• Search Commissions

Premiere Title of Commission Composer Listen
10/01/2021 Ave Maria Riho Esko Maimets Listen Close

In the summer of 2013 I visited my great aunt in Estonia. At the time I was looking for inspiration to write a new piece for Soundstreams. Although my great aunt was a citizen of Soviet Estonia, she was one of the very few people who was allowed to travel to the West - to Canada, to visit my family.

10/01/2021 Open Road James Rolfe Listen Close

Whitman's long lines and purple passages are a challenge to set and to sing. The soloists deliver the more personal, incantatory lines, with the choir responding, shading, interfering, echoing.

05/14/2013 Distance Fuhong Shi Listen Close

Distance is scored for mixed ensemble including four Chinese traditional instruments and Western instruments.

03/05/2021 Carrousel Michael Oesterle Listen Close

Carrousel is a quartet for keyboards: Glockenspiel, Vibraphone, Marimba, and Piano.

01/27/2013 Five and a Half Bridges James Rolfe Listen Close

10/11/2020 Sentir de cacerolas Analia Llugdar Listen Close

This piece was inspired by the 'cacerolazos', a demonstration accompanied by the clattering of saucepans in protest against Argentina’s economic and political situation that culminated in December 2001. The words are from the poem Oración de un desocupado (Prayer of the Unemployed) by Argentinian poet Juan Gelman.

03/02/2021 White Label Experiment (for John Cage) Nicole Lizée Listen Close

Composed to celebrate what would have been the hundredth birthday of avant-garde pioneer John Cage, this work pays homage to the ideas and philosophies embodied in his music and his words. Lizée—noted for incorporating turntables and other electronic devices into the concert-music setting—here makes extensive use of various objets trouvés (including typewriters and vinyl records on portable turntables struck with mallets) as percussion instruments, regardless of their original purpose.

11/29/2011 Tango Melancólico Serouj Kradjian Listen Close

Kradjian was moved to compose this piece after hearing a tango on his alarm clock early one morning while he was studying in Germany. The sound of the bandoneón and the fiery accentuated rhythms and melodies of Argentinian composer Ástor Piazzolla all provided inspiration for this work.

11/29/2011 Tango: Del Amor Imprevisto James Rolfe Listen Close

Rolfe’s own words best describe the challenge he faced in composing this work—the difficulty of writing from outside of the culture and style—and how he rose to meet it: “As an Anglo-Canadian composer writing a tango, I’m skating on thin ice. How can my stolid northern soul find its way into the very particular language, singing, rhythm, and soul of this dance?"

11/29/2011 Serbian Tango Ana Sokolovic Listen Close

The intention behing this commission was to create new approaches to a familiar form by seeing it afresh through a contemporary lens. Sokolović’s contribution is inspired both by jazz and by the traditional Serbian dance known as kolo.

02/24/2011 HeX Andrew Staniland Listen Close

'Hex' explores a series of shifting accents, pulses, dynamics, and textures, ranging from explosive ensemble passages to extremely subtle whistled textures, from highly complex melodic sections to the use of heavy-duty aluminum foil.

04/29/2010 Mallet Quartet Steve Reich Listen Close

'Mallet Quartet' marked the first time Reich had written for the five-octave marimba. Written in three movements (fast, slow, fast), the work involves a series of interlocking patterns among which the four players move. The marimbas create a dense harmonic background in the two fast movements, while in the central slow movement the texture becomes unexpectedly spacious and transparent.

04/27/2010 Time Zones Peter Hatch Listen Close

Written in up to eight different parts with eight different tempi and/or downbeats, 'Time Zones' gives each of the two players’ four mallets its own “time zone.” Performance of the work requires a drum-set player’s “limb independence,” but with the drummer’s independent use of arms and legs replaced by independence in the use of the mallets—a feat that Hatch describes as “not unlike trying to rub your tummy while tapping your head, but much more difficult.”

04/27/2010 Look on Glass Michael Oesterle Listen Close

Though the marimba and the Japanese koto come from divergent musical cultures, their timbres complement each other: both have a particular contemplative quality. Oesterle exploits the sonic texture of this unusual combination of instruments extensively throughout this piece, drifting from extremes of density and volume within a restrained melodic contour.

02/24/2010 Cantares José Evangelista Listen Close

'Cantares' ('Singings') is based on sixteen traditional Spanish songs, mostly from Castile. Encompassing religious songs, love songs, social songs, and a lullaby, much of the material would originally have been sung a cappella, with only rhythmic accompaniment. Evangelista sought a way of presenting them in new ways without imposing a harmonic language.

05/21/2008 Pan Trio Michael Colgrass Listen Close

In considering what other group of instruments would best complement the pan’s idiosyncratic timbre, Colgrass decided to emphasize its warmth and its sustain with harp, marimba, vibraphone, and other small percussion instruments. The result is an immense palette of musical colours not found in more conventional ensembles.

06/04/2021 Fanfare for a Blue Mountain Tryggvi M. Baldvinsson Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Iron Lips Fuzzy Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Fanfare/Processional Chris Paul Harman Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Toronto Fanfare Anders Hillborg Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Without Fanfare Gary Kulesha Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours

06/04/2021 Joy Raymond Luedeke Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Murphy Fanfare Kelly-Marie Murphy Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Axis: Bold as Brass Andrew Staniland Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.

06/04/2021 Fanfare Rolf Wallin Listen Close

The Toronto Fanfare Project, a series of eclectic concerts presented as part of the 2006 soundaXis festival of music and architecture, offered an elaborate five-day welcome to this rich literature for brass ensemble, animating some of the great architectural and acoustical masterpieces in the core of Toronto with a celebration of the music of Canada and its northern neighbours.