Volume 21 Issue 8 - May 2016

the 10:30pm concert sold
out as of mid-April, so an
additional concert is being
planned starting at 8pm.
Performers will be
spatially distributed
throughout the room, intermingled
with the audience.
The piece is scored for up
to 50 musicians, including
members of Radiant Brass,
the Element Choir, a
percussion quartet, piano,
electroacousmatic elements
and three secret singers, all
interwoven over the hour.
The identities of the singers
will be secret in order to
create the surprise element
of “what is that that I am
(above) John Oswald
hearing? Since there will be a
(right) Ryan Scott
celebrity element, people will
be surprised at WHO they are hearing,” Oswald
said.
Creating a work where all the performers will be
in the dark requires different compositional strategies,
as there will be no scores. Oswald selected
musicians who are used to improvisation “as they
know how to navigate through unknown musical
territory by listening rather than staring at a score.
Simple procedures will be used, so that once you
know the seed idea, you just need to listen your
way through it.” Even the Element Choir, who are
used to performing with visual cues coming from conductor Christine
Duncan, will have to rely exclusively on listening. Duncan already
uses some sonic cues in the choir’s regular performances, such as
singing specific musical gestures or notes to different sections of the
choir and her voice is often part of the overall choral soundscape.
These features will be the starting place for their role in “Blackout.”
Creating pieces to be heard in a completely dark environment is
not new to Oswald. Back in 1976, he spent a summer working with
R. Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser
University in BC. Out of that context he began thinking about the
best way to listen to something, and how a concert could be set up
so that the attention is focused on sound. His first darkness concert
was performed at the Western Front that summer in collaboration
with Marvin Green, and from there, the two created other events
in Toronto at the Music Gallery, the Mirvish Gallery and at Comox
Theatre. Oswald adds: “Marvin and I called that field of inquiry and
those concerts PITCH, a reference to pitch, but also to the idea of
pitch black.”
Oswald admits that a concert in the dark may not be for everyone,
but it will be made clear beforehand what to expect. His goal though
is for it to be a wonderful and joyful listening experience. Towards
the end of our conversation I asked him whether he thought we listen
differently when we are not visually stimulated. To answer, he relayed
the experience in one of his earlier darkness concerts when photographer
Vid Ingelevics came in with an infrared camera to take photos.
What the pictures revealed was that many people had their eyes open
and were staring off in all directions, especially looking upwards.
People were cuddled together and the various poses were unlike any
audience Oswald has seen. I guess the best answer is to come and
experience for yourself.
KOTO & SHO: Imagine a sound palette with no boundaries between
Eastern and Western instruments, where the traditional Japanese
koto (a zither-like instrument) and the sho (a mouth organ) blend
seamlessly with an oboe, viola and clarinet. Welcome to the world
of the UK-based Okeanos ensemble. Known for their fascinating
mix of Japanese and Western instruments, they are actively
engaged in commissioning and interacting with the Japanese
contemporary music world. Two members of Okeanos will
join Continuum Contemporary Music for a May 26 21C concert
titled “Japan: NEXT.”
The idea for the concert began when Continuum artistic
director Ryan Scott travelled to Japan in 2014. There he was
introduced to the music of the younger generation of Japanese
composers, and was inspired to put together a program of
their music. One of the younger composers Scott researched
was Dai Fujikura, currently living in the UK. It was through
Fujikura’s five-piece Okeanos Cycle, written between 2001
and 2010 that Scott discovered Okeanos; three of the five
pieces will be heard at 21C. Interestingly, even though Fujikura
lived in Japan for the first 15 years of his life, he had never
heard nor been in contact with traditional Japanese instruments
(a curious parallel
with Tagaq never having
heard throat singing
until she moved to Nova
Scotia). When Okeanos
approached Fujikura
to write music for their
ensemble, he had to
learn about the instruments
from the British
players. However,
wanting to avoid exoticism,
Fujikura brought
his own energetic and
distinctly European
style to this hybrid of
sound worlds.
Another composer Scott came into contact with while in Japan was
Misato Mochizuki, whose piece, Silent Circle, written for a 21-string
koto will be performed at the festival, but not without a few snags
along the way. Because the koto player from Okeanos had to cancel
her appearance, Scott reached out to Mitsuki Dazai, the leading koto
player in North America, to perform the piece. But Dazai travels with
a 13-string koto, a problem for the proper performance of Silent
Circle. The solution? Dazai has developed a way of getting the 21
different pitches on the 13-string koto by splitting the strings on the
harmonic points. (Apparently this has caused quite a stir in the koto
community.)
The program will also include two world premieres by Canadian
composers Hiroki Tsurumoto and Michael Oesterle. Oesterle’s work is
a new arrangement of a piece he originally wrote in 2010 for marimba
and the virtuoso koto player Kazue Sawai, and for which Oesterle has
subsequently made other arrangements for Continuum’s instrumentation.
However, for this event, he has pulled out all the stops: another
arrangement which takes advantage of all the available instruments.
Look on Glass, scored for two shos, koto, harp, guitar and marimba as
well as Continuum’s regular sextet, gives Oesterle the opportunity to
combine western and eastern instruments in his own unique way.
This portrait of three 21C concerts is just the tip of the iceberg,
with so much more to explore. The festival continues to be a unique
opportunity to take in the diversity and genre-bending trends of how
music is currently being created and conceived. Similar to the mosaic
of music that will eventually end up in Kronos’ Fifty for the Future
project, the 21C festival series, spread out over its five years, will be
creating its own unique tapestry of collaborations, creative exchanges,
and experimentations. It’s too early at this stage to see what its longterm
effects will be, but hopefully the festival will stand as a significant
venture in creating the attention that contemporary music
deserves.
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal
sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com.
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