Reaching a decade is in anyone’s calendar a milestone. And especially so if it happens to be the very first milestone and everything is moving forward with curiosity, lightness and speed.
Much the same might be said for New Music North, celebrating its 10th anniversary here in Thunder Bay.
This wonderfully forward-looking affiliation of contemporary composers, musicians and creative types whose imaginations are free to travel anywhere are presenting an extraordinary concert next week.
Ensemble Mujirushi arrives in the city as part of a Canadian tour: seven sound and media artists specializing in voice, piano, flute, saxophone, violin, electric violin, computers and electronics.
What might this eclectically modern group of new music visionaries sound like? Hard to imagine but that’s just the point: it’s bound to be visually saturated with bright colours, pulses and rhythms that the performers are interpreting from the composers’ graphic scores more like designs on a page rather than notes. Most interesting will be the journey for the audience though, positioned as it is on a receiving end so highly personal, individual and private.
Darlene Chepil Reid waits with excited anticipation to hear what Ensemble Mujirushi will do with one of her compositions on the evening’s program. The teacher of composition in LU’s music department has not heard it performed before so it will truly be new music for everyone, including her, in the concert hall that night. She admitted to feeling some pre-performance butterflies.
“Oh, as a composer that always happens,” she replied with a sunny smile. “Even when we write in regular notation, performers have their own inflection and ways of interpreting. Remember that the music isn’t the black and white on the page. The music is what I conceive in my head and then try through whatever musical notations to translate to the performer. So any performer can pick it up and say ‘this is what was in Darlene’s head at that time’ and ‘I’m going to try and perform it for her.’”
Chepil Reid described her method of new music composition as pushing the boundaries of notation beyond black and white on a page, “which is accurate and inaccurate at the same time. In terms of scrambling rhythms and dissonant music, sometimes traditional notation just doesn’t work. It’s not free enough for me as the composer and certainly not for the performer.”
For newcomers to New Music North, Darlene offered this: “there’s the element of surprise, right? Because I can’t predict what this music will be like (for you). Sure, the performers have rehearsed this music, played and practiced it together, but this is not free improvisation. They know what they want to portray to the audience. But I haven’t heard any of these works before, they are all new. It won’t be the premiere of my work because it’s on the tour, but it will be the first time it’s played in Thunder Bay and the very first time I will have heard it, too.”
Exciting, suspenseful, surprising and new: don’t miss Ensemble Mujirushi at New Music North’s opening concert of their season next Wednesday evening, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m. in the Jean McNulty Recital Hall on LU’s campus; $10 at the door or $5 reserved by email: [email protected].
Much the same might be said for New Music North, celebrating its 10th anniversary here in Thunder Bay.
This wonderfully forward-looking affiliation of contemporary composers, musicians and creative types whose imaginations are free to travel anywhere are presenting an extraordinary concert next week.
Ensemble Mujirushi arrives in the city as part of a Canadian tour: seven sound and media artists specializing in voice, piano, flute, saxophone, violin, electric violin, computers and electronics.
What might this eclectically modern group of new music visionaries sound like? Hard to imagine but that’s just the point: it’s bound to be visually saturated with bright colours, pulses and rhythms that the performers are interpreting from the composers’ graphic scores more like designs on a page rather than notes. Most interesting will be the journey for the audience though, positioned as it is on a receiving end so highly personal, individual and private.
Darlene Chepil Reid waits with excited anticipation to hear what Ensemble Mujirushi will do with one of her compositions on the evening’s program. The teacher of composition in LU’s music department has not heard it performed before so it will truly be new music for everyone, including her, in the concert hall that night. She admitted to feeling some pre-performance butterflies.
“Oh, as a composer that always happens,” she replied with a sunny smile. “Even when we write in regular notation, performers have their own inflection and ways of interpreting. Remember that the music isn’t the black and white on the page. The music is what I conceive in my head and then try through whatever musical notations to translate to the performer. So any performer can pick it up and say ‘this is what was in Darlene’s head at that time’ and ‘I’m going to try and perform it for her.’”
Chepil Reid described her method of new music composition as pushing the boundaries of notation beyond black and white on a page, “which is accurate and inaccurate at the same time. In terms of scrambling rhythms and dissonant music, sometimes traditional notation just doesn’t work. It’s not free enough for me as the composer and certainly not for the performer.”
For newcomers to New Music North, Darlene offered this: “there’s the element of surprise, right? Because I can’t predict what this music will be like (for you). Sure, the performers have rehearsed this music, played and practiced it together, but this is not free improvisation. They know what they want to portray to the audience. But I haven’t heard any of these works before, they are all new. It won’t be the premiere of my work because it’s on the tour, but it will be the first time it’s played in Thunder Bay and the very first time I will have heard it, too.”
Exciting, suspenseful, surprising and new: don’t miss Ensemble Mujirushi at New Music North’s opening concert of their season next Wednesday evening, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m. in the Jean McNulty Recital Hall on LU’s campus; $10 at the door or $5 reserved by email: [email protected].
