Dark Matter: Music Meets Physics

Several years ago, my friend and collaborator Konstantinos Vasilakos approached me with an idea to develop a collaboration between CERN and our laptop group, the Birmingham Ensemble for Electroacoustic Research. The idea was to develop ways of transforming data from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider – the world’s largest particle accelerator – into electronic music and visuals, allowing us to hear and see the results of this cutting-edge research into the nature of the universe. This was under the auspices of art@CMS, an established international project for collaboration between art and science. They connected us with physicist Maurizio Pierini, who along with Kostas Nikolopoulos and Tom McCauley has served as physicist advisor and collaborator.

In the original stages of the project, we worked with what is called live coding; essentially making music by writing computer programmes in real time. This is done in such a way that they can be re-written ‘on the fly’, while they are running. The physics data formed source material for our improvisations, and our goal was to explore the unique character of these particle collisions by rendering their salient aspects in sound, creating surprising results and challenging us as performers to respond musically.

This evolved into a fruitful and ongoing project, leading most recently to this new work for orchestra, electronic sound,and video for Esprit. While not an improvisation, it uses similar approaches to produce orchestral material as well as electronic music. Working in SuperCollider (the environment we use with the ensemble, of which I’m an active developer), I developed initial sonifications which I then converted to musical notation. These formed the core material of the work, both in terms of orchestral writing and electronic sound. The orchestra parts consist both of music derived from these (in whole or in fragments), and a variety of responses to them, inspired by the fascinating musical characters they exhibited. In some sense this work must be intuitive: Particle collisions do not sound like anything, except as made audible through an algorithm which maps aspects of the event to sounds or musical materials.

The visualizations posed a similar problem: We cannot see sub-atomic particles, as they are beyond that level of reality in which sight can be said to function; outside of the mechanisms which make ‘sight’ possible. All we can do is capture their traces, render their geometry. Many of the techniques historically utilized for this (the predecessors of today’s advanced particle accelerators) result in images which are beautiful and strange in their own right, and the mysterious tracks that can be seen in cloud chambers have been a powerful inspiration to me in this work.

The completed piece is in three movements. The first, Clouds, is based around a melody derived from a single particle collision – a sort of slow-motion version of both that event and the accompanying electronic sound. The second, Particles, is based around different sonifications with unique musical characters, which inspire orchestral responses. The final movement, Tapestries, weaves together lines of music derived from different physics events into a rhythmic interplay, inspired by Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow’s words: “Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.”

Blog Written by: Scott Wilson

Taiko Plus
Sunday April 15, 2018
Koerner Hall
7:15PM Pre-Concert Chat with featured composers and Michael Hoch, Founder of art@CMS
8:00PM Concert

Lilt: The Dance

My original choreographic design for Matthew Ricketts’ piece Lilt began with musings on the word itself.  ‘Lilt’ is defined as a gentle rise and fall, an intonation or cadence with a rhythmic quality.  It seems to suggest a place of weightlessness or carefree state of drifting. To me, a place where one either speaks or moves with a ‘lilt’ is one of idyllic calm, a quiet place in the centre.

Picturing this serene, ‘lilting’ place, I began to visualize a series of circles surrounding it, which led me to the concept of the centrifuge.  Centrifugal forces are fascinating.  They act outwardly on a body rotating around a centre, its own inertia propelling it from the middle. The motionless, weightless place is the source of the power.  Its propulsion is strongly outwards, but inevitably there is a return, as if tethered to the core. Matthew and I discussed this concept as his composition took shape, investigating how it would reflect in the score and movement.

Choreographically, the piece is an abstract representation of the contrast between the ‘wheels’ or ‘cycles’ we find ourselves thrust upon at various points in our lives, and the illusive place of ‘lilt’, or floating calm in the centre. The circles we follow may be spun from that which we inflict upon ourselves, or fall within a compelled larger path, the greater wheel in which we are a cog.  Stepping off this wheel may be incredibly difficult or even associate with a certain violence.

If we do manage to get off, we may find ourselves able to embark on a more linear path, powered by our own mechanism.  This could take us to great places, though we may just as easily be pulled back into the wheel.  Ultimately, the central place of ‘lilt’, where the cadence is gentle and centrifugal forces absent, is where we hope to finally arrive.  In an existential sense, we can ask ourselves if this is a place where we are fortunate enough to arrive often in our lives?

Choreographically, I explored these states by allowing Matthew’s musical landscape to dictate the path.  There are phrases which compel the body to fall into a cyclical pattern, the agitation in the outer boundaries of the circle building to a breaking point where everything suddenly falls away into stillness.  Others suggest a repetitive, almost mechanical state within a confined or tightly structured space.  Within that musical landscape I’ve attempted to find a physical vocabulary which clearly suggests states of spinning, reaching, and of settling. I’ve had the benefit of playing with a flexible footprint on the stage, with respect to where the orchestra is placed.  Matthew, Alex and I discussed the possibility of using the stage plot to define and reflect the concept of the centrifuge, as if the music itself is dictating the shape of the movement.  It’s wonderful to have the freedom to play with the geography of the stage design.  It truly makes the piece feel as if the music and movement are not simply complementing, but drawing each other into existence.

Working with Matthew has been a great pleasure and a fascinating exploration of ideas. I’m thrilled to bring our musical and physical landscapes together with Esprit Orchestra under Alex’s baton!

Plug In 
Sunday February 11, 2018 | Koerner Hall | 8pm
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Lilt: The Music

My new work Lilt is comprised of three primary types of material, each designed to provoke/provide a contrasting music-body relationship for Jennifer’s choreography. A central idea to both Jennifer’s work and mine has been centrifugal motion: the constant drift from a center but with residual pull back towards an initiatory state, forever tethered yet wriggling to break away, stuck in an uneven oscillation between staying and going…

The first primary type of material opens and closes the work: a strict metrical grid of 5-counts (shedding or gaining a beat every now and then) which alternate between short-long (2+3) and long-short (3+2) subdivisions. The difference is subtle yet persistent, creating a kind of alternating limp or lilt by unevenly lingering on the slightly longer vs. shorter beat within a gently tangled polyphonic texture (ex. 1).

Ex. 1: Limp—Lilt

 The second type of material concerns a persistent iambic figure (short—long) which alternates between a 2:3 ratio and, again very close but ever so faintly different, 3:5. This variation on slightly off-kilter, uneven lilting relates to the opening, but here moving in chordal blocks, now dense, now widely-spaced (ex. 2).

Ex. 2: Iambic Blocks

The penultimate section of Lilt suddenly plunges into an atemporal world without pulse, without tempo, seemingly without time itself (ex. 3).

Ex. 3: Without Time

Brief echoes of more metrical material resound like aftershocks, quickly absorbed into the slow muck. As a stark contrast to all that came before, this section lies low and slow, only gradually ascending from the abyss towards more earthly territory, all the while rediscovering the tick of time lost. The piece ends as we began: with gentle lilts, though with a newfound sense of all-too-human lingering.

* * *

Many of my initiating musico-choreographic ideas for Lilt stem from an earlier collaborative project with dancer/choreographer Brendan Drake (www.brendandrakechoreography.com) through composer Zosha Di Castri’s 'Composing For Dance' seminar at Columbia University. My work with Jennifer has been independent of this earlier project but the music, and my desire to compose with a kind of bodily immediacy, spans and indelibly links both together. I am grateful to both Jennifer and Brendan for these opportunities to reimagine what kind of new stresses and shapes my music might inhabit and embody.

 Written by: Matthew Ricketts

A Really Big Score!

Alex with Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason’s Emergence – a really big score!

Physically, it’s one of the largest scores that Alex Pauk, conductor and founder of Esprit Orchestra, has ever conducted (16” x 24”, 40 cm x 60 cm) – so big that it won’t fit on one music stand. It also requires a music stand extension to accommodate its length.

When you experience Emergence at Esprit’s second concert of its 35th season, you’ll know why the score needs to be so physically imposing.

With movement titles such as I. Silence, II. Black Breathing III. Emergence, the composer gives you an idea of what you are to experience. Good friends of ours just returned from a trip to Iceland and they described the landscape as primordial and vast – built on black lava. In the first movement of Emergence, with its huge blocks of shifting static chords, Bjarnason creates an expansive universe of sound into which you can almost disappear. Then the piece moves on to Black Breathing with its propulsive chords shattering the stillness. Finally, ending the piece, the movement titled Emergence, seeming to begin in a pinpoint of light, transforms itself into a gigantic, immersive, expanding universe with pulsing waves of sound that take you into a state of spiritual catharsis.

Bjarnason has an international following for his concert work, but equally impressive is his well-known work with the post-rock band Sigur Ros. You might have been with us for cellist Bryan Cheng’s exciting 2016 performance of Bjarnason’s cello concerto, Bow To String which received an immediate standing ovation.

Emergence will be a revelation.

- Alexina Louie

ESPRIT ORCHESTRA PRESENTS: EMERGENCE
Sunday November 19, 2017 | 8pm
Koerner Hall
TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning
273 Bloor St. West

Click here for more information and to reserve your tickets.

Musical Passion by Telephone

In the 1970’s when I was getting to know Claude Vivier, he would sometimes phone me from Montreal to passionately play parts of whatever piece he was writing at the time. He did this simply by putting the receiver by the keyboard of his upright and blasting away as loud as he could so you wouldn’t miss anything. There seemed to be no limit to his enthusiasm about his music and his explanations of what he had in mind.

This same thing would happen when friends or colleagues would phone him. These events were an unexpected treat. I can only imagine what Claude would be doing with the capabilities of YouTube, Facebook and all the other social media available to him had he lived to this day.

So that is how I first heard fragments of Siddhartha – played to me by Claude via telephone. It happens that I was working with the National Youth Orchestra as a new music animateur with small ensembles the summer that Siddhartha was to be premiered by the NYO, so I was really looking forward to hearing the piece in its full version for orchestra. It never came to pass as, for a variety of reasons, the piece was dropped from the programming that summer.

In the years that followed I arranged for the commissioning of Greeting Music for the Vancouver ensemble Days, Months and Years to Come that I conducted and coordinated. Claude went off on his big spiritual journey to Asia and finally moved to Paris where he met his violent, tragic demise.

From the time that Claude first gave me a facsimile manuscript copy of his Siddhartha score, I had it in mind that someday I would conduct the work if the opportunity arose. To get such an opportunity would be hard to achieve as the piece requires many players arranged in eight groups in a special seating configuration. Siddhartha also presents many challenges in rhythmic structures, tempo changes, sudden shifts in volume – very often mercurial and surprising – just like Claude’s personality.

At last, to start this Esprit season with something special, I decided to create the opportunity for Siddhartha to have its Toronto premiere. The piece has only been performed once before in Canada - premiered many years after its composition by the Orchestre Métropolitan de Montréal. The piece is saturated with the power, intricacies, declamatory statements, tenderness, spirituality and wonder that Claude’s music has always been infused with. The work perfectly foreshadowed the acclaim that has come to his music.

I can never forget the times I visited with Claude and watched him playing his music for others on the telephone.

There Is No Other Orchestra Like It Anywhere

For this 35th Anniversary Esprit season, I've aimed to present thought-provoking programs with strong thematic coherence and resonance. My philosophy of building strong artistic relationships over time is reflected in the commissioning of composers we've worked with or featured previously, repeat performances of significant pieces in the orchestra's evolution, and the welcoming back of soloists who appeared with us in previous seasons. This plan allows for audiences and musicians alike to get a deeper understanding of a composer's work or a greater appreciation of a performer's talent.

Our annual mentoring program in composition and performance is taking on new dimensions for the benefit of a great number of high school music students from six schools. Our mentors, mostly emerging composers, are Esprit associates who will assume leading roles in the resurgence of Esprit's New Wave Festival as well as other initiatives next season.

Some guest artists and young composers will be appearing us for the first time. As always, exciting world premieres of Esprit-commissioned works and Canadian premieres of important international pieces are essential ingredients of my programming. I'm really proud to say, from the orchestra's first days until now - there is no other orchestra like it anywhere.

- Alex

For information about Esprit's 35th Anniversary Season, visit our Current Season page.

Brilliant Piano Roll Hues

In the late 1970s, tuning in to a radio broadcast in California, I heard some remarkable piano pieces that left me astonished. The pieces delivered a flood of notes at speeds that would be impossible for a live performer to achieve. The unusual musical activity, extremely imaginative, was at times almost acrobatic. For example, two musical lines might start at opposite ends of the keyboard, move toward each other, cross in the middle, then continue moving to the other end of the keyboard creating a giant musical X. A live player would have to have extremely long arms to do this. Chords and melodic figures in complex rhythms come at the listener in great densities and speeds that could only be accomplished with many players on many pianos.

I later learned that the composer of the music was the ingenious Conlon Nancarrow who created such works as studies for player piano. Before the advent of computer generated sequencing, Nancarrow was one of the first composers to use auto-playing musical instruments.

In 1947, Nancarrow bought a custom-built manual punching machine that enabled him to painstakingly punch the holes in piano rolls to achieve superimposed layers of music with “sliding”  (increasing and decreasing) tempi, many-voiced canons (musical “rounds”) and forms in which notes jumped around in extreme ways.

Having lived most of his life in relative isolation (American-born in Arkansas, he became a Mexican citizen in 1956) it was not until the 1980s that he became better known due to recordings of his music being made and distributed. He was eventually lauded by important musical figures such as György Ligeti who proclaimed that Nancarrow was one of the most significant composers of the century.

Nancarrow eventually composed several works for small ensembles and small orchestras, among them being Piece No.2 for Small Orchestra (1984) which appears on Esprit Orchestra’s February 12th concert at Koerner Hall. The piece has tell-tale signs that some piano roll techniques were being transferred into layers of instrumental lines in the orchestra but not with nearly the same complexity that could be created with piano rolls. Never-the-less, musical ingenuity and excitement abounds. All of Nancarrow’s music is worth knowing about and listening to.

Check out the link below for a taste of Nancarrow’s music and to see player pianos in action.

— Alex

George Crumb: Music Like None Other

We never studied the music of the American composer George Crumb in music school, but it was his music that struck me as being truly unique when I was a young composer. It was different in so many ways from the music that I had been analyzing in theory class. He had developed a sound world that was so evocative, spiritual, haunting, and personal. It touched me. He explored unusual timbres, placed unusual instruments into the ensembles, devised new extended vocal techniques for singers. He made me realize that contemporary music could be really beautiful as well as being intellectually satisfying.

When I first opened the scores, they looked stunningly unusual. He wrote all his scores in the most fastidious hand. Parts of his compositions are in the shapes of spirals, circles and crosses. Many pieces lacked bar lines, which was revolutionary at that time. When I first saw that technique, I couldn’t figure out how the musicians would play the music!

One of the great benefits of being an Esprit Orchestra audience member is that you get to hear music you might never have the opportunity to hear live. This includes me.

I have never heard Crumb’s A Haunted Landscape in concert, but on Sunday, November 20 Alex and Esprit will offer me that very rare opportunity.

Hear it first with Esprit Orchestra on Sunday, November 20 - yet another Canadian premiere!

- Alexina Louie O.C.

M’m
Sunday, November 20th
Esprit Orchestra
Alex Pauk, Music Director
Koerner Hall
273 Bloor St W., Toronto
Concert 8:00
Pre-concert chat 7:15

For more information about Esprit’s November 20th concert, and where to buy tickets, click here.

A Long and Meaningful Friendship

Murray Schafer and I have had a long working relationship and friendship and I’ve long thought about celebrating him and his work with a special concert, an event that is really overdue.

I first met Murray when I moved to Vancouver in 1973. He was finishing his work with the World Soundscape Project and preparing to move back to Ontario. I was just beginning my career and looking for work at Simon Fraser University where he was doing his research and teaching. Rather than lead me into academia, he said "you are a composer and conductor - just stick to doing that." I’m grateful to him for that.

Over Esprit Orchestra’s history (we are about to launch our 34th season), I’ve commissioned several works from him, conducted his music more than 60 times (several times on Canadian and international tours in Europe and China) and made CD recordings of his music. I’ve programmed almost all of his works for orchestra and I’ve conducted the outdoor theatrical works Princess of the Stars and Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix in several separate production runs.

All this is just to say that I know Murray’s music well and respect it, and I know he trusts me and Esprit with his music. Murray will be in attendance at Esprit’s special tribute concert on October 23rd so the event will be a wonderful opportunity for friends and admiring audience members to meet Murray and pay tribute to him as we perform some of his most important pieces for the concert stage. It will be a vibrant celebration of a great composer.

I’ve lined up some terrific soloists for the concert. For Schafer’s monodrama Adieu Robert Schumann we’ll have the superb mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó in the role of Clara, Robert’s wife, evoking aspects of the last period in Schumann’s life – from his first hallucinations until his death in an asylum in 1856. The text is freely adapted from Clara’s diaries. Passages of Schumann’s compositions (lieder, fragments of his piano pieces) weave in and out of Schafer’s work, evoking moods, characters, and conflicts of the mind as Robert descends progressively into madness. A backstage piano mid-way through the piece plays the melody Schumann wrote down the night of his first dramatic hallucination – a melody he claimed was dictated by angels. The song, Dein Angesicht, opens and closes the composition.

I last performed Adieu Robert Schumann in 1990 with the legendary Maureen Forrester as soloist. I’m thrilled that I’ll now have the chance to do the piece again with Krisztina who is herself developing a legendary career. As for Murray’s flute concerto, this will be the fifth time that flutist Robert Aitken and I have collaborated to perform it with Esprit. The third work of Murray’s on the concert, Scorpius, is one that I commissioned for Esprit and have performed several times before.

Murray has had such a full, diverse artistic life and output. He is a great composer and I want to show this again.

— Alex

The Composer And The Snake

The premiere of my composition 'Sirens' by the Esprit orchestra was spectacular. I love it when I write a piece and Alex, through his conducting, is able to inspire such a great interpretation from the performers that the piece sounds much better than I imagined. He also went to such great lengths to find an elusive pump organ that is an integral component to this composition making it slightly unique and giving it an unusual flavour. Being a composer is often not an easy task, but when a work is performed so well and received by the audience, that makes it all worth while. Those feelings often last long enough to give energy to begin the next composition.

After this very successful premiere of my piece and a long 28 hour trip back to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, I returned the next day to my hectic teaching schedule.  I was helping my advanced students make recordings of their performance repertoire to submit for their International Baccalaureate Diplomas. This progressed well into the evening.

At around 22:00, I noticed  a cute visitor in the outside entrance to my classroom. I found him stuck in the bottom of the stairwell and he couldn't get back up the stairs. The school is by the river, so I used a piece of paper to herd him into a large tupperware container and let security put him out. He was really fast and aggressive, rearing up like a cobra and jumping. I checked online and it seems this is an adolescent Malaysian Pit Viper. There is no anti venom, certain death from a bite – and babies are as poisonous as adults. No wonder he was so arrogant! This is one of the many interesting things about living in Vietnam! There is no shortage of inspiration.

— Doug

Douglas Schmidt’s most recent piece for orchestra, Sirens, was premiered by Esprit in our March concert at Koerner Hall. For pictures, click here.

Also see "The Lady Gertrude" and Shanghai Dim Sum

Two Composers Under One Roof by Alexina Louie

People often ask Alex and I what it is like having two composers in the family. Letʼs just say itʼs lively! Our household has been particularly ʻexcitingʼ lately as we are both finishing new pieces at the same time.

Alex is writing his biggest and most profound work, Devotions for The Elmer Iseler Singers and Esprit Orchestra complete with expanded percussion section, and I am writing my smallest work, Small Beautiful Things, a set of eleven pedagogical piano pieces. Devotions premieres on Esprit Orchestraʼs final concert of our 33rd season on March 31, 2016 at Koerner Hall.

Devotions was inspired, in part, by the writings of Lao Tsu about the Tao, an ancient Chinese philosophy of life, as well as lines from a Japanese martial arts text and indigenous peoplesʼ poetry. Its movements have titles that reflect these profound words and ideas: Wondrous Tao, Be Brave!, Lifting Hands, Mask, Luminous Spheres Ascending.

On the other hand, one of the short pieces in my set of eleven is called Little Balinese Dancer. It was inspired by the lovely, enchanting, magical child dancers who performed for us in Bali. I recalled their expressive eyes, hand gestures and the unique way their bodies moved to the Balinese gamelan music. I wanted to capture their movements to the lilting cadence of the music as the dancers moved so expressively to its hypnotic rhythms and exquisite colours.

Another of my pieces is called Little Grey Bird, a composition that was inspired by a small unusual visitor who came to our bird feeder every day for several weeks this past winter. It was most unusual because it sat on the feeder from early morning until the sun went down, day after day. Our family became very attached to our little grey bird. Then one day, it disappeared. I felt compelled to write a piece that would do honour to our small friend. Not wanting it to be a sad ʻrequiemʼ for our bird, I needed this piece to be charming but not saccharine. After several attempts and many drafts, the thirty-seven bar composition caught just the right, sweet tone.

What is it like in our home when we are both composing? As a hint, letʼs just say that we have completely opposite working methods. Alex works at a computer. I play every note at the same baby grand piano that I had when I was a piano student. Alex loves working into the very wee hours of the morning. I like to sleep!

What is it like when both of us are writing a film score together? Youʼll have to ask our daughters!

Itʼs an interesting household.

Note: I am still trying to persuade Alex to be one of my pre-concert chat guests. He is being evasive....!

– Alexina

"Goose Bump Music: Finding, Sounding, Liberating" by Hussein Janmohamed

Finding

Music found its way to me at a young age. When I played music I was in my ‘happy place’. I learned to play the recorder in grade one and then saxophone and clarinet in elementary and junior school. I sang ginans (Ismaili devotional hymns) and cultural songs at the jamatkhana (prayer hall), and actively partook (with my family) in the Ismaili Marching Band.

It was not until High school, however, when choir found its way into my life. Since then, choral music has been central to connecting to my faith, building friendships, and informing my social conscience.

Goose Bumps

My family emigrated from Kenya, Africa to Alberta in the 1970s. Racial slurs, prejudice and discrimination were the norm. Life was not easy and we did not accept being translated negatively by others. Somehow we found a way (motivated by faith) to hold strong to our cultural values and positively respond. Creativity and community involvement empowered our response through which we also better understood, negotiated and constructed our identities.

For me, music became the bridge. I really enjoyed singing—at jamatkhana (prayer hall) or in choir because when I sang with other people I felt connected. I especially loved choir because we got to layer our voices and create harmony. When we were totally in sync with each other a magical feeling would fill the room. We knew this feeling by the goose bumps forming on our skin, and the electrifying chills running down our spines—a kind of spiritual feeling—the same kind of spiritual feeling I felt reciting ginans in jamatkhana. It was in these goose bump moments when we truly felt unified. Nothing else mattered—not our difference(s) nor the impacts of racism. What mattered was being in the same room with others and making music together.

Sounding

My friendships, community bonds, and sense of identity were organically shaped by these multiple ways of making music. Over time these different musical experiences began to intersect revealing new possibilities for bridging cultures and making music. At first I added vocal layers and harmony to ginans—a very simple exercise that not only sounded cool but also somehow linked my spiritual and material lives. Different ways of knowing the world amplified each other. I was excited by the musical outcomes and continued to experiment with patching together music from different parts of my life to express identity and respond to the realities of our world. If I could feel goose bumps singing other people’s music with them, could they not feel goose bumps singing my music with me?

Ismaili Centre Toronto at Night

Nur: Reflections on Light

In 2014 I was fortunate to receive a commission from the Aga Khan Museum to write a site-specific piece for the Ismaili Centre Toronto opening. The piece drew from the Verse of Light (24:35) from the Quran and explored the ineffable qualities of spiritual and physical light. I imagined music where waves and particles of light would dynamically co-exist—suspended in time and holding multiple voices in an interwoven fabric of sound. The more I worked at it the more I saw the piece as a way to envision a society where diverse peoples could mingle compassionately in each other’s light.

Liberating

The Elmer Iseler Singers premiered the piece with six Ismaili singers from across Canada. This would be the first time I would experience those choral goose bumps performing along side musical friends a piece of music that represented my identity and that was sung in my community setting.

I felt a sense of liberation. I felt elation. I felt pride. Most of all I felt hope—hope in the power of music to undo past hurts, bridge understanding and tell our stories anew.

Coda

In a world where Islamophobia, ‘clashes of ignorance’ and negative representations of Islam are prevalent I hope that more composers and musicians will have the courage to stand up and sound out their understanding of a peaceful faith that is rooted in compassion and committed to the uplift of society. I am grateful to the Esprit Orchestra and Elmer Iseler Singers for recognizing these global tensions, and opening their musical doors so we can be in the same musical room together.

My deep thanks also to mentors, friends and family for walking with me on this musical journey. I hope that going forward we can together discover musical ways of knowing that make it possible for all people to speak, and in so doing shape, reshape and compose our collective identities.

— Hussein

"The Lady Gertrude" and Shanghai Dim Sum

That darn composer Doug Schmidt presented me with a real challenge (so I thought) for premiering his new work "Sirens" on Esprit's March 31st concert. He included a part for a harmonium - a real old-fashioned pump organ with air pumped into bellows with two foot pedals. (The player has to steadily pedal alternating feet to keep up the air pressure and simultaneously play at the keyboard - and change stops as necessary!) It's one thing to do this with hymns or chorales, but imagine trying to do this playing complex new music rhythms!

Naturally I wondered where we would get such an instrument in good condition. Doug was thinking ahead and, from Saigon where he now lives, began forwarding me Canadian Kijiji links to possible organs. These were not helping much in the search but finally there was a possible instrument to be viewed in northeast Markham - in the far reaches of Suburbia. Alexina and I got in the car and drove there to discover that the instrument was for sale at $250. The owner, who was downsizing, wasn't interested in renting it out and it was the size of an upright grand piano. Even if Esprit bought it, the moving charges would have been exorbitant (Markham to the rehearsal hall, then to Koerner Hall then to --- where?). I could not imagine finding storage for it and trying to sell it after the concert.

Driving back to Toronto along Highway 7, we were astonished at the vast malls that have sprung up there - seemingly filled only with Chinese restaurants. All was not lost for us on this adventure. We turned in and discovered the Ding Tai Fung Shanghai Dim Sum Restaurant - very special and different from what we usually find downtown. This made the trip worthwhile.

But - back to the harmonium. What next? I spent a couple of hours on the phone in a further unsatisfactory search. Then, our musicians contractor, Christine Little, suggested I call David Olds at New Music Concerts about our need. He recommended I contact Dawn Lyons and Den Ciul, harpsichord builders, restorers and providers, who I've worked with before when we needed a harpsichord. Their company is called Claviers Baroques.

I called Dawn and - AMAZINGLY! - Dawn and Den had the perfectly-sized, perfectly in tune, easily transportable harmonium in their living room. In all her glory, she is named "The Lady Gertrude". She will be ours for the concert. At last, relief! But, it gets better.  Dawn and Den (and Gertrude) live two blocks away from me in High Park.

Somehow it's fitting that the harmonium in Doug's piece represents the main character of the work - a sailor lured by sirens to his demise on the ocean deep. I hope you’ll come and hear Lady Gertrude at Koerner Hall on March 31st!

— Alex

The Inspiration Behind "Sirens" by Doug Schmidt

Alex approached me about composing an orchestral piece for Esprit Orchestra last summer. This was just prior to my moving to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in South Vietnam from Dusseldorf, Germany.

I had envisioned composing a piece based on the broad concept and inspiration of 'Sirens', ancient mythological birds with female human heads known for their hypnotic songs and luring sailors into the ocean deep to their eventual deaths.

I began writing the piece shortly after moving and it began to acquire a host of associated meanings and intention.

My intention was to write a sort of tone poem. The first section of the piece represents the songs of sirens (featuring piccolo and bassoon), the central part represents the futile struggle of the main character (featuring harmonium organ) who succumbs to the song, and the final section is presented as the individual reflecting on his entrapment by the siren song (alto flute, oboe, flute, clarinets) presented as a fragmented counterpoint revealing distorted and convoluted memories of his past life.

Doug Schmidt, composer

I liked the asian concept of one interrupted breath per phrase on the woodwinds representing the sirens and the harmonium pump organ with lung like breathing bellows representing the soul or life of the main character. So the piece by default became a type of concerto grosso where a group of instruments are featured within a larger ensemble.

Through the course of composing the work it assumed a much larger symbolism for me, representing how we all are attracted like moths to our gadgets and the often inaccurate news media who manipulates our emotions and thoughts, transforming us into very different beings. This is a sort of death of our true selves and is so slowly accomplished that we can only try and remember who we really were.

Here is a pic of a Saigon traffic jam, a unique phenomenon taken by a friend of mine!

– Doug

My Chinese Opera Gong by Alexina Louie

From the time I was a child growing up in Vancouver, I have been mesmerized and excited by the loud percussive music of the Lion Dance which is always performed as part of Chinese New Year celebrations. Each year, our father would take us to Pender Street to witness the exciting ritual. The gongs, drums, loud firecrackers, as well as the energetic moves by the martial arts practitioners under the weighty lion’s head, stirred me then and continue to do so now.

Of course, I had no way of knowing that those early exposures to Chinese ritual and music would become part of my musical language. Eventually I began to collect some Asian instruments because I found them beautiful.

In 1973, our father decided to take our whole family back to our village in China for the first time. Ours was one of the first groups of western Chinese allowed into China – a trip filled with indelible memories. We were a part of a group of several families who went back to our ancestral villages.

I purchased my sheng on that first trip. It is a most unusual-looking instrument. The seventeen pipes of the sheng, a reed instrument, rise from a semi-circular cup-shaped base. The player exhales and inhales through a mouthpiece creating reedy-sounding chord clusters as well as individual notes.

On that same trip, I found my guqin (a fretless zither, the most intimate of instruments – it is said that its most delicate tone is the sound of your pulse on the string!) hanging in the window of a Chinese musical instrument store in Shanghai. A crowd of Chinese people all dressed in Mao jackets (Mao was still alive), crushed into the little store, curious about what I, a foreigner (foreigners were unheard of at the time) who curiously looked somewhat like themselves, was doing, banging loudly on Chinese opera gongs to find ‘just the right ones’ to carry back with me. My enthusiastic noise-making caused much amusement.

These and other instruments have followed me from China to California, where I made my home for ten years, and now to Toronto. The inspiration of Asian instruments and music (dense chord clusters, bent tones, unusual glissandi effects, musical gestures that convey the contrast and balance of Yin and Yang) can be heard, dramatically brought to life in my Imaginary Opera which Esprit is performing on Sunday, January 24 in Toronto. If you attend, you will be hearing my very own Chinese bender gongs brought back from that trip in Pursuing The Dragon, the last movement of my piece.

Although there are no singers in my composition, it is theatrical and highly dramatic. In each movement, I provide evocative music and invite the listener to conjure up his/her own imagined opera scenario.

The excitement of Vancouver’s Chinese lion dance exists in the wild finale of Imaginary Opera.

– Alexina

Esprit chats with Canadian Composer Alexina Louie about her work, Imaginary Opera - to be performed on Sunday January 24, 2016.

Louie’s Imaginary Opera integrates the composer’s Eastern and Western approaches to music through both intense and quiet, mysterious dramatic musical events reflecting contrast and balance as in the principles of Yin and Yang.

Holiday Adventures & Recommendations

This past holiday was a welcome break before gearing up again for our January 24th concert. So what did Alexina and I get up to?

Years ago, I had visited Pompeii with my family which got me thinking about checking out the Pompeii exhibit at the ROM.  Just one day before it closed in Toronto, we decided to see swing by. It turned out to be a great visit. So many artifacts to see — jewellery, sculptures, and household articles, just to name a few — that can't be viewed in Pompeii where there is a focus on architecture and the stories of how the population perished. You have to go to the museum in Naples to see the vast stores of treasures that were discovered in the pumice of Pompeii. This I'd love to do someday. 

Almost missing the ROM show has me thinking that there is another show in Toronto I'd recommend you see before it leaves the Art Gallery of Ontario - namely the wonderful exhibit of Turner's paintings. It is really thorough and quite remarkable. 

As for movies that attracted Alexina and me, satisfying our craving for a good flick, were Brooklyn, Youth, Spotlight and The Big Short — all were really excellent.  

…Now for The Martian and Star Wars (the latest episode) — nothing like a good Sci-Fi!

— Alex

...The Start of Something Big

Music students frantically attempt to keep up with theory, harmony, sight-singing, keyboard harmony, exams, papers, presentations, practising, performing, singing in the university chorus, ensemble work etc. Because of the stress of this continual development of skills, an unspoken understanding develops among colleagues.

Esprit Orchestra founder and conductor Alex Pauk and composer, educator John Rea have known each other for, dare I say, several decades now, ever since they were students at the University of Toronto.

John eventually made his way to Princeton, to satisfy his academic curiosity – Alex to Vancouver, to develop his career in composition and conducting. During his decade in Vancouver, Alex founded his third new music group, Days, Months and Years to Come. Because of their ongoing camaraderie and musical respect for one another, John was one of the first composers Alex commissioned for that new ensemble. The piece? Jeux de Scène. That was 1976!

Fast-forward several years…

Alex had moved back to Toronto and John had become a professor of composition at McGill University. At that time, Alex introduced me to the remarkable John Rea. We had such warm, zany, intellectually stimulating times together (and we continue to do so). Not only did we learn about the wide intellectual pursuits that John was constantly considering, but we also learned a lot about Italian cooking – and he learned a lot about Chinese cooking. Many wonderful Italian and Chinese meals have been eaten since those earlier times. Ah, the joy of sharing great cuisines!

Over the years, the friendship between Alex and John saw them through many experiences, including countless meetings of the Canadian League of Composers (Alex was for many years the President, and John was a member of the Executive Committee). There were so many contentious issues that impacted the lives of composers that the CLC meetings went on for hours at a time. I remember one day they arrived from a meeting in a stupor. Wordlessly, they simultaneously lay down on the floor on their backs, staring at the ceiling! (They may have groaned). It was quite a sight.

Over thirty years ago, Alex felt the need to start a special orchestra devoted to the music of our time – a contemporary music orchestra – an orchestra of committed players able to handle the technical musical challenges of brand new scores. They had to put their total energy, vigor and expression into bringing difficult new scores to life by giving them excellent performances.

As the Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg once said, “My music is not modern, it is merely badly played.” Esprit’s mission was to ensure that such terms would not apply to its artistry. This takes a lot of energy, as well as a lot of rehearsal.

Before setting out to build this dream orchestra, Alex approached John to act as a sounding board. The two of them tossed ideas back and forth and John, in his usual fashion, posed questions that encouraged Alex and helped clarify a way to proceed.

Those discussions took place prior to 1982. The rest, as they say, is history. Canada’s only full-sized orchestra dedicated solely to performing the music of our time was created 33 years ago. It remains one of the very few in the world.

Who was the first composer commissioned by Esprit? John Rea, Vanishing Points. The two friends collaborate again on Sunday, November 15.

Come witness the fruits of their friendship.

– Alexina

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Esprit Orchestra: Play

Sunday, November 15, Koerner Hall 8:00 PM
7:15 Pre-concert chat – composers John Rea & Andrew Norman with Alexina Louie

Tevot (Thomas Adès), Play (Andrew Norman), Zefiro torna (John Rea)

Join us for Esprit’s biggest orchestra to date (including quintuple winds, 8 French Horns, 8 percussionists and TWO TUBAS)! It is going to be amazing! 

What A Rush!

After Esprit’s opening concert on October 4, as is our routine, Alex and I joined our friends and composer colleagues for a post-concert celebration, after which we arrived home past midnight. I then prepared for my Vancouver-bound flight departing early the next morning. Somehow the days prior to the Esprit concert were swallowed up by all the responsibilities of managing the many details related to the Esprit concert (including my pre-concert talk), as well as preparing university lectures for the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University.

I managed to pack and catch my plane, and immediately upon arrival in Vancouver, I rushed to my double rehearsal with Turning Point Ensemble —a double rehearsal because Owen Underhill, Turning Point’s music director and conductor, had done me the honour of bookending their season opening concerts with two of my compositions: Music For A Thousand Autumns (1983) and A Curious Passerby At Fu’s Funeral (2015) — yes, that is a difference of 32 years!

Composing a new work can take several months or even a year or two depending on the size of the commission and the detail of the new work. For the duration of the compositional process, I am always weighing my musical ideas and constantly refining them. Often an idea that seems very creative makes me wonder, “What was I thinking?” in the clear light of the following day. Many ‘good ideas’ end up on the other side of the pencil. It is tiring work, but as the months move forward, excitement begins to build. By the time I put the double bar (signaling the end) on A Curious Passerby, I felt I had written a piece that satisfied my creative instincts.

For a composer, the routine of the performers preparing your composition for a premiere is filled with anticipation and sometimes dread. Why dread? Because those sounds that you have been living within your head are not fully heard or realized until you get to your first rehearsal. Is the musical material worthy? Did some sections go on too long? Did you balance the dynamics (louds and softs) of the ensemble well? Did you develop the musical idea skillfully enough or did you approach the material in too haphazard a fashion? Or did that development take too long? Did the apex of your piece reach its mark? These are a small handful of some of the larger overall issues that might plague you and cause you some anxiety.

The first rehearsal is often a nightmare. In a short amount of time you have to catch mistakes in the copying, answer many questions from the musicians (How loud do you want this? Is the tempo correct? Does the bassoon have the lead line here? Is this the correct sound you want from the gong? Do you need a different one? etc.). Since the musicians come to ‘read’ the score together for the first time, the first rehearsal is usually a surprise event for everyone!

The number of rehearsals you receive for your new piece depends on the performing organization, but if you ask any composer, you never have enough rehearsals! The day of the performance there is the dress rehearsal, which is a run through of the entire concert. At this point there is usually, but not always, time for last minute touchups. Then you have to trust the musicians to pull all the stops out at the concert (usually that evening). The ‘dress’ most often lacks a bit of zip and may be a little disappointing because the players often pace themselves in order to save their biggest effort for the performance. If they are committed to your piece, they will put their full energy and skill on the line at the concert.

A Curious Passerby At Fu’s Funeral had a rousing reception – Owen was pleased, the musicians were enthusiastic, and the audience was overwhelmingly responsive. After all, they had been there to witness and to participate in an exciting event – the first time a newly created composition was to be publicly performed. It’s a bit of a risk for all of us: Would the piece succeed or would it fall short of its goal?

It was wonderful to have been welcomed home with terrific performances of two compositions. (I was born and raised in Vancouver. I studied piano privately with the most supportive teacher, Jean Lyons, and went on to attend UBC.) Several friends and colleagues whom I hadn’t seen in several years attended the premiere. As well, a number of university students who were at my lectures came to the second performance.

That Owen and TPE took most of those concert pieces to several cities across Canada was so unusual for a brand new composition. What a privilege to have it heard in several centres just after its world premiere.

The long months of work resulted in an energetic, fast-paced, and exciting composition. The new work had an impact. When my husband, Esprit’s conductor Alex Pauk, heard the piece for the first time at the performance sponsored by New Music Concerts in Toronto on October 17, he turned to me and said, “That’s a wild piece! You had the audience on the edge of their seats!”

To succeed in creating a work that excites people, given the very unusual nature of the world of contemporary composition, is truly satisfying. The long days, nights, and months of difficult work culminated in several committed performances. That it was received with such enthusiasm was a thrill.What a rush!

– Alexina

PLAY with ESPRIT

"Unease about speed is the adrenaline dispenser in video games, when you're always one shot, or one flick of the joystick away from catastrophe. Play might leave listeners with the uncomfortable feeling that they are not listening fast enough.” So writes Justin Davidson Follow commenting on the explosion in full freak-out mode that comes with the downbeat of Play by Andrew Norman, one of Esprit’s guest composers on November 15th at Koerner Hall.

Play, a 45-minute symphony based on the multiple meanings of the work's title, is organized in unusual ways. Non-linear forms like those encountered in video games serve as important sources of inspiration.

Regarding Play's reference to video games, Norman says, "Play for me has this reference to video games. I’m not a huge gamer, but there is something about the way games are structured and the way narratives are structured in a game which is very appealing to me as I think about form and music. Oftentimes there’s a non-linear way through a game. How to convey a story arc, or a general narrative over a span of time, but one that can loop back on itself, and that can take a circuitous route through the material.

We’re very adept at processing these things from the ways we watch movies and TV these days. I mean, non-linear story telling seems to be almost a cliché in some of our other time-based mediums; the whole flash back, or flash forward, or cut to a parallel universe kind of thing. Why not in orchestra music?"

There is a strong theatrical aspect to the piece. Norman wants the audience to "see" the piece being performed live because he has written instructions in the score for musicians to behave in special (sometimes strange) ways. "Players often freeze in place, mid-breath and bow-stroke, waiting to be turned on again by the flick of a percussive switch."

The piece is, in part, a work of wordless theatre. Play involves human interactions, playing of instruments – play in child-like ways, as well as in sinister modes of control – "being played”.

In creating the piece the composer gave thought to what the performers are doing on stage and their relationships in the hall: The conductor’s arm-waving causes things to happen; the composer controls the conductor's arm waving – both cause the players to do things. All this causes the audience to have certain feelings. The chain of cause and effect is foremost in Norman's mind.

PLAY with ESPRIT Sunday November 15th!

– Alex

Fast Track! by Alexina Louie

People have been asking Alex and I what weʼve been up to since returning from Espritʼs China trip earlier in the summer.

It was such an exciting, successful, and exotic trip with the orchestra, but it set Alex and I back three weeks in our respective projects. That doesnʼt include time loss due to the affects of the twelve hour time difference. That jet lag was brutal. Day for night!We both immediately dove into our new compositions – Alexʼs Soul And Psyche for the combined forces of Esprit and the Elmer Eisler Singers scheduled for the last concert of Espritʼs season (March 31, 2016), and my new chamber orchestra piece for the Turning Point Ensemble, which I had been working on, but had to put on hold when I got on the departing plane.

My deadline was tougher than Alexʼs as the premiere performance would take place in Vancouver on October 7. I have been writing music basically non-stop since we returned from China. My composition is scored for fifteen performers and that means there are a lot of empty musical staves to face every morning.

My piece consists of a lot of fast music which I refer to as “dangerous music.” Why dangerous? Itʼs because you write pages and pages of music and you think you are covering a lot of time because of the large number of sheets you have filled.

When I finally decide to time what Iʼve written, itʼs always a shock! I might have thought that those pages of full score might have covered eight minutes of music, but when timed they may actually cover only 2 1/2 minutes. Of course, it doesnʼt take you 2 1/2 minutes to write 2 1/2 minutes of music – it could take weeks! My piece checks in at 138 pages! I have just finished it, but the premiere is just weeks away. Tight one.

Yet another dilemma that I faced was TPEʼs request for the title of the piece before it was finished! I normally donʼt like to force the title. Some of the titles of my pieces appear at the beginning of the compositional process, which is often a help as it can influence and inspire the music you are about to write. At other times, the title doesnʼt appear until you are well into the piece.

This was the case with this most recent composition – A Curious Passerby At Fuʼs Funeral.Espritʼs opening concert of our 33rd season is Sunday, October 4 in the magnificent Koerner Hall, Toronto. On the morning of Monday, October 5, I am on the plane winging to Vancouver in time to make a rehearsal that afternoon.

Fast track!

– Alexina Louie