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Karen Kieser Prize Concert : U of T New Music Festival PDF

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Preview Karen Kieser Prize Concert : U of T New Music Festival

Karen Kieser Prize Concert U of T New Music Festival Tuesday, January 14, 2020 7:30 pm Walter Hall, 80 Queen’s Park Presented by Gregory Lee Newsome We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. PROGRAM Like A Memory (2002) Hildegard Westerkamp Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano - Hildegard Westerkamp, diffusion Marla Hlady, sculpture Attending to Sacred Matters (2002) Hildegard Westerkamp Hildegard Westerkamp, diffusion Klavierklang (2017) Hildegard Westerkamp Text by Hildegard Westerkamp Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano & spoken voice - Hildegard Westerkamp, diffusion Intermission Prélude (2019) Francis St-Germain Quatuor Cobalt (Guillaume Villeneuve, Diane Bayard, Benjamin Rota, François Leclerc) Karen Kieser Prize Presentation Gregory Lee Newsome & Francis Ubertelli Quartetto 2 (2018) Francis Ubertelli Quatuor Cobalt (Guillaume Villeneuve, Diane Bayard, Benjamin Rota, François Leclerc) Technical Assistance: Eliot Britton, Peter Olsen, Kristen Antunes, Adam Fainman, Ryan O’Grady, Tristan Zaba Special thanks to: Sherry Lee, Institute for Music in Canada, Jackman Humanities Institue The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music is awarded each year to a graduate student in composition whose work is judged to be especially promising. Karen Kieser was a distinguished triple-graduate of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto and a former Head of Music at CBC Radio. Friends and colleagues endowed The Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music upon her death in 2002 as a tribute to her life, her work and her passionate devotion to the cause of Canadian music and musicians. Past winners of the Karen Kieser Prize are: Rebekah Cummings (2018) and Fearless Bekah Simms (2018) Microlattice Tyler Versluis (2017) 3 Unuttered Miracles Sophie Dupuis (2016) Perceptions de La Fontaine Shelley Marwood (2015) Imaginings Patrick McGraw (2014) Glass Christopher Thornborrow (2013) Walking Adam Scime (2012) After the rioT Riho Esko Maimets (2011) squall Kevin Lau (2010) Starsail Constantine Caravassilis (2009) Sappho de Mytilène Igor Correia (2008) Three Songs of Great Range Fuhong Shi (2007) Lightenings Christopher William Pierce (2006) Melody with Gesture Katarina Curcin (2005) . . . walking away from . . . Craig Galbraith (2004) The Fenian Cycle Andrew Staniland (2003) Tapestry Abigail Richardson (2002) dissolve a concert pianist, and indeed she gave many performances throughout the 1970s in North America and Europe, both as a soloist and with the Canadian Electronic Ensemble. But by then, she had already been bitten by the broadcasting bug. From 1973 to 1977, while still in her twenties, she hosted important CBC Radio and CBC Stereo music programs like Music Alive and Themes and Variations. The quality of grace under pressure she displayed in Karen Kieser (1948-2002) that role would characterize all her Karen Kieser was a passionate later endeavours, and she never woman. She cared deeply about lost her focus on the audience many people – her friends and as the ultimate raison d’être for a colleagues, her husband Larry, broadcaster’s work. her parents, siblings, nieces and nephews – and about many As music producer with the flagship things – her work, her religious network program Arts National faith, her home and garden, from 1977 to 1982, Karen spent travel, art and music. But Karen’s the following decade as first deputy strongest passions and deepest head (1982-1986), and later head commitments were dedicated to (1986-1992), of CBC Radio Music. two things: Canadian music and She set three records, as the public broadcasting. The two came youngest, longest-serving head of together in her distinguished career music, and – what probably made at the CBC. Karen Kieser was born her most proud – the first woman in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, to hold the position. Throughout England, on February 19, 1948. her career, she was a trailblazer She died just 10 days before for women in senior positions at what would have been her 54th the CBC. Her tireless work ethic, birthday, on February 8, 2002, after ability to master countless details a courageous, five-year battle with while keeping an eye on the big ovarian cancer. She held three picture, and unique combination degrees from the Faculty of Music of unfailing good manners and at the University of Toronto: a steely determination, made her Bachelor of Music and a Master of both an inspiration and a role Music, both in Piano Performance, model. Karen’s tenure at CBC and a Master of Arts in Musicology. Radio Music had many highlights, She could have had a career as including a renewed emphasis on live broadcasts and documentaries, dance special, among many others. numerous prestigious special Despite being diagnosed with events and international awards, cancer in 1997, she continued and expanded audiences. She to work for another two years: championed the cause of a decision typical of her lifelong Canadian music and musicians devotion to duty. Even thereafter, through the creation of Canadian she remained active as an arts content policies for classical music consultant, writer and volunteer, broadcasting on CBC, an ambitious serving on juries and panels for the commissioning program, and the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts establishment of CBC Records as Council and Metro Toronto. In 2000, a high-profile label with a reputation she was honoured with the Vice- for excellence both at home and President’s Award for outstanding abroad. She was equally committed achievement in the service of CBC to finding and developing new Radio. For the first time, the vice- broadcasting talent, and many president of English radio, Alex of the leading lights of the music Frame, insisted on presenting the department today (both on and off award personally. the air) were recruited and nurtured under her watchful eye. While still Those who knew Karen Kieser head of music, Karen had been an well remember her warm smile eloquent advocate for the creation and thoughtful concern for other of Glenn Gould Studio. In 1992, she people, whom she always treated became the facility’s first general with dignity, respect and countless manager. In a very real sense, quiet acts of kindness. They speak this “jewel in the crown,” which also of her unflaggingly positive combines an intimate live recital and sincerely optimistic outlook, hall and a state-of-the-art digital restless curiosity and wide range recording studio, is another of her of interests, insatiable appetite lasting legacies. for hard work, ability to motivate and inspire people to exceed their From 1994 until illness forced her own expectations, and insistence to stop working in 1999, Karen on holding others (and most of all was co-ordinator of strategic herself) to the highest standards initiatives for CBC English Radio. of quality in every aspect of life, Among the numerous projects she both professional and personal. worked on during this time were She conducted her battle against the Festival television specialty cancer with characteristic rigour, channel application, the successful energy, clear-sightedness, humour, application for the CBC’s pay a stubborn refusal to surrender, audio channel Galaxie, the move and, in the end, calm acceptance of CBC Radio in Toronto from and inner peace. AM to FM, and a CBC Television PROGRAM NOTES Like a Memory explores that through the abandoned industrial area of aural perception in which sites, “playing” on anything and we hear music in sounds and everything and finding the most sounds in music, where scrap fascinating resonances. Whether metal structures become musical the sounds came from an old instruments and the piano becomes steam engine or an out–of–tune a strange sound sculpture. piano with broken strings, they have become the musical instruments for Many things came together in this Like A Memory. composition. In 1985 I took my tape recorder and microphone Attending to Sacred Matters is and walked along Slocan Lake in one in a series of pieces based the interior of British Columbia, on the sounds of India. Here I am Canada, to an abandoned old working specifically with the sounds house I had discovered some days of the many religious and spiritual before. Among the few remains practices that I encountered and inside was a piano. Many strings recorded in this country—such had broken, pieces of wood, as the chanting from the Sikh some rusty nails and wires were Golden Temple in Amritsar, bells lying among the strings, and rats and ritual sounds from various had nested in its sounding board. Hindu temples, sounds from an Some keys were missing and of the Ashram in Rishikesh and the voice remaining ones, not all keys were of Swami Brahmananda, Muezzins working. I had found a “prepared calling for prayer from various piano” in the deepest Cagean mosques, chanting at dusk on the sense and delighted in improvising Ganges in Rishikesh, bells from a on this “instrument” and recording Jain temple, the chanting of OM, the sounds that emerged. I also and so on. In addition, there are played and recorded snippets of the sounds of water and the voice classical music that I remembered of environmental activist Vandana from piano lessons years ago. They Shiva. sounded delightfully out of tune and “off”. What do we consider to be sacred in our lives and how do we attend In 2000 I went back to the same to it? This question, my travels region with photographer Florence in India and my long-standing Debeugny to collect sounds and environmental concerns formed images for a project on ghost the impetus for this composition towns called At the Edge of and are somehow brought together Wilderness. Fallen down buildings here. and rusty metal structures became soundmaking devices as I moved Klavierklang is a sonic-musical this period are put forward: those journey into the complexities of of the Middle Ages; a return to piano playing. During the past few nature, to pure emotion and the years Rachel and I often reflected acceptance of dissymmetry. Thus, on the challenging and traumatic, for approximately seven minutes, but also inspiring experiences we Prélude plays with our cultural have had with piano teachers, the references by navigating between roles our mothers’ ears played in microtonal motet, contrasts and an our musical development and how almost grotesque quote of sacred much the piano has been both a music. sanctuary for sonic explorations and soundmaking, and a site Quartetto 2 illustrates a parallel of trauma and discouragement. between the shift to atonalism Ultimately Klavierklang is a journey and the Dionysian experience towards the piano playing we have of looking into the irrational. It always loved, into the magic of its seeks to overwhelm the listening sound. parameters and redesign the tonal music geometries through an Klavierklang was commissioned by analysis of language in a structure Rachel Iwaasa and was created that is ontologically posterior to the with the financial assistance of the system that instantiates it, i.e., the Canada Council and the BC Arts complex relationships between the Council. Many thanks go to David signified and the signifier. Quartetto Bloom, who directed Rachel in the 2 seeks to reschedule music inside dramaturgical aspects of her live a system of logically inevitable performance. propositions, such as “protocol sentences” in the definition of a Prélude is an updated vision of grammar where any identity of German Romanticism. Namely, as if opposites, any “transformational Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler and equivalent,” entails a denial of the E.T.A. Hoffmann lived today with “principle of non-contradiction.” the same aesthetic and political concerns as before. It is, moreover, Changing things make possible in Hoffmann’s writings that the the continued existence of other piece initially draws its inspiration. things. The reality of a string quartet His tales – strewn with mises en in today’s technological world is abyme, caricatured characters and confronted with a present that is no dichotomies – which constantly longer recognizable, in which the plunge into fantastic realism make screams of expressionism fossilized him a faithful representative of the long ago. The ideas conveyed essence of this troubled time. In here would like to challenge this order to get closer to the romantic assertion. spirit, some idealized values of COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES Hildegard Westerkamp was born at SFU together with colleague in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946 Barry Truax. Since then she has and emigrated to Canada in 1968. written numerous articles and After completing her music studies texts addressing issues of the at the University of British Columbia soundscape, acoustic ecology in the early seventies she joined the and listening, has travelled widely, World Soundscape Project under giving lectures and conducting the direction of R. Murray Schafer soundscape workshops at Simon Fraser University (SFU). internationally. Her involvement with this project not only activated deep concerns In 1993 she was instrumental in about noise and the general state helping found the World Forum for of the acoustic environment in Acoustic Ecology (www.wfae.net), her, but it also changed her ways an international network of affiliated of thinking about music, listening organizations and individuals who and soundmaking. Vancouver share a common concern for the Co-operative Radio – founded state of the world’s soundscapes. during the same time - provided She was chief editor of its journal an invaluable opportunity to learn Soundscape between 2000 and much about broadcasting, and 2012. ultimately enabled her to produce and host her weekly program Born in 1994, Francis St-Germain Soundwalking in 1978/79. is a composer, saxophonist and improviser based in Montreal. One could say that her career in He holds a Bachelor of Music in soundscape composition and mixed composition (2017) from the acoustic ecology emerged from Université de Montréal, under the these two pivotal experiences and direction of Pierre Michaud, where found support in the cultural and he also studied with Ana Sokolović. political vibrancy of Vancouver at Interested in long-term that time. In addition, composers performances, he founded the such as John Cage and Pauline company Les Concerts en Alcôve Oliveros have had a significant in 2016, producing in situ influence on her work. multidisciplinary events focused on sound, movement, chance While completing her Master’s and spatialization, with the aim of Thesis in the 1980s, entitled democratizing contemporary art. Listening and Soundmaking - A These include the Concert aux Study of Music-as-Environment, puces (2016) – which was created she also taught acoustic in collaboration with the composer communications courses until 1990 Maxime Daigneault at the Arte Flea in the School of Communication Market – and the Molécules concert series (2017), held at LOCAL 250 as a teacher, he returned to music (temporary art gallery), as well as at following the birth of his son and MaBrasserie Brewery Cooperative. a chance encounter with an old acquaintance. He is currently Francis St-Germain also preparing his thesis as part of his collaborated with the theater doctoral studies at the University of companies Tête au corps Toronto. (HISTOIRES ORDINAIRES, Limbes) and La reine ninja (Festival des Arts Francis Ubertelli has written de Ruelle, Arène ninja), as well as numerous works for chamber with the collective of filmmakers Le ensemble and received grants and Zoo. Most recently, his research commissions from the Canada is focused on linking aspects of Council for the Arts and the Monte mysticism and cerebralism. His dei Paschi di Siena in Italy, the piece Beata Ludovica Albertoni Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Toronto’s (2019), commissioned by the Arraymusic, the Charm of Finches violinist Simon Alexandre, is his flute quintet, the Sounds of Silence most recent representation of this Project, Brussels’s Thelema Trio, idea. the Fibonacci Trio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Born in 1968 in Quebec City, Alizée flute ensemble, the Ensemble Canada, Francis Ubertelli began contemporain de Montréal, studying composition under Antwerp’s Champ d’Action, the Armando Santiago at the Quebec Alcan string quartet and the Conservatory. He later studied National Arts Centre Orchestra under Franco Donatoni and Azio in Ottawa. In addition, selected Corghi at the Accademia Nazionale works have been featured at the di Santa Cecilia in Rome, taking Conservatoire royale de Bruxelles’s classes with Ennio Morricone and trombone examination and at Luciano Berio. He graduated in the Université de Montréal string 1996. A few years later, following quartet performance section. His the death of his mentor, plagued music is regularly played in Canada, by a profound aesthetic crisis the United States, Europe and combined with an extended South America. nervous exhaustion, he quit music. That year, he met the shadow of Hailed in the press as a “keyboard the divine during a game of chess, virtuoso and avant-garde muse” which redirected his path in life. In (Georgia Straight) with the 2011, he published his first novel “emotional intensity” to take a in France, an essay comparing piece “from notes on a page to a ongoing social changes with the stunning work of art” (Victoria Times 9/11 attacks, which he witnessed. Colonist), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa In 2015, after some years spent is recognized among Canada’s foremost contemporary music “unforgettable” (Vancouver Sun) pianists. Selected to close the ISCM and for “the passion, intensity World New Music Days 2017 in and the nuanced playing she’s Vancouver, Rachel has performed in acclaimed for... she manages to the Netherlands, Germany, US and instill a sense of dynamic tension across Canada, with engagements and pull to every note” (The including Muziekweek Gaudeamus, Province). Rachel was a co- Music TORONTO, Music on Main, founder of the Queer Arts Festival Vancouver New Music, Redshift, in Vancouver, recognized as one Western Front, Vancouver of the top 5 festivals of its kind Symphony, Victoria Symphony, worldwide. the Aventa Ensemble (Victoria), CONTACT contemporary music Emerging ensemble, the Cobalt (Toronto), New Works Calgary, Quartet stands out for its eclectic Groundswell New Music (Winnipeg), and modern musical approach, and Vancouver Pro Musica. exploring with as much enthusiasm the ancient music on period Rachel has commissioned or instrument as the contemporary premiered works by many of creations. Socially engaged Canada’s most eminent composers, musicians, the members of the such as Hildegard Westerkamp, quartet are dedicated to making Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock, music ever more accessible to a Nicole Lizée, Jordan Nobles, Jeffrey wide audience, defying stylistic Ryan, Farshid Samandari, Marci and social boundaries. Increasingly Rabe, and Emily Doolittle. One half active, the quartet concluded of the acclaimed contemporary its first French tour in 2019 and flute/piano duo Tiresias with Mark multiplies collaborations with Takeshi McGregor, Rachel has also internationally renowned artists collaborated with Yannick Nézet- such as Laura Andriani, Yegor Séguin, Judith Forst, Heather Dyachkov, Yukari Cousineau, Jutta Pawsey, the Bozzini Quartet, Puchhammer, Silvia Mandolini and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Vincent Lauzer. The ensemble has Caroline Shaw, and Richard also been a collaborative quartet at Reed Parry of Arcade Fire. Her Domaine Forget since 2018. interdisciplinary adventures have led to work with photo-based artist Involved in the display of today’s SD Holman, playwright/director repertoire, the ensemble showcases David Bloom, choreographer Tara contemporary music with several Cheyenne Friedenberg, and multi- collaborations and creations by media provocateur Paul Wong. Quebec composers. The quartet performed the world premiere of Rachel’s debut CD, Cosmophony, Francis Ubertelli’s Quartetto No. has been praised as “brilliant” and 2 at the Canadian Music Center

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