Volume 23 Issue 6 - March 2018
In this issue: Canadian Stage, Tapestry Opera and Vancouver Opera collaborate to take Gogol’s short story The Overcoat to the operatic stage; Montreal-based Sam Shalabi brings his ensemble Land of Kush, and his newest composition, to Toronto; Five Canadian composers, each with a different CBC connection, are nominated for JUNOs; and The WholeNote team presents its annual Summer Music Education Directory, a directory of summer music camps, programs and courses across the province and beyond.
In this issue: Canadian Stage, Tapestry Opera and Vancouver Opera collaborate to take Gogol’s short story The Overcoat to the operatic stage; Montreal-based Sam Shalabi brings his ensemble Land of Kush, and his newest composition, to Toronto; Five Canadian composers, each with a different CBC connection, are nominated for JUNOs; and The WholeNote team presents its annual Summer Music Education Directory, a directory of summer music camps, programs and courses across the province and beyond.
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FOR THE RECORD<br />
JUNO NOMINATIONS FOR<br />
CLASSICAL CANADIAN COMPOSERS<br />
DAVID JAEGER<br />
The five composers who have works nominated in this year’s JUNO category for Classical<br />
Composition of the Year form a formidable group of mid-career Canadian creators:<br />
James Rolfe, Alice Ho, Andrew Staniland, Jocelyn Morlock and Vincent Ho. I first met them<br />
as emerging young composers through my work at CBC Radio; since then, all have developed into<br />
significant artists, shaping the future of Canadian composition. I recently asked each of them to<br />
frame their currently nominated piece in the context of their past and current work.<br />
James Rolfe: When I first met<br />
James Rolfe (b.1961) he was a<br />
prize winner in the CBC/Radio-<br />
Canada National Competition for<br />
Young Composers in 1990, which<br />
I coordinated for CBC Radio. His<br />
winning composition, Four Songs<br />
on Poems by Walt Whitman for<br />
bass voice and piano, revealed<br />
early evidence of his gift for<br />
writing for the voice. In 1998, his<br />
opera Beatrice Chancy, commissioned<br />
by Queen of Puddings and<br />
the first of his ten operas, at the<br />
current count, introduced the<br />
vocal world to soprano Measha<br />
Brueggergosman.<br />
Rolfe’s current JUNO-nominated composition Breathe was commissioned<br />
in 2010 by Soundstreams Canada. The impetus for the commission<br />
was to provide a new Canadian work for Soundstreams to bring<br />
together the vocalists in the European group, Trio Medieval, and the<br />
musicians of the Toronto Consort, directed by David Fallis. Breathe<br />
appears on a Centrediscs release, and also gives the CD its title. Rolfe<br />
says the JUNO nomination is welcome recognition for all the great<br />
artists who made this CD – writers, singers, musicians and production<br />
team. “The three pieces on it are dear to my heart: my collaborations<br />
with their writers (André Alexis, Anna Chatterton, Steven Heighton) led<br />
me to places I had never been – lyrical, emotional and playful places I<br />
still return to in my current work, places I can still find new means of<br />
expression, new ways to weave voices together.” In addition to Breathe<br />
(libretto by Anna Chatterton), the CD includes two dramatic Rolfe<br />
works commissioned by Toronto Masque Theatre, Europa (libretto by<br />
Steven Heighton) and Aeneas and Dido (libretto by André Alexis).<br />
Towards the end of <strong>March</strong>, and just a few<br />
days after JUNO night, Rolfe’s newest opera<br />
The Overcoat will have its world premiere<br />
at the St. Lawrence Centre in a co-presentation<br />
by Canadian Stage and Tapestry. Morris<br />
Panych is the librettist, whose book<br />
is based on the short story of the same<br />
name by the 19th-century author Nicolai<br />
Gogol (1809–1852).<br />
Alice Ping Yee Ho: My first<br />
encounter with the music of<br />
Alice Ping Yee Ho (b.1960) was<br />
in 1994 and during another CBC<br />
Radio broadcast of a composers’<br />
competition, when we broadcast<br />
her orchestral work, Ice Path<br />
from the Winnipeg Symphony<br />
Orchestra’s (WSO) New Music<br />
Festival. Ho’s work was a finalist<br />
in the WSO Canadian Composers’<br />
Competition, and her music<br />
already bore the trademarks of<br />
her vividly colourful style.<br />
Ho’s Glistening Pianos was<br />
nominated in the 2015 JUNO<br />
Classical Composition of the Year<br />
category, and her duo for violin and piano, Coeur à Coeur, is nominated<br />
in that same category this year. The work was written especially<br />
for the husband-and-wife team, Duo Concertante: violinist<br />
Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves. Ho explains: “The idea of<br />
the commission came at a sushi dinner in Toronto, with the idea of a<br />
composition about Nancy and Tim’s life. Their beautiful story of two<br />
lovers and artists struggling and pursuing their dreams is real and<br />
inspiring. The element of writing from the heart becomes something<br />
I cherish in my ongoing works, regardless of styles or genre.” The<br />
recording is on a CD titled Incarnation on the Marquis label.<br />
Alice Ho recently completed a children’s opera with librettist<br />
Marjorie Chan, The Monkiest King, to celebrate the 50th anniversary<br />
of the Canadian Children’s Opera<br />
Chorus. Public performances of the opera<br />
will be at the Lyric Theatre, Toronto Centre<br />
for the Arts on May 26 and 27. Ho’s most<br />
recent recording will be launched shortly<br />
after JUNO night. It’s a CD of her chamber<br />
music titled The Mysterious Boot, featuring<br />
flutist Susan Hoeppner, cellist Winona<br />
Zelenka and pianist Lydia Wong on the<br />
Centrediscs label.<br />
continued on page 86<br />
84 | <strong>March</strong> <strong>2018</strong> thewholenote.com
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