À La Dérive

Sketch for Cello, Double Bass and Piano

Performed by Erica Williamson
GGS April 2013

Improv On Bach

Performed by Daniel Wheeler, tenor
Simon Docking, Piano
Vocalypse Production Opera From Scratch Workshop
August 2013

Homecoming

Performance by Joëlle Mauris
University of Toronto New Music Festival
January 2013

Qui Lazarum Resuscitasti

Clickidi-Poppidi-Boo

Performed by the University of Toronto Wind Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Gillian MacKay.
March 2013, University of Toronto

One Last Thing Before I Go

Student Composer Concert
University of Toronto
Walter Hall, 7 pm, January 19, 2016

Amina Holloway - Cello 
Markéta Ornovà - Piano

Prosopagnosia

Piece commissioned by Thin Edge New Music Collective

Performed on June 12, 2015, by:

Stacie Dunlop, soprano
Sarah Yunji Moon, flute
Liz Eccleston, oboe
Anthony Thompson, clarinet
Olaf Szester, percussion


Perceptions De LaFontaine

For accordion, piano, percussion and tape. 

Performed on March 24, 2016 by Wesley Shen, Branko Džinović and Evan Bowen at the Caution Tape Sound Collective's concert "Tetrad." 

Words Fail Me

Performed by David Dias da Silva and Jacob Struzik at the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab 2016. 

The piece is about Poveglia Island, a place in Italy deemed the “most haunted island in the world.” It is closed to tourists and fishermen stay away from it. The island has gained its reputation due to the twisted and quite morbid events that took place on its soil. Indeed, between 1973-1804, Poveglia became a quarantine station for the ills affected by the plague. A total of 160 000 people would have lost their lives due to the disease on the tiny piece of land. Later in the 1920s, a mental hospital was built on Poveglia. The legend has it that patients would witness paranormal activities in the walls of the institution. Moreover, the doctor at head of the institution was cruel and would make gruesome experiment on his protégés. The hospital close in 1968, and no significant activities took place on the island after that.
The two clarinetists represent two ghosts on Poveglia Island, who are simply wandering, unaware of each other’s presence. They go about their bland, day-to-day “activities,” unless they are disturbed by the presence of visitors. Then, the unwelcome guests whom illegally infiltrated the island create a state of panic.
The players are asked to move around the stage according to instructions indicated in the score and detailed in these notes. The work is divided in Tableaux (one Tableau per system). Each has its own texture and set of moves associated with it. The music itself is sometimes unmeasured, sometimes unmeasured, and at times free but with one part in relation to the other.

Poveglia

Played by unassisted fold in Pavia, Italy, at highSCORE Festival.

Thanks to artsNB for supporting my participation in the program.

Birds Migrate to the Moon

DMA Recital February 12, 2017 -2

String Quartet

Aftermath

Performed by Toronto Winds in Toronto on February 27, 2018. Conducted by Dylan Maddix, and featuring harpist Kristan Toczko

Black Winter

* The title of the piece must be adjusted according to the year of performance. The statistic from the U.S Center for Atmospheric Research claims that, if global warming keeps increasing at the current rate, the Arctic will be free of ice by 2040. Thus, the number of years in the title must be written according to the formula “2040-X,” X being the present year.

	The piece is a commentary on the changing state and distribution of water on Earth due to climate change.  As part of the consequences of global warming, an increase in floods and severe droughts is expected. These changes can be heard as the “water” transforms over the course of the piece.

The performance is by the West Choir under the direction of Joseph Ohrt, on April 14, 2018 in Toronto.

Thoughts on the Conservation of the Earth in Words and Music

There will be no ice left in the Arctic in 22* years from now

Piece written for ECM+ for their Generation2018 tour. Performance in Toronto on November 11, 2018.

About the piece:
Elles ont peint le crépuscule de noir et de blanc was inspired by the work of American photographer Gregory Crewdson, more specifically by his Twilight series of 1998-2002. His pictures are remarkable in that they are incredibly detailed and cinematic. The decor and characters’ clothing in his portraits are usually old-fashioned and mismatched, showing a modest American small-town lifestyle. Crewdson aims to capture not an action, but a moment, a state of mind. His meticulously planned backdrops create an atmosphere that enhances, and sometimes even translates, the emotions of the characters in that instant. Crewdson often presents people living through extreme emotions, including those experienced as a result of the brain reaching its breaking point, such as deep sadness, complete exhaustion, exhilaration, frenzy and hysteria.
 
 Similarly, Elles ont peint le crépuscule de noir et de blanc explores extremes, as reflected in the range of instruments chosen and dynamics of the orchestration throughout the work. It is the soundscape of the piece, like the settings in Crewdson’s work, that creates certain moods and hopefully evoke an emotional response in the audience. Each section of the piece represents a particular state of mind as seen in Crewdson’s pictures. These contrasting sections morph into one another, and the fluidity of the music aims to embark the audience on a journey, one that has an underlying tension and unexpected turns.

Picture:
Gregory Crewdson, from his Twilight series (1998-2002)

Elles ont peint le crépuscule de noir et de blanc

Invention and Toccata - I. Invention

Invention and Toccata - II. Toccata

Duo Holz
Michael Murphy - Percussion
Aysel Taghi-Zada - Violin

Premièred at the CMC on April 3, 2019

Taken by the Locos

Performed by Tristan Durie at Caution Tape Sound Collective concert on November 25, 2019, Array Space, Toronto, ON

Listen if You Dare

I'm a Canadian composer interested in new music for soloists and ensembles, and in interdisciplinary art. Go to www.sophiedupuismusic.com to see more of my work, including videos of pieces with theatre and movement.

Sophie Dupuis

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