Orchestras Canada

Two of Montreal’s most innovative classical ensembles are working together on a joint performance at the end of May: on May 30, Appassionata and the Ensemble contemporain de Montreal are partnering on a program entitled L’Amour Sorcier. The concert will be jointly conducted by ECM+ artistic director Veronique Lacroix and Appassionata music director Daniel Myssyk, and it features two new pieces written specially for the occasion by composers Analia Llugdar and Andrew Staniland, along with Ana Sokolović’s Nine Proverbs, and Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo. Not only is it a musically rich evening, the presentation will also feature original videos, projected onto a giant transparent screen with the musicians and soloists also visible on stage. Soloists for the evening are singer Julie Boulianne and electric guitarist Tim Brady, and the event takes place at the acoustically-superb Salle Pierre-Mercure.

Last week, the National Arts Centre Orchestra live-streamed its 2012-13 season launch – and by all accounts, it was a stellar affair. The season marks Pinchas Zukerman’s 14th as music director – and it’s action packed! Highlights include a Beethoven festival, a tour of northern Canada, two world premieres by Peter Paul Koprowski and Ana Sokolovic, an all-Strauss program, presented in partnership with Montreal’s L’Orchestre Métropolitain (and led by that orchestra’s popular Maestro, Yannick Nézet-Séguin), chamber concerts, children’s concerts, pops performances, solo recitals, and a pair of guest orchestras: Les Violons du Roy and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. For more information, please visit nac-cna.ca.

At its concert on November 30, Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra will launch its latest recording, Maki Ishii Live. The new recording features the orchestra (led by music director Alex Pauk) and percussionist Ryan Scott – and the concert will include one of the works on the CD, South – Fire – Summer, described as “a colossal multi-percussion and marimba solo with sparse orchestral accompaniment, which mounts to a powerful, climactic finale.”

The program (which takes place at Koerner Hall, Royal Conservatory of Music) will also include Valentin Silvestrov’s Postludium, Ana Sokolovic’s Nine Proverbs, and Rocanã by Unsuk Chin.

A tantalizing glimpse of what’s to come at the Winnipeg Symphony’s New Music Festival 2010 was revealed yesterday, with the announcement that the WSO will debut a a new work by Darren Miller, the Saskatchewan composer who won the 2010 Emerging Composer Competition of the Canadian Music Centre, Prairie Region. Miller’s work will be premiered on February 10, 2010.  According to the media announcement, “the winning composition by Miller, for amma, was chosen from orchestral works submitted by emerging Canadian composers, all of whom have Prairie connections. Each entry was judged by a jury, which included the WSO’s composer-in-residence – and former Emerging Composer Competition winner – Vincent Ho.”

The National Arts Centre has just announced the most recent winners of the NAC Awards, three $75,000 packages encompassing musical commissions and residencies.  The honorees, well-known in the Canadian orchestral community are (alphabetically) John Estacio of Edmonton; Peter Paul Koprowski of Ottawa; and Ana Sokolovic of Montreal.  Each composer will be commissioned to write three works that will be performed by the NAC Orchestra over the next five years, and will help teach student musicians as part of the NAC’s Summer Music Institute.  The NAC initiative was established in 2002, with Gary Kulesha, Denys Bouliane and Alexina Louie the inaugural recipients. The goal is to present the awards about every five years in future.