Flunky Jim from Canadiana Suite
performed by New Music New York
William George, tenor
Mitchell Johnson, violin
Malina Rauschenfels, cello

Flunky Jim (from Canadiana Suite)

Running Into The Sea
Music by William George
Poem by Robert Sund

Performed by Erato Ensemble
from the concert "The Living Ocean"
November 26, 2016

Vaughn Chauvin, baritone
Carolyn Shiau, piano
Jeff Pelletier, bass flute
Julie Begg, bass clarinet
Stefan Hintersteininger, cello

The Living Ocean

Running Into The Sea

Text by Renée Sarojini Saklikar
"When speaking of myth, what might an ancient love-story reveal for our local situation: city of harbours, hemmed by an inlet, by mountains, site of arrival—where extraction of resources means engagement with powerful forces? In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, what seeds might burgeon into a new re-telling? For me, this past winter, the letter E, for energy, for earth, surged into this story of loss at that most poignant of threshold moments: to look behind!—the more I read into myth, the more she came to me: an eco-resistance-warrior-princess, tunneling up through rock and concrete, insistent that I pay attention and ask: what’s happening on the mountain?"
~Renée Sarojini Saklikar

I found the message and amazing images in Renée’s poem very inspiring musically. The final text is a condensation of a longer poem. In adapting, my goal was to focus on the story line of Eurydice as eco-warrior returning to the world, specifically Burnaby Mountain (her earthly home) to protect it from current environmental threats. Eurydice here manifests in several different characteristics: idealistic young protestor, timeless aboriginal Earth Mother, fragile lost girl of myth, innocent folk singer, avenging angel. Each aspect of her personality is represented musically, tied together by a fragment from Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits.”
~ William George

The Song Of Orpheus

Burnaby Mountain Song: Eurydice

In Archibald Lampman’s poem Unrest, the narrator struggles in vain to find peace of mind and music of the soul. To illustrate this struggle musically, I have used augmented chords, Viennese tri-chords, and my own ‘unrest’ chord. The melody tries to resolve but the piano keeps changing tonality and keeps its resolution just beyond reach.

Unrest

EAST

3 Moon Songs of Li-Po - 3. Quiet Night Thoughts

3 Moon Songs of Li-Po - 2. The Moon At Jade Pass

3 Moon Songs of Li-Po - 1. The Drinker, The Moon & His Shadow

The Drugs Don’t Work was commissioned by the UBC Medical Research Department in 2009, as part of a project to examine alternative ways to assess medical trial responses. Artists in different media chose transcriptions of conversations from medical trial participants and interpreted them artistically. This piece is a verbatim setting of the response from the subject identified only as Interviewee #4.

FIRE

The Drugs Don't Work

The Peace of Wild Things: Wendell Berry In Song

A garden in Vancouver

In Whitman’s poem Vigil Strange I Kept On the Field One Night, I was drawn to the contrast of the tenderness of the narrator caring for his wounded and dying patient with the brutality
of the war raging around them. Musically, I was aiming for a folk-like quality in the melody, representing love, optimism and peace, accented by dissonances in the piano underlying the reality of the situation. I see the violin as an abstract angel, hovering over the dying soldier.

I Sing the Body Electric: Walt Whitman & the Beat Generation

Vigil Strange I Kept On the Field One Night

Will's songs and vocal chamber works have been performed and commissioned by such organizations as New Music New York, Erato Ensemble, Vancouver International Song Institute, Holy Rosary Cathedral, and The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. His cantata "The Virtues" was nominated for a 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Mr. George is the recipient of multiple ASCAPlus Awards, and is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

William George, composer