Matthew Jocelyn

Beat by Beat | In with the New
Playing Big
WENDALYN BARTLEY
Once there was a time when aspiring Canadian composers were
discouraged from writing pieces that required large ensembles,
such as an orchestra. “No one will play it” was the advice
given. But in Canada, that was before Esprit Orchestra came along.
Formed in 1983 by conductor and director Alex Pauk, the orchestra
is still going strong after more than 30 years of programming exclusively
new orchestral music. Recently Pauk was recognized for his
outstanding contributions to Canadian life and was appointed as a
member of the Order of Canada.
That followed on the heels of a wildly successful tour this past
spring to China, where according to Alexina Louie’s blog posts, they
performed to cheering packed houses, with audience members clamouring
to have selfies taken with members of the orchestra afterwards.
Such was the reception of Canadian orchestral music in China! To
read more about the tour, I recommend reading Louie’s posts, which
can be found by going to espritorchestra.com and clicking on the
blog link.
Play: The opportunity and possibilities that Esprit gives composers
are about to be displayed to the maximum in their upcoming concert
on November 15 with the programming of a piece titled Play by
American composer Andrew Norman. Play is a massive and sprawling
47-minute work originally written in 2013 for the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project and is described as being akin to a “Symphony
No.1.” In researching Norman’s work, I came across a November 18,
2014 episode of the Meet the Composer podcast series produced
by Q2, an online radio station connected to the Classical WQRX
station based in New York. Luckily, the last segment of the episode
(44 minutes in) was dedicated to a conversation with Norman about
Play. He talked about how he was given free rein to write anything he
wanted, so he decided to go “really big.”
The podcast begins with a collage of different voices, each one
describing their response to the piece. “Like a roller coaster ride, a
jack-in-the-box, exhilarating, expansive, breathless, frightening, frenetic,
and risky” are some of the terms used. With such a description,
it’s best to go straight to Norman’s own words about the inspiration
for the piece: the structure of video games. Although not a gamer
himself, what intrigues him the most is the idea of “trying things
again and again until you get it right. You try something, and you fail.
You try again, and choose another door.” For him, this gaming process
is very much about structural or formal design, the architecture of a
piece. He even goes so far as to equate classical symphonic form itself
as sharing similarities with video games. For example, in a Beethoven
symphony, several ideas are first presented, but all mixed up. The ideas
return in different ways until finally they appear in the right arrangement
in the finale.
A similar process happens in Play, where the listener is confronted
with a vast array of ideas at the beginning, a “gazillion ideas,” as
Norman describes it. As the piece unfolds, some of those ideas
become important and are transformed, while others are like wrong
doors and are discarded. There are even multiple climaxes – each one
coming up with a different answer, which turn out to be the wrong
one, until the final climax appears with the right answer close to the
end of the piece. He also uses the percussionists in a fashion analogous
to the different operations in a game environment – pause, fast
forward, rewind, etc. For example, every time a certain percussion
instrument is played, that’s the signal for the orchestra to pause. It’s
actually how he wrote the piece, thinking “what would it sound like if
I randomly paused the music at any moment, sped it up, or moved it
fast forward?”
Norman’s other interest in the piece is to explore the human
potential of the orchestra, rather than just limit himself to using the
orchestra as a field of sonic resources. Thus the orchestra members
become different protagonists, interacting on an interpersonal level.
This also extends to the
underlying meanings of
the word “play,” which
suggests something both
fun and also something
more dark, like a chain
of control with the musicians
being “played” by
the conductor. And given
the role of the percussionists,
they too become
more like a conductor,
playing the orchestra. In
all, it sounds like it will be
quite the ride on the evening
Andrew Norman
of November 15. Joining
in on the Esprit express that night will be two other works – Tevot,
written in 2007 by English composer Thomas Adès and Canadian John
Rea’s Zefiro torna (Zephyr Returns) from 1994.
Seismic Waves: There are several other upcoming musical events
that also promise to create seismic movement in the local airwaves. In
early December, Soundstreams is launching “Ear Candy,” a new series
designed to engage the audience with new forms of presentation in
more intimate venues. The first one happens on December 7 and 8 and
features an electrified version of the Christmas classic, the Messiah.
“Electric Messiah” puts together electronic musicians (John Gzowski,
Doug Van Nort), extended vocals (Christine Duncan) and sound
poetry (Gabriel Dharmoo) along with the Electroacoustic Orchestra
of York University. The evening at the Drake Hotel will be bookended
by DJ sets. Before all this gets going though, Soundstreams will be
collaborating with Canadian Stage to present the North American
premiere of Julie, which runs from November 17 to 29. This chamber
opera composed by Belgium’s Philippe Boesmans is an adaptation of
Strindberg’s 1888 play, Miss Julie, and is an example of Strindberg’s
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