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 members 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 carry to Toronto audiences? What are their notable qualities?
The honored Vancouver Chamber Choir is below 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 shall be their first Toronto live performance below his management.
Music and storytelling are linked within the music that’s been programmed (for the primary half). Why do you assume this can be a mixture that cuts throughout cultures throughout the globe, and throughout centuries? Is it a sort of important human high quality, to inform tales in music?
Nice choral music is without doubt one of the richest and most rewarding types of storytelling from numerous 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 seeking 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 might be not often advised or identified, whereas Riikka Talvitie’s Kuun kirje, which interprets to “Moon music,” is a piece directly each mysterious and sensuous.
An ideal 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 necessary is it to attach the RBC Bridges program with ensembles just like the Vancouver Chamber Choir? It should be a useful alternative for the rising composers.
Soundstreams believes that new works deserve the very best premiere performances, whether or not the composers are established or rising. Works from the normal repertoire have had the good thing about a number of performances, usually over lengthy intervals of time, and interpretations of these works additionally obtain a collective maturity over time. New works haven’t any such context as a reference level, so premiere performances have the accountability to appreciate a brand new work in probably the most compelling method 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’ve made it a apply wherever attainable to interact skilled current 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 present this 12 months to have the ability to supply 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 may 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 could have been mentoring — Mari Alice Conrad, Rebecca Hass, Josema García Hormigo, Oskar Österling, Katharine Petkovski, and Mees Vervuurt?
I’m very a lot trying ahead to spending time with these composers. Every of them brings a singular voice and a recent perspective to composition. They’re curious, courageous, and deeply dedicated to exploring new methods of expressing concepts by way of music. Their work, although diversified in model and background, resonates with a shared want to interact with up to date points and emotional truths.
I strongly suspect that mentoring them shall be as a lot a studying course of for me because it is likely to be for them; I hope our exchanges will open up new avenues of thought for all of us, and I’m certain they may encourage me to rethink facets of my very own musical apply.
What’s 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 things from kind and construction to the intuitive, nearly 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 grow to be a tapestry of numerous influences. I try to put in writing music that touches on the human expertise in a method that’s each private and universally accessible. I work with themes of longing, transformation, and the fantastic thing about our shared existence — qualities, I hope, which communicate to audiences no matter cultural background.
It appears that evidently up to date classical music has opened up an awesome deal over the past decade or so by way of reputation and consciousness, each for audiences and younger artists. Is that your impression? Is there a rising appreciation for it?
There’s little question in my thoughts that we’re witnessing an thrilling renaissance in up to date classical music. Over the past decade, the style has not solely grow to be 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 may be. The fusion of conventional strategies with revolutionary concepts, usually propelled by new applied sciences and world interconnectedness, is drawing recent ears and minds to the live performance corridor. It’s an exhilarating 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 shall 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 necessary 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 wherein 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 a substitute of Patrick merely changing the 2 pagan warriors, he’s inspired to take heed to Caílte’s poem a couple of pure spring of great 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 last bars, this motif is the melodic glue that holds the narrative components 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 spotted 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 objective” (with which the poem commences) appeared very evocative of the artist’s lot in life. Trying again on the piece from San Francisco, the place I reside now, it appears fairly poignant in a brand new gentle. The tech world, so dominant right here, appears very objective — and solution-oriented — particularly AI. I’ve at all times loved being freed from “function” (or, certainly a objective) as a composer. And as AI encroaches increasingly 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 sort of objective.
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I take heed to the stillness of you (setting a D. H. Lawrence poem) varieties the central second of repose in a a lot bigger work referred to as Mass Statement, 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 wishes to be watched and heard (security, monitoring, empowerment, and satisfaction) has, in some sense, at all times been capable of 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-Statement, which aimed to document on a regular basis life in the UK. Based in 1937, Mass-Statement controversially paid investigators to anonymously document individuals’s dialog and behavior at work, on the road and at numerous public events together with public conferences, sporting, and non secular occasions.
The Efficiency
Main as much as the live performance, beginning on February 22, there shall 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.