Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

FEATURE
Afghanistan poppies
MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE
DAVID JAEGER
ASIAN STUDIES - UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
Suzanne Steele
In 2009 Canadian poet
Suzanne Steele was
appointed as the first ever
Canadian war poet, and served
in Afghanistan with the 1st
Battalion Princess Patricia’s
Canadian Light Infantry as a part
of the Canadian Forces Artist
Program. She documented her
experiences in her poetry and on
her website, warpoet.ca.
After her return home, she mentioned to the late Michael Green,
a co-founder of One Yellow Rabbit theatre in Calgary, the idea of
writing a requiem using the words she had written in Afghanistan.
Green introduced her to Heather Slater at the Calgary Philharmonic,
who in turn suggested Vancouver composer Jeffrey Ryan as a collaborator.
Steele liked Ryan’s music, and soon they were working together
on a project that became Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation. The
work received its premiere in Calgary in 2012, and was also produced
and recorded with the Vancouver Symphony last January.
Ryan and Steele were easy and effective collaborators. Ryan recently
told me, “It was clear to me from our first meeting that for Suzanne,
the poetry would be coming from a deeply personal and emotional
place–of course it could be nothing else but. So I knew that, not being
the one who was there, it was also my job to be the counterbalance
to that. Suzanne wrote and wrote, and I gave practical feedback from
the compositional side: I think this is one too many stories, this needs
to be longer, this needs to be shorter, this needs to be soprano not
tenor, we need to combine these two ideas, can we have an orchestraonly
moment here, and so on. It helped that Suzanne has a degree in
music, so she had an understanding of what I was talking about, as
well as how to write words that can be effectively set and sung. In the
end, I think through this process we came up with something that is a
perfect marriage of words and music.
I asked Ryan what struck him most about Steele’s poetry. He said,
“The most exciting thing for me is that she was there. She was writing
from what she saw and experienced. She knew people there who were
killed, she knew people who came home with PTSD, she knew their
families. So I knew there would be a truth and authenticity in her
poetry that, really, no other poet could have brought, and it gave the
piece immediacy and relevance. Also, it was a perspective I never could
have even imagined myself. But being able to talk with her as the words
were being shaped meant that as soon as it was time to start composing
the music, I knew where she was coming from and what she was
wanting to express, and from that foundation I already had ideas
about what the music would sound like. It’s the same when collaborating
on opera; being part of the development process of the story and
the libretto, discussing each draft and giving feedback, means that the
music is already emerging in my head long before I put pencil to paper.
“One thing that Suzanne said in our first meeting stuck with me
through the whole process. She said that she was there as a witness,
and it was the artist’s job not to provide the answers, but to ask the
CONCERTOS!
Sunday December 3, 2017
Betty Oliphant Theatre | 404 Jarvis St.
Elliott Carter: String Trio
Linda C. Smith: Path of Uneven Stones
with Eve Egoyan
Paul Frehner: Clarinet Concerto (premiere)
with Max Christie
Robin de Raaff: Percussion Concerto
with Ryan Scott
NMC Ensemble | Robert Aitken direction
TICKETS: CALL 416.961.9594
www.NewMusicConcerts.com
8 | November 2017 thewholenote.com