Brent Lee
artistic advisor – wcmf
composer – Am Rande der Nacht, Hildegard Remix

Brent Lee is a Canadian musician, scholar, and educator. He studied at McGill University and later the University of British Columbia, where he completed his doctoral degree in 1999.
His compositions range from orchestral music to electroacoustic pieces, and include jazz and incidental music. He has received awards and commissions from CAPAC, SOCAN, the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Gaudeamus Foundation (The Netherlands), and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France). In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded.
His compositions and improvisations often explore the relationship between acoustic instruments and digital sound processing; this interest has extended to his work as a performing member of a number of improvising ensembles including Gems, Strictly Plutonic, Modus Vivendi, and the Electric Improv Lab. Most recently, he served as composer-in-residence with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2006.
He has been an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre since 1991 and Artistic Advisor for the Windsor Canadian Music Festival since 2003.

Am Rande der Nacht

This piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, one trumpet, two trombones, percussion, harp, piano forte and strings. Approx. 13 minutes.

Dawn and twilight have been recurring and apt metaphorical themes in my music; the image of half-light and half-darkness as well as the slow and inevitable processes of gathering light or darkness have often corresponded with sonic images and processes developed in several of my compositions. Am Rande der Nacht (The Verge of Night) takes it title from the poem of Rainer Maria Rilke. While this piece does not represent an attempt to programmatically render the rather abstract imagery of the poem, I do feel that the poem’s sense of space and resonance is reflected to a degree in the music.

Hildegard Remix

Tim Shantz suggested the idea of a project involving his choir and live electronics to me some time ago, and proposed Hildegard of Bingen as the choral source material. HIldegard’s music reflects the monophonic chant style pervasive in the 12th century, and its subtle simplicity is ideally suited to harmonic and timbral elaboration. I in turn invited Chris McNamara to collaborate on this remixing of Hildegard’s music, as I have been an admirer of Chris’s multimedia sound and image manipulations since first hearing them a few years ago. What you will hear includes fragments of Hildegard’s miracle play Ordo virtutum arranged (remixed?) for a polyphonic chorus and in turn amplified and processed (remixed again) using computer technology. – BL

 

Geof Holbrook
Composer – Faith in Gravity, Dragonfly on Bay Street

Canadian composer of mostly orchestral and chamber works that have been performed in Canada and elsewhere.
Mr. Holbrook studied composition with Denys Bouliane and Sean Ferguson at McGill University in Montréal from 1998-2002, where he has studied with John Rea since 2002. He has also twice attended Domaine Forget in 2000-01 and Royaumont once in 2001 and has attended masterclasses with Cornelis de Bondt, Omar Daniel, Brian Ferneyhough, Martín Matalon, Aleksandr Raskatov, Tan Dun, and Klas Torstensson.
Among his honors are two first prizes in the Ensemble category in the SOCAN competition for young composers (2001, for Faith in Gravity; 2003, for Khipus) and second prize overall in the SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Commission (2002, for Faith in Gravity). His music has been heard in Canada, France and Germany.
Mr. Holbrook is also active in other positions. He served as composer-in-residence to the McGill Symphony Orchestra in 2002 and has served as associate composer to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa since 2004.

Faith in Gravity

This piece premiered in 2001 and was revised in 2007. This is the world premier of the revised composition. It is scored for one flute, one oboe, two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns, one trumpet, one trombone, two percussion, piano forte and strings. Approx. 15 minutes.

This piece was written for the Contemporary Music Ensemble at McGill University, while I was doing my Bachelor’s degree there. It represents the start of a series of pieces that I wrote with an agenda to unite science and art—in my case that means writing music that captures a scientific idea. In Fatih in Gravity, my inspiration was the mechanics of astronomy, and I wanted to portray the beauty of gravitational movement of object in space. I created a sort of “gravitational counterpoint”, in which different voices attract each other, and move in a kind of orbital fashion. We also hear accelerations and decelerations, curved trajectories, and dramatic collisions.
Five years after writing this piece I wrote my Masters thesis at McGill on science as an inspirational source in modern music. By that time I had come to terms with the dichotomy between science and art, and had figured out my reasons for trying to combine these things. I used this piece as an example of a work of art that, at least in spirit, had the right approach for combining these two areas of human activity that are so difficult to reconcile.

 

Christien Ledroit
Composer – Trade Winds, Elementalities

Christien Ledroit was born in 1975 in London, Ontario. He completed his undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario where he studied composition with, among others, Marjan Mozetich, Kristi Allik, John Burge and Alfred Fisher. He completed his Master of Music in composition at McGill University in Montreal in 2003, where he studied with Alcides Lanza, Jean Lesage and Sean Ferguson.
Throughout high school Ledroit played guitar in a punk band, while still continuing to develop technique on the violin. It is precisely this dichotomy which most influences his music today. Ledroit maintains active interests in studying and performing both contemporary art music and loud aggressive rock music. The combination of the essences of these two styles lends his compositions an unusual sound. Ledroit has received commissions and awards from many sources. Awards include two prizes at the 2001 SOCAN competition for young composers, including a first prize for Shards, and a second prize for Elementalities. The commission of Elementalities by the Lithium Ensemble, led to the commission of Ledroit’s Concerto for Tabla, for Lithium’s tabla-player, Shawn Mativetsky. Christien now lives in Hamilton with his wife Stefanie and daughter Ramona. For further details please visit his website.

Trade Winds

This piece was comissioned by Shawn Mativetsky and composed in 2003. It is scored for strings and tabla. Approx. 14 minutes.

Trade Winds is hybrid of Indian and Western compositional techniques and styles. The title alludes to the weather patterns that allowed ancient cultures to meet and trade with each other. It refers to a blending of cultures and exchange of ideas, brought about by a mutually-occurring phenomena, wind (or in this case, music).
The harmonies and melodies of this work are completely based on Indian musical theories. The structure of the work is a loose interpretation of one of many Indian solo structures, and while it does not adhere strictly to Indian models, it captures the same basic slow-fast structure. The solo tabla part is constructed in much more strict accordance with traditional Indian practice, though here too it is not exact. The main themes are each set in traditional Indian beat and accent patterns called tals; the first theme is set in jhaptal (10 beats, 2+3+2+3) and the second in rupak tal, (7 beats, 3+2+2). The intervening chord progressions slide between the two. The tabla line most clearly carries the associated beat and accent patterns throughout these sections. The coda is set strictly in a tintal rhythm, (16 beats, 4+4+4+4) with the accent structure carefully observed. The tabla improvises throughout the coda, until the end.

Elementalities

Elementalities is a set of short pieces, all based on different presentations and mutations of elements. The piece started with the idea of creating elements (short melodic and/or rhythmic fragments) and transforming them, and grew into a suite of five ‘mind games’, all related to each other, but independent, such that any combination of movements may be played in concert.
The outer movements, Elemental I and II, are concerned almost exclusively with basic presentation and permutation of elements. Elemental I offers four different unmetered settings of a set of elements, presenting them in different instruments, different orders and different registers. Elemental II treats a different set of elements to similar procedures, but places them in a metered setting.
The second movement, Cereal, strings certain melodic and rhythmic elements of the other movements into a single melodic line. This melodic line is placed in one of several rhythmic/metric layers, and is then put through several serial permutations to create the structure.
The third movement, Floating, sets a rhapsodic flute line, drawn from the various elements of the other movements, floating above a mechanical, slowly changing background in the percussion.
Elementalities was commissioned and premiered by Montreal’s Lithium Ensemble and was premiered by them September 30, 2000.

 

Christopher McNamara
Artist – Hildegard Remix

Chris McNamara is a Windsor-based video, audio artist and writer who also teaches new media at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He has exhibited his work extensively in both Canada and the U.S. (most recently at Mercer Union, Stride Gallery and The Western Front). In October 2002, McNamara exhibited at Stiftung BINZ 39, in Zürich, Switzerland. In the Fall of 2004 his work was included in Shrinking Cities at Kunst Werke in Berlin. Establishing Shots premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2007.
A founding member of electronic music collecitive/label Thinkbox, Chris produces sound and image compositions for both galleries and performance environments. His Festival appearances include Mutek in Montreal, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and Spark Festival of New Electronic Music at the University of Minnesota.

 

François Rose
Composer – Le temps scintillé, Points d’emergence

François Rose (born in Montréal, Québec in 1959) studied composition at McGill University in Montréal with Bruce Mather, Bruce Pennycook and John Rea. From 1989 to 1991, as a recipient of a Canada Council grant, he studied composition and orchestration with Gérard Grisey in Paris as well as computer music with Tristan Murail at IRCAM.
In 1997, he received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds and Brian Ferneyhough and carried on his acoustical research with F. Richard Moore.
Dr. Rose’s music was performed in several European, Australian, North- and South-American cities. In 1990 he was awarded the ZAIKS prize in the III International Serocki Competition in Poland for a chamber orchestra piece, Face à face, and in 2001 the Second Prize at the 5th International Edvard Grieg Competition for Composers in Norway for Le souvenir de l’oubli for violin and piano.
François Rose has been invited as a guest speaker at the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany (1994), Warsaw Music Academy, in Poland (1995), McGill University in Montréal, Canada, the Conservatory of Paris and IRCAM, in France (1996). Since 1997 he is professor of composition, harmony and orchestration at the University of the Pacific in Northern California.
Dr. Rose is a member of the Canadian League of Composers and his music is available at the CMC (Centre de Musique Canadienne).

Le temps scintillé

This piece was composed in 2006 and is scored for one flute, one oboe, one clarinet, one bassoon, one horn, one trumpet, one trombone, two percussion, piano forte and strings. Approx. 11 minutes.

When writing Le temps scintillé for chamber orchestra, I imagined music being like a curtain of light that I could slow down in order to zoom-in on different temporal layers and focus on their light.
The piece is divided in three continuous sections. In the first section all the instruments of the ensemble follow the piano and the two marimbas and converge toward a common point, when suddenly time is suspended and the resonating light of a harmonic structure is exposed.
In the second section, the string and wind instruments provide a slow moving curtain of sounds while the piano and marimbas use accents to extract some pitches and bring them to light.
Finally, in the third section, the orchestra presents a fast moving pulsating-texture, of which different slower layers emerge, like a prism dispersing light into different colors.
Le temps scintillé was written for the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory and its conductor Nicole Paiement.

Points d’émergence

Points d’émergence (1996) could be thought of as the meeting point of unity versus globality, melody versus timbre. Points d’émergence is composed of the superposition and/or juxtaposition of different rhythmic layers. As the piece unfolds, layers are brought in phase to allow a specific melodic contour to emerge and separate itself from the mass but only to fade back away into it as the phase is shifted. In this process, the melody’s timbre and speed are constantly transformed.
Points d’émergence was premiered on February 25, 1997 in San Diego at the Mandeville Recital Hall by David Shively.

 

Andrew Staniland
Composer – Protestmusik, Tapestry

Andrew Staniland is a composer and new media performer whose music is performed and broadcast internationally. Recent commissions include works the virtuoso group Toca Loca, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Andrew’s music has been described as “beautiful and terrifying” (New Yorker magazine) and as a composer who “will emerge as one of the most individual voices in this country” (National Arts Centre Press Release, November 2002). He holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Toronto, and has received numerous accolades, including top prizes in the SOCAN young composers competition, and the 2004 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music. Staniland is currently Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Protestmusik

This piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, one tuba, two percussion, harp, celesta and strings. Approx. 9 minutes.

Protestmusik is based on my chamber work concerto for nine instrumentalists, written in 2003 for the National Arts Centre Young Composers Program. The work was composed in an incredibly short period of time – about 3 days – in the summer of 2003. The chamber ensemble was made up of musicians from the OFC. In 2004, I recomposed the piece for orchestra over a period of about four months (a sharp contrast from three days it took me to write the chamber piece!) It was a finalist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s New Creations Competition in 2004. This composition has a very personal narrative for me concerning the recent invasion of Iraq.

Tapestry

Tapestry is cast in a traditional mold of three movements which flow uninterrupted. What is not traditional is that a member of the trio is a pre-recorded tape. The tape element is composed entirely with sounds from a recorded studio performance of the acoustic portion of the piece. These sounds on the tape are often altered in various ways to create colours and textures that differ from the natural sounds of the clarinet and cello. This approach was used to create a sound world that blurs the distinction between the sound made by the performers, and the sound played through the speakers.
Using live performers and pre-recorded sound together in the same piece presents many interesting challenges to the composer and performer. I find the medium interesting, as pre-recorded music maintains an overwhelming presence in our daily lives, sometimes not as a substitute for live music, but as an entity to be enjoyed in itself. Having the chance to incorporate tape into a piece with live performers introduces an amazing array of possibilities, as the tape is capable of producing a pallet of sound that exceeds any other medium, limited only by the imagination of the composer.
The piece begins with a quiet texture produced by the instruments on stage, which is taken up by the tape and shaped into two “waves” of timbre. From this encounter, a dialogue grows between the cello, clarinet, and tape. The tape assumes a responsive function for the majority of the first movement, emphasizing textures initiated by the instruments.
The interlude is somewhat homophonic in texture, focusing on harmonies based on clarinet multiphonics. The tape plays an important role in the interlude, providing a great deal of harmonic content. Near the end of the short interlude, the instruments, led by the cello, begin to break away from the tape, and launch into the finale.
The finale is primarily monophonic in texture, with strong jazz influences. The main characteristic of this movement is that the tape is not as present, and when it does appear, it predominantly initiates sound that the instruments take up, rather than being mostly responsive. Midway into the work, the main musical source of the movement is revealed – a variation on a sacred Jewish folk song Sholom Aleychem (Peace be with you). As the end of the piece approaches, the tape returns to prominence, and the work concludes with the tape and the instruments playing in unison for the first time.
This piece was awarded the 2003 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music.