Volume 23 Issue 5 - February 2018

FEATURE
The Craft
of Ēriks
Ešenvalds
BRIAN CHANG
“Overpow’ring light burst upon
my startled senses!”
– Northern Lights, Ēriks Ešenvalds
At a certain point in the blended storytelling, music,
and video multimedia monument Ēriks Ešenvalds
calls Nordic Light Symphony, he has singers wet their
fingers, running them against the rims of glasses filled with
various amounts of water. The movement causes ethereal
pitches and overtones, evoking one of the greatest natural
phenomena beyond our planet - the Aurora Borealis.
The Aurora Borealis has long captured the imagination of Ešenvalds,
as it has countless others for millennia. This striking magnetic effect,
also known as the Northern Lights, is inseparable from the people who
live in the Northern regions of the planet. Stories, spirituality and life
itself have been built around and through these stellar experiences. But
they are a visual experience, without sound. “Keep in mind this is the
Earth’s largest atmospheric optical phenomenon,” Ešenvalds told Inga
Ozola of Latvian Public Broadcasting. “When it overcomes the starry
skies above you, your vision alone cannot take it all in.”
Ešenvalds comes to Toronto as part of a visit organized by the
Orpheus Choir of Toronto for the Canadian premiere of his Nordic
Light Symphony. Premiered in 2015 with the Liepāja Symphony
Orchestra and State Choir Latvija, conducted by Māris Sirmais, the
work was awarded the Latvian Grand Music Award, the highest
musical honour of the composer’s home country. This was Ešenvalds’
third time receiving the award for choral compositions in his career.
Laura Adlers, of the Ottawa-based Adlers Agency, is a core part of
the team that has led to Ešenvalds coming to Canada. She was with
him in 2015 when he gave the keynote at the Singing Network in St
John’s, Newfoundland (and kissed the cod, which as the story goes
makes him an official Newfoundlander). A lot of what interests him
is the “connection of nature and faith,” sentiments well-shared with
inhabitants of The Rock. Nature strongly shapes his musical and
creation process; and he is incredibly careful with his craft. “I have
learned first to find the idea or story of the piece,” he said in an interview
with choral conductor, composer and music journalist Andrea
Angelini on her website. “Then I go to the library to find perfectly suitable
lyrics; and only then I have my nibbled pencil and a blank music
sheet and at my piano I compose the piece.”
Nordic Light was an expedition of love. The work is the result of
four years of research and the culmination of a very careful thought
process inherent in his unique approach to storytelling. Overlapping
with a two-year appointment at Trinity College, Cambridge University,
UK, completed in 2013, Ešenvalds studied 150 books and spoke with
experts on the Aurora Borealis. “I was fascinated by their dimensions,
the versatility of their colours, and forms, and the mystical legends
rooted in Northern folklore (including folksongs),” he said on musicabaltica.com.
Part of Nordic Light relies on the storytellers themselves
as part of the multimedia experience of the narrative. By video,
22 storytellers bring life to the music directly from the North from the
Iñupiat and Inuit peoples, and people from Iceland, Latvia, Finland,
Norway, and Estonia. In total, Nordic Light explores 33 distinct stories
about the lights.
In a TEDx Talk given in Riga, Ešenvalds explains the diverse stories
he learned. He acknowledges that many of these stories are gone,
lost: “The unique cultural heritage had disappeared.” Yet, a multitude
of stories remain in many places where the lights are perceived
QUICKSILVER PRESENTS
FANTASTICUS
April 13 & 14 at 8pm
Tickets on sale now at TorontoConsort.org
thewholenote.com February 2018 | 13