On February 27, Toronto’s Soundstreams performs host to the Vancouver Chamber Choir and music director Kari Turunen in a live performance of works by visiting composer Tarik O’Regan, and 6 model new works by individuals in Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Rising Composer Showcase.
The RBC Bridges Composers are: Rebecca Hass, Oskar Österling, Josema García Hormigo, Katharine Petkovski, and Mari Alice Conrad.
We requested Soundstreams Creative Director Lawrence Cherney and composer Tarik O’Regan concerning the live performance.
Soundstreams Creative Director Lawrence Cherney; Q&A
What does the Vancouver Chamber Choir deliver to Toronto audiences? What are their notable qualities?
The commemorated Vancouver Chamber Choir is underneath new creative management — Finnish director Kari Turunen — following the retirement after 46 years of their nice founder and music director Jon Washburn. Kari has introduced an entire new repertoire to the VCC, not solely from his personal nation Finland, however from an entire spectrum of different cultures. This will probably be their first Toronto live performance underneath his management.
Track and storytelling are linked within the music that’s been programmed (for the primary half). Why do you assume it is a mixture that cuts throughout cultures throughout the globe, and throughout centuries? Is it a type of important human high quality, to inform tales in track?
Nice choral music is among the richest and most rewarding types of storytelling from various heritages. The VCC program brings to us spellbinding tales from Eire, Antarctica, Métis Nation and Finland in works by 4 composers by no means carried out earlier than on Soundstreams’ phases: Tarik O’Regan, Riikka Talvitie, Nico Muhly, and T. Patrick Carrabré.
The entire featured works are settings of tales of thriller and journey: Tough Notes by Nico Muhly units phrases by Captain Robert Scott from the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica; and Tarik O’Regan’s The Spring (from “The Colloquy of the Ancients”) follows two aged Irish warrior-heroes, inexplicably nonetheless alive as they journey throughout Eire searching for religion.
Histoire des Métis: The Freedom Songs by T. Patrick Carrabré, is a crucial and highly effective assortment of items, based mostly on Métis tales which are not often informed or recognized, whereas Riikka Talvitie’s Kuun kirje, which interprets to “Moon track,” is a piece directly each mysterious and sensuous.
An incredible choral ensemble just like the Vancouver Chamber Choir is the proper automobile to breathe life into these compelling tales with ardour and a full spectrum of expressiveness.
How vital is it to attach the RBC Bridges program with ensembles just like the Vancouver Chamber Choir? It have to be a useful alternative for the rising composers.
Soundstreams believes that new works deserve the absolute best premiere performances, whether or not the composers are established or rising. Works from the standard repertoire have had the advantage of a number of performances, typically over lengthy durations of time, and interpretations of these works additionally obtain a collective maturity over time. New works don’t have any such context as a reference level, so premiere performances have the accountability to comprehend a brand new work in essentially the most compelling approach artistically and technically.
Rising composers not often have the chance to work with skilled instrumental or vocal ensembles, not to mention bigger ones like choirs and orchestras. We now have made it a observe wherever attainable to interact skilled present ensembles to be in residence for Bridges. Previous ensembles have included the Gryphon Trio, TorQ, Cecilia Quartet and the Rolston Quartet. It’s such an unbelievable reward this yr to have the ability to provide rising composers a bigger skilled ensemble just like the illustrious Vancouver Chamber Choir to premiere their new works.
And there’s much more! By participating high-quality skilled ensembles, we open up the door to the chance that they are going to have interaction additional with the rising composers after Bridges: both by incorporating the brand new works into their repertoire; or by commissioning them to put in writing new full-length works.
Composer Tarik O’Regan: Q&A
What are you able to inform us concerning the 2025 RBC Bridges Composers you’ve gotten been mentoring — Mari Alice Conrad, Rebecca Hass, Josema García Hormigo, Oskar Österling, Katharine Petkovski, and Mees Vervuurt?
I’m very a lot wanting ahead to spending time with these composers. Every of them brings a singular voice and a contemporary perspective to composition. They’re curious, courageous, and deeply dedicated to exploring new methods of expressing concepts by music. Their work, although diversified in model and background, resonates with a shared need to interact with modern points and emotional truths.
I strongly suspect that mentoring them will probably be as a lot a studying course of for me because it could be for them; I hope our exchanges will open up new avenues of thought for all of us, and I’m certain they are going to encourage me to rethink elements of my very own musical observe.
What is going to the mentoring course of entail?
Mentoring is just not solely about imparting technical expertise or compositional strategies; it’s about nurturing an open dialogue the place concepts, influences, and experiences intersect. In our conferences, I hope to delve into all the pieces from kind and construction to the intuitive, virtually ineffable qualities that give music its emotional affect.
As a London-born composer based mostly within the US, with twin Arab and Irish heritage, you’ve chosen artwork music (classical music) because the medium for expression, and your work has been broadly carried out. What do you assume appeals to (or connects with) audiences throughout cultures (in your music)?
I’ve at all times believed that music is a common language, albeit with totally different dialects. Rising up in London and now residing within the U.S., I discover that my music naturally has develop into a tapestry of various influences. I attempt to put in writing music that touches on the human expertise in a approach that’s each private and universally accessible. I work with themes of longing, transformation, and the great thing about our shared existence — qualities, I hope, which converse to audiences no matter cultural background.
Evidently modern classical music has opened up an excellent deal over the past decade or so when it comes to reputation and consciousness, each for audiences and younger artists. Is that your impression? Is there a rising appreciation for it?
There’s little doubt in my thoughts that we’re witnessing an thrilling renaissance in modern classical music. During the last decade, the style has not solely develop into extra seen but in addition extra vibrant. Audiences are more and more open to exploring music that challenges conventional boundaries, and younger artists are boldly reimagining what classical music will be. The fusion of conventional strategies with progressive concepts, typically propelled by new applied sciences and world interconnectedness, is drawing contemporary ears and minds to the live performance corridor. It’s an exciting time to be concerned on this musical panorama. I’m very, very fortunate to have the ability to spend time with six of those innovators within the subject.
What are you able to inform us about The Spring, and the opposite two items that will probably be carried out by the Vancouver Chamber Choir?
What binds all of them is transformation and introspection.
The Spring is a musical rendering of the opening passages from the Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients), an vital Center Irish narrative relationship from the twelfth or thirteenth century.
In its entirety, the textual content follows two aged Irish warrior-heroes (Oisín and Caílte, inexplicably nonetheless alive centuries after the famed battles through which they fought) as they journey throughout Eire with the newly-arrived Saint Patrick.
Solely the very opening of the legend is roofed in The Spring, but the kernel of the story that’s to unfold is discovered right here. As an alternative of Patrick merely changing the 2 pagan warriors, he’s inspired to take heed to Caílte’s poem a couple of pure spring of serious significance to the soldiers’ tribe (the Fían). Right here the secular/sacred osmosis begins as the nice Saint is requested first to take heed to the historic tales of his new land earlier than providing the tenets of his new faith to the inhabitants.
Musically The Spring is a concatenated sequence of self-enclosed musical segments linked collectively by a recurring theme. First heard on the very opening and final iterated within the ultimate bars, this motif is the melodic glue that holds the narrative parts collectively.
Concerning Flip, I got here throughout this portray of Albert Verway (1865-1936) within the Rijksmuseum once I was engaged on a challenge with the Dutch Nationwide Ballet. I used to be struck by it, partly due to the imagery, but in addition as a result of I noticed I merely didn’t know any Dutch poets or poetry. So I went out to discover a assortment of Albert Verwey’s poetry, and fell in love with one referred to as Cirkelloop. One thing concerning the “spark with out aim” (with which the poem commences) appeared very evocative of the artist’s lot in life. Wanting again on the piece from San Francisco, the place I stay now, it appears fairly poignant in a brand new mild. The tech world, so dominant right here, appears very aim — and solution-oriented — particularly AI. I’ve at all times loved being freed from “function” (or, certainly a aim) as a composer. And as AI encroaches increasingly more into the realm of the creator, it appears to have missed a trick: a spark it might be, however it’s all about fulfilling some type of aim.
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I take heed to the stillness of you (setting a D. H. Lawrence poem) types the central second of repose in a a lot bigger work referred to as Mass Commentary, which is a meditation on the histories of our diversified ambivalent relationships with surveillance in its myriad guises. The usage of applied sciences that sate our needs to be watched and heard (security, monitoring, empowerment, and satisfaction) has, in some sense, at all times been in a position to be weighed in opposition to our anxieties round invasions of privateness (bodily and psychological hurt, hacking, subjugation, and embarrassment).
The work takes its title from the British social analysis group, Mass-Commentary, which aimed to document on a regular basis life in the UK. Based in 1937, Mass-Commentary controversially paid investigators to anonymously document folks’s dialog and behavior at work, on the road and at varied public events together with public conferences, sporting, and spiritual occasions.
The Efficiency
Main as much as the live performance, beginning on February 22, there will probably be a collection of workshops revolving across the music and extra, together with Tarik O’Regan’s workshop on Composition and Course of on the Canadian Music Centre. Discover out extra [HERE].
Discover particulars concerning the February 27 live performance at Christ Church Deer Park [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
