that I am not a
composer is probably reflected in
programming. I am not tied strongly
to a personal aesthetic so my programming
may be more broad-ranging."
Composer Scott D. Wilson, whose
work 13 Angels will tour, is blunter.
"Jennifer, to my mind, is probably
the most scrupulous person I've
ever dealt with in the new music
world" he says, "and it may be that
not being a composer helps her to
be that way." A lot of stuff in that
world happens for political reasons,
based on patterns of 'I'll scratch
your back, and .. .'. Of course it's
not always so venal, probably not
even usually so, but it does tend towards
it." .
He points to Jennifer's success in
creating wide-ranging connections in
diverse places around Canada and
internationally, "not as opportunities
to leverage benefits but to create
sites to be mined: for more information,
the next connection in the network,
the next composer, the next
fresh exciting piece. Certainly she
has her friends, and even favourites
but you feel that those composers '
and works get her attention because ·
of her real love for the music."
'
Continuum's bienniai Call for
Scores is also fundamental to the
group's culture. "Every two years
we get upwards of'200 scores from
Canadians and international composers"
Jennifer says. "Sifting through
it all takes time but we have found
some very important work and have
developed close professional relations
with composers as a result."
James Rolfe was Continuum's
Artistic Director at the time of the
first Call For Scores in 1992 .. "We
NOVEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 7 2003