Volume 25 Issue 4 - December 2019 / January 2020

Beat by Beat | In with the New
January’s
Distinguished
Visitors
U of T New Music Festival
WENDALYN BARTLEY
One thing that has been consistent with the University of
Toronto’s annual New Music Festival over the years is the
presence of a visiting composer from another country or
Canadian city. During last year’s festival in January 2019, it was Toshio
Hosokawa, a leading composer from Japan, and the year before that
in 2018, Canadian Nicole Lizée was given the honours. This visitorship
is named the Roger D. Moore Distinguished Visitor in Composition,
and was established by Roger Moore, a longtime supporter and
philanthropist of new music. Sadly, Moore passed away in March of
this year, and there will be a concert, as part of the festival, to honour
him on January 21. More about what is on the program for that night
below. This year’s visiting composer is André Mehmari, a leading
Brazilian composer, pianist and arranger in both classical and popular
music. Because of his diverse artistic accomplishments many of the
events of the festival span both the jazz and contemporary music
worlds, with the opening concert on January 12 combining electronic
jazz, visuals and live electronics.
The festival continues to January 21 and interestingly, the various
concerts, masterclasses and talks will be interwoven with the Royal
Conservatory’s 21C Music Festival (see my story on Laurie Anderson
elsewhere in this issue) which runs almost concurrently, a short walk
from the U of T Faculty of Music. Having a plethora of new music
events to choose from in the dead of winter is shaping up to be one
way to beat the cold and gloom of January.
André Mehmari: As has been the case with some U of T festival
Distinguished Visitors in Composition, you probably know less about
André Mehmari now than you will come the end of January, by which
time you will have introduced yourself to his wide-ranging repertoire.
The January 15 concert, “From Bach to Latin America,” will
feature a mixture of Baroque and jazz works with Mehmari on piano
and Emmanuele Baldini on violin. These two performers will team up
again the next evening, January 16, along with members of Orquesta
de Camara de Valdivia, an ensemble from Chile directed by Baldini,
for a concert of chamber works. Mehmari’s jazz and improvised music
will be heard on January 18 in an evening with the U of T’s DOG
Ensemble along with U of T jazz faculty members. Check his two
composition masterclasses, January 14 and 15 at 10am in Walter Hall;
and a songwriting class, January 17 at 7:30pm in Walter Hall, when
students and the public alike will have an opportunity to engage with
Mehmari in a more informal setting.
Karen Kieser Prize Concert: Another regular event at the New Music
Festival is the Karen Kieser Prize Concert, with this year’s happening
on January 14. This award is given annually to a promising graduate
student in composition and this year’s winner is Francis Ubertelli,
whose piece, Quartetto 2, will be performed by Montreal’s Quatuor
Cobalt. The program this year will also feature the work of two
Vancouver artists: Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, on piano, performing two
works by composer Hildegard Westerkamp – Klavierklang and Like A
Memory – as well as a third electroacoustic work, Attending to Sacred
Matters, to be diffused by Westerkamp.
Clear Things May Not Be Seen
VOCAL CHAMBER MUSIC OF
BOB BECKER
Never in Word (1998)
To Immortal Bloom (2017)
Cryin’ Time (1994)
Clear Things May Not Be Seen (2018)
André Mehmari
Klavierklang, composed in 2017 for piano, spoken voice and twochannel
audio and commissioned by Iwaasa is a sonic-musical
journey into the complexities of piano playing. The piece arose out of
conversations between Iwaasa and Westerkamp on the challenging
and inspiring experiences they have had with piano teachers. This
focus spans topics such as how their mothers’ ears influenced their
musical development and how the piano became both a sanctuary for
exploration and sound making as well as a site of trauma and discouragement.
The sound materials and inspiration for Like A Memory, a
composition from 2002 for piano and two-channel audio, began back
in 1985 when Westerkamp recorded the sounds of an old, broken and
rat-infested piano she discovered in an abandoned house along the
shores of Slocan Lake in B.C. She says in the program note she sent
me after our conversation about this piece that she had discovered
“a prepared piano in the deepest Cage sense and delighted in improvising
on this instrument.” Some years later she travelled back to the
same area to work on another project focusing on ghost towns and
again recorded sounds from abandoned industrial sites she discovered
featuring sopranos
Lindsay Kesselman and
Andrea Ludwig with string quartet,
clarinets, piano and percussion
Tuesday, Feb. 4 (noon)
Four Seasons Centre for the
Performing Arts, COC
FREE CONCERT SERIES coc.ca
Thursday, Feb. 6 (12:10pm)
Walter Hall, University of Toronto
Faculty of Music FREE CONCERT SERIES
music.utoronto.ca
thewholenote.com December 2019 – January 2020 | 39
HEDWIG MARIA