10/01/2021 |
Ave Maria |
Riho Esko Maimets |
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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.
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10/01/2021 |
Open Road |
James Rolfe |
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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.
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04/28/2011 |
Symptoms of a Quase Language |
Craig Galbraith |
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In the poem from which Galbraith has taken his text, Vancouver writer Desirée Jung uses a mixture of Portuguese and English to describe a state of mind in which two worlds collide and, for a moment, coexist with one another, intermingled and inseparable. A subtle use of guitar accompaniment and close harmony lends further expression to the composition’s theme of merging realities.
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03/23/2011 |
Breathe |
James Rolfe |
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'Breathe' redefines many musical periods through its blending of ancient and modern texts, and through the performance of new music with historical instruments and techniques. Each part of the piece focuses on one of the four classical elements—air, fire, water, and earth—all of which are strongly present in the poems Rolfe has chosen for his text.
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10/20/2010 |
Dring, Dring |
Ana Sokolovic |
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Sokolović describes 'Dring, Dring' as a “little musical theatre piece inspired by the telephone and the actions we take around that common object.” Divided into four sections (“dialling,” “answering,” “lullaby,” and “bye-bye”), the piece explores both the sounds emitted by the telephone and our human interactions with it.
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02/12/2020 |
The Weaving Maiden |
Chan Ka Nin |
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The story of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden, a tale of two forbidden lovers who are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month over the wings of magpies, is well known in Chinese folklore. Since the Weaving Maiden is from heaven and the Cowherd is of the world below, the music embodies the division between the celestial and the earthly.
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11/14/2004 |
Lonely Hearts |
Giles Swayne |
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Although often very funny and rather saucy (the fourth song, Verse for a Birthday Card, is a mini-fugue on the words “Some people like sex more than others”), they also have distinctly serious and quite poignant undertones.
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11/05/2021 |
Paint the Light |
Jeffery Ryan |
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“When talking about music,” says Ryan, “we often borrow words from visual art to describe sounds. We speak of orchestral ‘colours,’ of ‘brightness’ or ‘darkness,’ and so on.” Paint the Light had its genesis in Ryan’s fascination with actual colours and his interest in the transformation of “colours” within a piece of music.
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02/26/1999 |
Voices |
Harry Freedman |
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Freedman acknowledges that the title of this work “may strike some listeners as being somewhat redundant: one does not, after all, go to a choral concert expecting to see fifty krumhorn players on stage!” But in fact that title points to the innovative nature of the piece, for unlike most choral works, Voices has no meaningful text.
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04/04/2021 |
Heirmos |
Christos Hatzis |
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In composing Heirmos, Hatzis sought to evoke his experience of visiting Greek orthodox monasteries and hearing the monks and nuns sing their Sunday services. Certain aspects of this experience, such as the cantors’ philosophical approach to time and the way the ambient space affected the timbre of their voices, made him aware of unexplored potential in his own work and prompted him to consider alternative ways of thinking about musical continuity.
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05/25/1994 |
The Birminal Trilogy |
Harry Somers |
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Described by the composer as “wurbl inwentions by Edward Lear, boshed to music by Harry Somers,” this trilogy of settings combines one of the eccentric English humourist’s best-known nonsense poems with two other less familiar pieces from his pen.
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04/06/2021 |
Laudes Creationis |
Derek Holman |
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Laudes Creationis exemplifies many of the characteristic aspects of Holman’s musical style. Each movement has a distinct harmonic and rhythmic identity. The three percussionists and the harp add a distinct colour to each section by accenting the angularity of the melodic material. Though certain passages in the work are more tranquil in mood, these usually function as resting places between more actively rhythmical sections.
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