Premiered by Montreal’s Quatuor Bozzini on 14th Nov., 2015. Co-presented by Blue Moss Ensemble and the Music Gallery with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Program Note: Scientists have recently revealed that a species of moth in the Kirindy forest of Madagascar drinks tears from the eyes of birds. Birds can usually fly away from these predators, but not while sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly. Sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis “shaped like an ancient harpoon,” with hooks and barbs. It is inserted under the eyelid where the barbs are used to anchor it in place. The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears. (Deborah MacKenzie)

Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds

"French Curves, Abram's 2002-3 work was a Canada Council-funded commission from les Coucous Bénévoles, a now-defunct chamber group known for their preference for new works, despite their Baroque instrumentation."

You can read more about Abram and his piece, French Curves, in the CMC Library Residency post by Nick Storring.

French Curves | John Abram (2003)

Alan Turing rode his bicycle.
He rode his bicycle to work.
He rode to Bletchely Park.
Riding, the chain on his bicycle comes off.
He rode his bicycle, counting - until the chain came off. He rode his bicycle, counting.
Counting, he stopped before the chain came off.
He fixed the chain.
Riding again, counting,
he rode his bicycle to Bletchley Park. Counting.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. In 2012, Turing’s 1944 reports on his “speech system” Delilah, were finally pulled from the British National Archives and opened to the public. This functional machine, designed to scramble and descramble voice messages, was so far ahead of its time that it resembles the way we currently store music in digital format.

The musical construction of Delilah for solo flute was motivated by Turing’s unorthodox search for humanity or human intelligence within patterns and systems. It uses modules within a scheme of a triangular number sequences, applied to a metric grid of constant alternation between two and three. The music constantly resets, like the chain on Turing’s bicycle (one of the stories of Turing’s eccentricities related by his colleagues at Bletchley Park - headquarters of the code breaking brain-trust for Britain in WW II). It searches for answers to an unasked question, allowing this systematic approach to create subtle emotional shifts. Like Turing, it presents its puzzle playfully: in its persistence it becomes serious and then, as it begins to wallow in the process itself, lightens its mood again: a simple arc in a pattern of system, method, and discovery, it’s greatest motivation the joy of moving forward.

Delilah was commissioned by Mark Takeshi McGregor, with financial assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts

Delilah for solo flute by Michael Oesterle

Shieling [n]

once shelters in remote places that now stand derelict, largely because the movement of livestock has ceased

Dominick Tyler | Uncommon Ground


Thanks to Sarah Harmsworth, Kyara Nelsen, and Kelaiah Horat.

Shieling

Thanks to the Quatuor Bozzini.

Premiered May 16, 2017 at the Goldcorp Centre of the Arts, Vancouver, BC Canada.

Quatuor Bozzini

Night Sea

Kaija Saariaho's landmark work for flute and electronics, NoaNoa (1992), performed live on 13 February 2018 by Mark Takeshi McGregor (flute) and Emilie LeBel (electronics) at the University of Montana.

The title refers to a woodcut by Paul Gauguin called NoaNoa (“Fragrant”). It also refers to a travel diary of the same name, written by Gauguin during his visit to Tahiti in 1891 - 93. The fragments of phrases selected for the voice part come from this book. - KS

Kaija Saariaho: NoaNoa for flute and electronics

Interprété par le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, dirigé par Dina Gilbert au Bain Mathieu, le 8 juin 2018 
Enregistrement effectué en concert (par Kevin Gironnay)
Document d'archive

Mes plus grands remerciements à Normand Forget, à Alain Beauchesne, à Jérémy Chignec, à Lorraine Vaillancourt, à toute l'équipe du NEM, et aux interprètes:

Musiciens du NEM:
Geneviève Savoie, flûte
Julie Sirois-Leclerc, hautbois
Martin Carpentier, clarinette basse
*Charlotte Layec, clarinette basse
Michel Bettez, basson
Jocelyn Veilleux, cor
Lise Bouchard, trompette
Angelo Muñoz, trombone
Julien Grégoire, percussions
*Keiko Devaux, piano
Johanne Morin, violon
Lyne Allard, violon
François Vallières, alto
Julie Trudeau, violoncelle
Yannick Chênevert, contrebasse
(*musiciennes invitées)

Ebb (2018)

the lovely dirt of public spaces
for fixed media

Commissioned by Núcleo Música Nova, «microFOLIA», Universidade Estadual do Paraná

the lovely dirt of public spaces (2018)

2020.02.08.

Rite of Spring recorded all on a spinet (and samples used with a MIDI keyboard for notes out of range)

Le sacre du printemps Premier tableau: L'adoration du clavier - 1. Introduction

Emilie Cecilia LeBel - Canadian composer
New album out on bandcamp:  https://redshiftmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/field-studies

the lovely dirt of public spaces (2018)

EmilieCecilia

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