Volume 28 Issue 4 | February - March 2023

IN WITH THE NEW
Continuum’s Show Room
and Soundstreams’ Reich
WENDALYN BARTLEY
JOSEPH PEPELNAK
A
fascinating yet seemingly ordinary scenario forms
the basis for a tension-filled new opera by composer
Rodney Sharman and librettist Atom Egoyan. The
last time these two creators collaborated was for their
opera Elsewhereless in 1998, which received over 35
performances both across Canada and the Netherlands.
The new work, commissioned by Continuum, is
titled Show Room, and a concert presentation will be
performed at the Music Gallery on March 18 and 19. The
story reveals a complex relationship between a mother,
her son, the mother’s clothing, and a woman who runs
a haute couture business. The instrumentation consists
of soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, two soprano
recorders, alto and tenor recorders, an alto and tenor
sackbut (a Renaissance- and Baroque-era trombone),
percussion, piano, toy piano, violin, cello and double bass.
I recently spoke with Jennifer
Tung, conductor of the production,
to find out what to expect
from Show Room. She explained
that in this opera, unlike many
where a lot of action takes place
quickly, the dramatic aspects of
the story are stretched out slowly
over time. Musically, Sharman
makes use of microtonality in the
score to create textures that also
shift very slowly. “Text is repeated
many times, which helps create
the tension,” she explained. “In
the libretto, as the relationships
between the characters build, you
think the story is going in one
direction, but then it doesn’t end
up there. Because Rodney knows
Jennifer Tung
the singers, he was able to write
vocal lines specifically harnessed
for the strengths of each individual voice.”
Tung also commented on the unique way Sharman combines early
instruments with contemporary harmonies and the specific way
he writes out the degrees of the microtonal shifts. “For example, he
indicates how many steps or changes the player needs to take to go
from B to B-flat, which on the piano is only one step, but with the
recorder, sackbut, or a string instrument, it’s possible to make four or
six steps between these two notes.”
In a video interview available in Continuum’s web series Press Play,
Sharman says: “I’m able to move from major to minor keys in a strange
and twisted way that reflects the twisted situation in this opera. There
are places in the text where I simply stop and dwell on a word, on the
beauty of the voices, or on the unusual timbres that are created.” In
the same interview, Egoyan explains that the “characters are pushed
to extremes and react in a perverse way, perversions that are rooted in
emotion that creates a sense of need, fear, desire and yearning.”
Tung comes to the project after extensive training, initially receiving
degrees from the Eastman School of Music in singing performance
and collaborative piano or vocal coaching. Over time, she has revived
an earlier passion she had for conducting, even though when younger
she was discouraged from pursuing that route because of the difficulty
women had in developing conducting careers.
She initially received mentoring from Maestro Denis Mastromonaco,
conductor of the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, learning “on
the job.” She took on the role of conductor of the Mississauga Youth
Symphony and was subsequently selected to be a participant in
Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership (WML) three-year
program, designed to help women and non-binary conductors and
music directors develop their skills. After conducting Brian Current’s
Gould’s Wall this past summer, she was invited by Continuum’s
artistic director Ryan Scott to take on this project. After a few years of
COVID delays, the project is now ready to be rehearsed and premiered
under Tung’s expert musical direction.
Soundstreams Presents the Music of Steve Reich
Soundstreams is celebrating the 86th birthday of American
composer Steve Reich (b. October 3, 1936) with a concert in the
George Weston Recital Hall on March 25 that will include a performance
of Reich’s iconic work Drumming and the Canadian premiere
of Reich’s more recent piece Reich/Richter. The latter was written to
be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna
Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3) and received more than one
hundred performances at The Shed in New York in 2019.
It has been close to seven years since Soundstreams last presented
the music of Reich, when Music for 18 Musicians and Tehillim were
performed at Massey Hall. Drumming, dating from 1970-71, goes
back even further than that, being first performed in Toronto at a New
Music Concerts event in February of 1976. Composed for nine percussionists,
two female singers, whistler and piccolo, the percussion
players begin on four pairs of tuned bongo drums in Part One, change
to marimbas with the addition of the singers in Part Two, move to
glockenspiels in Part Three (with the whistler and piccolo), and finally
in Part Four, a full ensemble. The piece is continuous without any
pause or break, and takes 58 minutes to perform.
12 | February & March, 2023 thewholenote.com