ACWC 40th Anniversary - September

Title: “It was not all a dream”
Performers: Mark Calvert, tenor; Sally Schlichting, flute; Meghan Johnson, cello.
October 1, 2016, Juneau, Alaska

Program note: These words by Lord Byron, from his much longer poem “Darkness,” seemed to me eerily predictive of the environmental catastrophe that awaits us – possibly even in this century – if we humans don’t stop producing and using fossil fuels.

It was not all a dream - Leila Lustig

White Cat Blues - three songs for soprano and piano; poetry by Lorna Crozier.

1. The White Cat
2. The Colour Blue
3. Shadow

The three poems are about the colour blue - sometimes beautiful, sometimes cool or sad, sometimes just itself.

Premiered by soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen and pianist Terence Dawson in 2010 at the Vancouver International Song Institute at UBC.

http://www.leslieuyeda.com

White Cat Blues - Leslie Uyeda

Kontraband Kollektif - Oizys
Voice, Tenor Saxophone, Double Bass, Drum kit
Lieke van der Voort, Emily Steinwall, Hayden Farrar, Alfie Vienneau 
Humber College Studio, 2016-2017

First song of the EP Atropos, this song is part of an aural account of illness, suicide, loss and and my personal conflicting feelings surrounding these events. For more in depth information, please refer to an interview done in 2018: https://acourseindying.com/interview-when-your-father-commits-suicide/

Kontraband Kollektif was created in 2016 by Lieke van der Voort. Refusing to tie herself down to a single musical project and longing for extended collaborations, Lieke decided that an open concept collective would be the ideal situation. Kontraband Kollektif is an always shifting, moving and inclusive collaborative: anybody can be a part of it.

http://www.kontrabandkollektif.com/index.html

Oizys - Lieke van der Voort

Hard Shell Baptists - single movement work, on Songs for My Mother CD, 2018, for soprano and piano, time: 7:25. 
Mary-Catherine Pazzano, soprano, Carol Ann Weaver, piano.  Recorded Grebel Chapel, University of Waterloo, 2018.  The song is a setting of text by Miriam L. Weaver (mother of Carol Ann) about the vivid rituals and customs of Hard Shell Baptists, as practiced in rural Appalachian Kentucky, USA, in mid 20th C.

https://carolannweaver.com/

Hard Shell Baptists - Carol Ann Weaver

"A Shimmering" Poetry by Sharon Singer music composed by Patricia Morehead

Beste Kalendar - mezzo-soprano, Philip Morehead - piano
August 29, 2020 Koerner Hall, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto 
A Shimmering 2020 World Premiere 3 min.

The inspiration for A Shimmering
It was a perfect night, crisp and still, in late summer, on a northern Ontario lake when the moon painted a silver path across the shimmering water. As the world held its breath, the muse began to whisper. 

Sharon Singer poet and librettist wrote the book and libretto for the opera Isis and Osiris, Gods of Egypt, composed by Peter-Anthony Togni , which had its world premiere at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in 2016. Highlights of the opera are currently streaming on YouTube. Sharon has four published poetry books to her credit as well as three CDs and a long history of spoken word performances in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Dallas, and New York. www.sharonsinger.com

Tonight there is a shimmering
thin gold trail
under a brilliant harvest moon
Last night, the moon
part obscured by dark clouds in a black sky
sat silver high
while a thick mist rose from the lake

Long ago
stars filled the vault
like tossed diamonds
but now the sky is never really black
enough to see the fortune in gemstones scattered there.
Crickets do not listen to the moon.

Patricia Morehead, composer/oboist, PhD Composition University of Chicago, BM in Oboe New England Conservatory, diplomas from Royal Toronto Conservatory, Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, and Accademia Chigiana. She is Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Center. She has taught composition and Twentieth Century Music at Roosevelt University, composition, theory and music history at Dominican University and Columbia College Chicago. Patricia was chosen 2002 “Chicagoan of the Year” by John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune as founder of CUBE Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
Patricia is 1990 first-prize winner in the “Search for New Music” competition by the International League of Women Composers, and recipient of more than 40 commissions by performers in Chicago and festivals abroad. Her CD's “Good News Falls Gently” and "Brass Rail Blues" are available on the Navona Label distributed by Naxos. Patricia’s compositions are published by Jeanné.
www.patriciamorehead.com

A Shimmering - Patricia Morehead and Sharon Singer

Walking in the Public Gardens After Rain

An Afternoon at the Cafe Down the Street

Peace Comes is the premiere of a new upper voice choral work by Gerda Blok-Wilson, inspired by Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

Peace Comes

Glimpse 4

Prophecy Sun recorded Bird Curious almost entirely in her living room using an iPhone, with the exception of one track which was recorded while riding her bicycle. Each song was captured live in one take. The compositions focus on the voice as a symbol of the unconscious, capturing the immediacy of emotive textures and sounds that live inside her head. Her rhythms are of day dreams, future visions and lost love serenades.

Available for free download on the label Panospria May 1, 2012.

Moments pass

A 6-song album of electroacoustic compositions by Carmen Braden, self-released March 2013. carmenbraden.com

4 Inopa Naipo

Written for Isabelle Kerouac's dance piece Third Space

Third Space

Text: Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (1773)
Music: Anna Pidgorna

Soprano: Anna Devin
Piano: John Hess

This work was commissioned by the Irish Art Song Project. Scores, recordings and Irish language resources are available free of charge at: www.cmc.ie/AmhrainEalaineGhaeilge

This song is a setting of excerpts from the most famous of Irish laments, composed by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s (Eileen the Dark O’Connell) upon the death of her young husband Art Ó Laoghaire (Art O’Leary) in 1773. Eileen was honest in her assessment of their marital life. She thought him very handsome and a good lover, and found him generous and loving towards her and their children. He had a temper, however, which she had to navigate and deflect as women have generally been expected to do in patriarchal societies.

The text comes from:

Tórramh-Chaoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire / Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (Sliocht) The Funeral Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire / Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (Excerpt)
As/From: Ferriter ms No. 1, University College Dublin, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. IV (2002)

Tionscadal na nAmhrán Ealaíne Gaeilge 2019 / Irish Art Song Project 2019

Free

Amhráin Chaointe / Keening Songs: I. Caoineadh Eibhlín / Eileen's Lament

Invention and Toccata - I. Invention

Invention and Toccata - II. Toccata

Aurora Borealis

Association of Canadian Women Composers

The ACWC is a professional organization for Canadian women composers, their supporters, and the performers of their music.

A Shimmering - Patricia Morehead and Sharon Singer

ACWC / ACC

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