Brilliant. Magnificent. Inspirational. Film: Picnic at Hanging Rock. Uluru. Dreamtime. Excellent work!

JBRH 010

So Mad

Brenda Ray D'Ya Hear Me! Naffi Years 1979-1983

D'Ya Hear Me!

D'ya Hear Me! naffi  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Brenda Ray

For bass clarinet, double bass, piano, and percussion.

Performed by Anthony Thompson, Adam Scime, Wesley Shen, and Dan Morphy as part of the Curiosity Festival's finale "Metal," presented by the Toy Piano Composers.

Recorded by John Gray at Heliconian Hall, Toronto, ON, April 9, 2016.

microlattice (bass clarinet, double bass, piano, percussion)

Musipal

Performers: East Side Quartet

Program Notes:
This two-movement work explores the energy in sunlight. The first movement, titled Reflect, focuses on the frenetic, scattered motion of light waves. The music contains only a few short gestures, but it jumps to and between them at speed, as if it were following a ray of light over contrasting surfaces. Each gesture is imbued with that same, active motion, exemplified by the use of extreme ranges in the piano and tightly interlocked rhythms in the ensemble. Contrarily, the patient second movement, titled Absorb, acts as a solar-powered circuit. The music begins in the low register and breathes slowly while the circuit receives and stores energy. As the power accumulates, the electricity begins to hum, an effect that is personified by drones in the violin and viola. Finally, after flickering on and off, the movement climaxes with a powerful release of energy, followed by a steady, sequential descent in register as the circuit runs out of power.

Sunburst for piano quartet

For Two Double Basses
Recording performed by Corin Long and Michael Tiepold.
Commissioned by Konzerthaus Dortmund
First Performed 17 February 2006, in Konzerthaus Dortmund, by Corin Long and Michael Tiepold.

Blue And Gray (2005)

Povarovo - Ronald

SENTIRE CON TATTO - di Daniela Terranova
String Quartet (2019)
Commissioned by Regia Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna
Performed by QUARTETTO PROMETEO (Giulio Rovighi, Aldo Campagnari, Massimo Piva, Francesco Dillon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbPx7orR7Y8

Sentire con tatto (string quartet)

"Good Bye Forever" is one of my favourite tracks from one of my all-time favourite albums, "Lilies," released by Arovane on City Centre Offices in 2004. This short piece is an improvisational piano vignette on that beautiful theme, with special atmospheric treatments by Uwe Zahn himself. It marks the beginning of our musical conversation that we have begun in December of 2017 and continue to this day... Stay tuned for more!

Mike Lazarev plays Arovane's "Good Bye Forever"

Sounds from the Black Ark: The Very Best of Lee Perry

Sunshine Dub

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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.

microlattice (bass clarinet, double bass, piano, percussion)

Bekah Simms

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