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

'Sister' by Edmund Finnis (2013) Lucy Railton - Cello, Aisha Orazbayeva - Violin

Piano 1, Aya Yamamoto
Piano 2, Donia Jarrar

This piece was inspired by what began as a night -time drive with friends beneath the desert sky on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. We would drive out into the desert, with nothing but the moon and stars, the bedus lights, to guide our way. Leaving the heavily polluted city sky behind us, the stars would appear one by one as the curtain of pollution was slowly lifted. The constant whir of the car engine was like a steady pulse that put us to sleep.
In the morning when we returned to the city, the traffic and disorderly, overcrowded streets welcomed us. Driving in that city is a constant brush with death, with cars driving the wrong way down one-way streets as policemen yawn and turn their heads, horse and donkey-drawn carriages blocking the sides of the highways, children hopping rides on the backs of buses, women driving with their babies on their laps, three or four men on one motorcycle, and pedestrians getting injured on a daily basis. Drivers will not even stop or move out of the way for an ambulance.
Eventually we made it to Khan El-Khalili, Cairos famous bazaar and souk in the Islamic District. The souk is filled with coffee shops and hookah bars, where we spent the day. Its narrow alleys and cobblestoned streets are filled with beautiful Egyptian silver jewelry stands, gold, spices, perfumes, accessories, oils and dessert shops where lokmit aadi, deep fried doughnut holes, are made.
My friends and I ended the day with a visit to Cairo Jazz Club, one of the best venues for live music in the city. There was dancing, there were drinks, and then there was dawn. We walked along the Nile. There were no stars, only a reflection of the citys lights on the river water.

-Donia Jarrar 

Cairo, I Love You (for two pianos)

Svadba by Ana Sokolovic

An a cappella opera that takes place the night before a fiancée, Milica, leaves for her wedding. Her girlfriends keep her company all night long and engage in raucous ‘girltalk’, invoking pagan rituals as they prepare her for the impending wedding. What elevates this ‘girltalk’ to a supernaturally exhilarating experience is Ana Sokolovic's style of composition. Using existing Slavic/Balkan peasant folk tales, myths and traditions as her text source, she draws on her native Balkan folk music as a source of inspiration for all her music. She transforms the music and text into her own unique onomatopoeic language and transports listeners to a world of magic realism. The singers have to use every single possible vocal technique - combining opera singing with Balkan folk singing, overtones, extreme chest voice, heightened nasal voice, whispering, creating a wildly inventive intense palette of colours.

Svadba by Ana Sokolovic

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

TEXTUREN 
for soprano, flute, saxophone, percussion, piano, violin and electronics
performed and written for the WET INK ENSEMBLE

Libretto based on botanist Michael Sundue's "A monograph of Ascogrammitis, a new genus of grammitid ferns (Polypodiaceae)". Brittonia 62(4): 357-399. © 2010 The New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx

on hat [now] ART 186

WET INK ENSEMBLE & guests
Ariana Lamon-Anderson (clarinets), Eliot Gattegno (saxophones), Ian Carroll (trombone), Andrew McIntosh (viola), Eric Moore (cello), Scott Worthington (contrabass)

Carl Christian Bettendorf - conductor

Rozalie Hirs - poetry
Michael Sundue - taxonomy 


TEXTUREN

For amplified harpsichord and piano.  rocKeys duo.  Katelyn Clark, harpsichord and Luciane Cardassi, piano.  Live recording.  Friday Evening at the Rolston.  Rolston Recital Hall, The Banff Centre.  Feb 4, 2011.

Dubbelspoor by Louis Andriessen

This is the live recording of an improvised piece performed on organetto.  It was performed live at the church in Skagastrond, Iceland, in March 2013.  

Organetto improv on e iceland 2013

Anna Pidgorna (b. 1985) is a composer and media artist who combines her interests in sonic objects, visual art and writing to create works that are dramatic and picturesque. She works in both the acoustic and electronic realms, and is quickly rising on the contemporary music scene. Her mini-opera for voice and electronics, "Mirror, mirror," was premiered by Janice Jackson at Halifax's Oscillations Festival in February 2012. "Light-play through curtain holes" for solo accordion was recently included in ISCM Canadian Section's official submission to World New Music Days 2013. Pidgorna was born in Ukraine and is heavily influenced by her heritage. Ukrainian folk themes appear as bird song in her first orchestral work, "Tintamarre," and form the backbone of her second chamber opera, "On the Eve of Ivan Kupalo." Ms. Pidgorna completed her undergraduate studies at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick in 2007 and is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Calgary. This year she will be participating in a prestigious workshop with Kaija Saariaho and Anssi Karttunen at Carnegie Hall, and the National Art Centre's Composers Program in Ottawa. Days.

Association of Canadian Women Composers

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

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

Anna Pidgorna

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