Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

Simms, and a popular classic of the (admittedly limited) bona fide
flute quintet repertoire, Derek Charke’s Raga Terah. The show will
also feature David Heath’s flute septet Return to Avalon, where the
Finches will be joined by soloists Kelly Zimba and Camille Watts, from
the flute section of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
I ask if there’s much repertoire available for five flutes. He laughs.
“When we started, we started with almost nothing,” he says. “But
I’m pretty involved in the flute community, so I asked friends. And then
there were a whole bunch of arrangers and composers who decided
they would arrange things for us without charging anything, which was
really helpful in the beginning when we had no money. That’s how we
started building up our repertoire. And each year we try to commission
a new piece. Bekah’s piece on June 17 is our second commission.”
“Which was the chicken and which was the egg?” I inquire, in
connection with Avalon [Heath’s flute septet]. “Did you find the piece
and say oh good, let’s ask Kelly and Camille to play it with us, or did
you say it would be great to play with Camille and Kelly, and then start
looking for a piece to play?”
“Actually I found this piece last year,” he says. “in fact it’s originally
written for two flutes and piano, which Heath arranged for two flute
soloists plus five flutes. I found the piece on YouTube and listened to it
and thought, ok, this piece could work. And that was around the same
time that Kelly won the principal flute position at the TSO. She lives a
couple blocks away from me, so we go out for lunch and stuff like that.
So I asked her if she was interested and then I thought, Camille would
be perfect. Because this piece actually requires the soloists to play
both regular flute and either piccolo or alto flute as well. So Kelly is
going to play the part with alto flute and Camille is going to do the one
with piccolo. So it worked out perfectly. Even better, they both play
Burkart flutes, so Burkart will be sponsoring the event.”
For this upcoming concert, as with all their others, programming
and the rehearsal process are intense and thoughtful.
“There would be no point if we didn’t take it seriously. All of us
have really different schedules. So sometimes it’s almost impossible to
find time. Normally we rehearse every week, once a week. We book it
about a month or two in advance. And for me, even doing once a week
is not enough. To get all of the details in and everything, I find that
it’s almost impossible. But all the musicians are great. A lot of experience
with solo, contemporary music, orchestra. So it just brings many
different ideas all the time. And we do fight. In rehearsal we argue all
the time! That’s a kind of fun part of chamber music.”
Seven flutes sounds like an abundance of riches, I comment.
“People think, oh, seven flutes, that’s weird” he replies. “But I grew
up in Vancouver where I was used to doing ten-flute contemporary
work, every year in different groups out there. And with top-notch
players from the Vancouver Symphony, all pro, and a couple professors
from UBC, so very, very high level playing. That’s what I’m used
to seeing, whereas it’s not quite as common out here. So five or seven
flutes is not that unusual for me.”
And large ensemble doesn’t necessarily mean less challenging
repertoire either: “I think with flute ensemble, people automatically
think of lighter music. But we wanted to make sure that people think
of us as a serious chamber ensemble. Chamber music is a different
kind of playing - much more difficult.”
In the final analysis, this is a group that exists in some ways because
of the high level of orchestral profiency and involvement of its
members, but also as a foil to the particular rigours and constraints
of orchestral playing. It’s an outlet for all kinds of things - chamber
music, commissioning, community projects and, yes, good oldfashioned
arguing back and forth on the path to collective creative
discovery - that an orchestra-size ensemble typically cannot manage.
So it’s a story about flutes and flute players - but it’s also about more
than that: it’s about the small ensembles that grow within the musical
community of our city, in each fertile nook and cranny.
“We keep trying new things,” Lim says. “Finding what works.”
Concert note: for the June 17 concert Amelia Lyon will be replaced by
Anh Phung, who has worked with the group previously. There will be a
masterclass by Kelly Zimba as part of the event prior to the performance.
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com.
FEATURE
Jerram’s
Moon Shines
Over Miller’s
Stratford
MJ BUELL
Museum of the Moon at OORtreders Festival, Netherlands
Sharp-eyed readers may already have spotted John
Miller’s Hitchcockian cameo appearance as a satyr,
silhouetted against the moon, on the cover of this
year’s Stratford Summer Music program book. It’s a
distinctive profile, almost as distinctive as his artistic
fingerprint on the festival itself – one that he’s curated for
18 years – and this year for the last time.
The moon is a fitting backdrop for Miller’s final appearance as SSM
artistic director, heralding as it does the upcoming appearance at
Stratford of Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon. It will be the third
Jerram creation to be part of Stratford Summer Music; the relationship
cultivated with Jerram over the years is quintessential Miller. He
finds talented people, notices that essential something in them that
works for him, and then having forged the relationship he maintains
it. Artists and performers come back, and so do audiences.
In a recent visit to The WholeNote Miller talked about Jerram’s
first SSM visit in 2007, describing Jerram as “an inventor … a futurist
… a guy who has experiences and then leads them in directions that
most of us would never think of going.” That first visit was with a
project called Sky Orchestra, Miller explains. “It was inspired by a
trip to the Middle East and Jerram’s first experience of hearing, from
several imams simultaneously, the call to prayer; suddenly the sound
of compelling music was everywhere.” Back in the UK Jerram collaborated
with composer Dan Jones to create eight hot air balloons, each
with two speakers attached, which take off at dawn or dusk and fly
across a city of sleeping or waking people. Each balloon plays two
different tracks of a 16-track orchestral score, creating a huge audio
landscape. In the case of Stratford Summer Music the music of Sky
Orchestra flooded the early morning sky as it took off from Stratford
and flew towards St Mary’s.
Jerram’s popular Play Me I’m Yours project – artist-decorated street
pianos, for anyone to play – came to Stratford for the first time in 2012,
and returns in 2018 for a fourth time. So this summer’s Museum of the
LUKE JERRAM
16 | June | July | August 2018 thewholenote.com