World premiere (cello solo version) of "metamold," performed by Crash Ensemble (Ryan McAdams, conductor) on April 25 at Smock Alley in Dublin, Ireland. Part of New Music Dublin.

Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Bringham Young University.

metamold (sextet + electronics)

Single Red Flower
I: a few warbles for the little dead
II: the big alive, feeling small
completed July 2022

Performed November 20 2022 by Standing Wave at St. George the Martyr, Toronto, ON. Part of "Ex Machina" presented by New Music Concerts.

ABOUT
“single Red flower” was written shortly before, during, and after the death of my two rats Parsley and Sage. They were my pandemic companions, providing much love and friendship during two awful years of lockdown in a small Toronto basement apartment. The two movements are threaded with residual emotion from their passing. 

Having never dealt with losing my own pet before – let alone two in quick succession - I was mystified, touched, and overwhelmed with the rituals of their little deaths: laying them in the cage for their cagemates to process their death; picking out a flower pot, soil, and seeds in which to bury them; and laying them to rest in a backyard rental in which we would soon be leaving. Only one plant bloomed from the planter, a beautiful red flower of a species I have never seen before. 

While I often try to keep my emotions out of my music, this piece inadvertently became strange, small, and ritualistic, reflecting these experiences. Little, quiet sounds are brought to the forefront and amplified to fill the space in the same way that little things can fill our hearts beyond bearing.

single Red flower (sextet)

Performed live by Black Box Ensemble, November 23 2024 at Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, NYC.
Tyler Neidermayer, Recording and mixing engineer

Leonard Bopp, conductor
Annie Nikunen, flute
Tyler Neidermayer, bass clarinet
Lauren Conroy, violin
Jordan Bartow, cello
Yifei Xu, keyboard
J Clancy, pecussion

Originally commissioned by Ensemble Paramirabo. 

ABOUT
“Stygian pulse” (2023) refers to a chronic throbbing pain in my left shoulder and neck that I have been experiencing for over ten years. It is shapeshifting in its colour and intensity and even its sonic properties, but most days it is an inky, dark, and dull recurrence. The normal medical routes for pain relief have proven ineffective beyond a temporary period.

While the pain doesn’t majorly inhibit any of my daily activities, my inability to alleviate it has
created a sort of “settling:” the pain has become mundane, foreverhere – unpredictable in its exact rhythm or temperament, but with a certitude that it will return, beating darkly. As a feature of my body for over a third of my time on Earth, I’m quite sure it’s here until the end. My stygian pulse – tiny focused outbursts until I die.

Stygian Pulse (sextet + electronics)

Performed January 19 2020 in Mazzoleni Hall, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, by the Glenn Gould New Music Ensemble under the direction of Brian Current. 
Kendra Dyck, soprano. 
Allison Janney, harp.
Andrew Gordon Bell and Bekah Simms, electronics.
Recorded by Pouya Hamidi.

Programme note: Bestiary I & II, for amplified soprano and harp, chamber orchestra and electronics, is a compendium of creatures and plantlife that inhabit the musical narratives of singer/songwriter/harpist Joanna Newsom on her album "Ys." Starting with a simple quotation of one of Newsom's introductory harp lines, the electronics envelop and populate this new musical landscape in strange ways, growing darker. The following movements, "Fauna" and "Flora," treat simple musical and text material with a warbling reverence. Much of the material - both acoustic and electronic - is gleaned from Newsom's music in some way, especially the digital artefacts of her unique voice when slowed down in extreme ways. 

Using the fantastical and sometimes surreal aesthetics of Medieval European bestiaries as a guiding principle, the source material is filtered through a fog with the intention of creating a more curious kind of beauty.

Bestiary I & II (amplified soprano & harp, chamber orchestra and electronics)

** *
This page is predominantly live recordings - please check out studio recordings here:
https://bekahsimms.bandcamp.com/
***

Composer Bekah Simms hails from St. John's, Newfoundland and is currently based in Glasgow after nine years living and working in Toronto. Her varied musical output has been heralded as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music), “tough, even gutsy...with a sure sense of original and vibrant colours” (Vancouver Sun), and lauded for its "sheer range of ingenious material, expressive range and sonic complexity" (The Journal of Music.) Propelled equally by fascination and terror toward the universe, her work is often filtered through the personal lens of her anxiety, resulting in nervous, messy, and frequently heavy electroacoustic musical landscapes. Recent interests in just intonation and virtual instruments have resulted in increasingly lush and strange harmonic environments.

Bekah's music has been widely performed across North America and Europe. She has worked with some of the top interpreters of contemporary music internationally, including Crash Ensemble - with whom she is currently an artist-in-residence - Riot Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, and l’Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal. Bekah has also been the recipient of over 35 awards, competitive selections, nominations, and prizes, including the 2019 Barlow Prize and the 2023 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. The resulting work from the Barlow Prize, "metamold," was nominated for the 2022 Gaudeamus Award. Works from her debut album “impurity chains” were nominated in both 2019 and 2020 for the JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Her music has thrice been included in the Canadian Section's official submission to World Music Days (2016, 2019, & 2021), and in 2016 the CBC included her among their annual 30 hot classical musicians under 30.

Bekah is a Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, following previous academic positions at the University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario.  Her principal teachers during academic studies were Gary Kulesha and Andrew Staniland, alongside significant private study with Clara Iannotta and Martin Bédard.

Bekah Simms

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