Orchestras Canada

This past weekend, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director John Morris Russell, gave the first-ever mainstage performance of a new work by high school French hornist, composer and member of the Windsor Symphony Youth Orchestra Eric Swiatoschik. The 8-minute long work, entitled Galactic Conquest, debuted at last Spring’s WSO | WSYO Side-by-Side Concert. Maestro Russell was so impressed by the piece that he decided to bring it to the WSO’s main stage at the Chrysler Theatre.

Swiatoschik, a student at Walkerville Collegiate Institute, worked with Assistant Conductor Peter Wiebe as a co-op student last season. Though his tasks were primarily related to data management, music distribution and other administrative work concerning the WSYO, Mr. Wiebe knew that Eric had done a little composing and decided to further that experience by asking him to assist in creating arrangements. “[Eric] was a very quick study,” says Wiebe, “so I decided to ask him to write a piece for the Youth Orchestra, knowing that he would be on schedule and full of creative drive. I was not disappointed!” The work was performed on a pair of Pops Series concerts by the WSO.

For more information about the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, please visit windsorsymphony.com.

CONDUCTORS/CHEFS D’ORCHESTRE

Windsor Symphony Orchestra
Music Director / Directeur musical
Application deadline/Date limite : October 14 octobre 2011

As the snow falls and the cold winds howl, new music festivals across the country continue to delight and amaze. This weekend, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra wraps up the Windsor Canadian Music Festival, a celebration of community and creative partnerships in Windsor, Ontario.

The festival is a joint effort of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and the University of Windsor School of Music, and features talks, school visits, a conductor/composer workshop, a jam session, panel discussions, chamber music and a full orchestral concert. Over the course of the week, audiences will hear works by Michael Lacroix, Ana Sokolovic, Christien Ledroit, Lee Pui Ming, Claude Vivier, Jim Hiscott, John Burge, Heather Schmidt, and Nicholas Papador – among others. Featured performers include guest conductor Brian Current, soprano Monica Whicher, pianist Lee Pui Ming, tabla artist Shawn Mativetsky, percussion.

And if you’re wondering about the programming philosophy of the festival, here’s how organizers describe it: “Over the last several festivals the WCMF has developed an artistic vision that reflects its commitment to a set of core values. Each year we feature the work of four or five North American composers. Both the WSO and UWindsor music faculty concerts present multiple works by our featured composers. We feature composers from across the country and of different generations, and aim for a diversity of musical styles and voices. The Festival looks for composers who have a mature musical voice and for whom this opportunity will represent a significant step in their artistic development. Of course, we also choose composers that we are confident will compose an engaging new work that will appeal to our local audience.”

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra wrote to let us know that they’ve been sending small ensembles from the orchestra to nursery and elementary schools this year, with 41 schools visited in four days in November, and two more weeks set aside in January and April. In all, over 12,500 young people will have the chance to hear ensembles from the WSO through these programs. “Having these programs in the nurseries and schools opens the door to the symphony world, a world that the kids can enjoy for a long time to come,” says Tanya Derksen, director of Education and Outreach at the WSO. “We’re providing them with a great opportunity to start learning early about symphonic music, the instruments and the musicians that play them, when the kids wouldn’t necessarily get that opportunity, especially at those early ages.” www.wso.ca

Meanwhile, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra has partnered with the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Learning Through the Arts program on a collaborative composition project at three different Windsor-area public schools. Working with WSO music director John Morris Russell, singer/guitarist Ted Lamont and cellist Karen McClellan, grade 4 students from the schools will create a composition based on the Renaissance hit tune, L’homme armé, which will then be arranged for the orchestra by WSO Assistant Conductor Peter Wiebe and presented on education concerts later this spring. Learning Through The Arts is a program administered through the Royal Conservatory of Music and designed to bring artists of all disciplines into partnership with classroom teachers to enliven core curriculum. These grade 4 students will receive instruction in the curriculum Music Expectations integrated with the core subjects including Social Studies (Medieval times), Science (of sound), and Language Arts (writing expectations). For more information about the WSO, please visit: www.windsorsymphony.com

For more information about Learning Through the Arts, please visit www.ltta.ca

The Windsor Symphony Orchestra has recently announced a new partnership with TD Bank Group and two of its colleague orchestras in southwestern Ontario, Orchestra London and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. The TD MyWSO Music Pass has been designed to make music accessible to students at every level, from high school to graduate school.

The pass offers full-time students access to any Windsor Symphony Orchestra subscriber series concerts, as well as access to Orchestra London and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony to attend an unlimited number of subscriber series performances during the concert season.

The TD MyWSO Music Pass costs $65 and can be purchased from the WSO office. The pass may also be used at all series performances with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Orchestra London, increasing its value many times over.

Earlier this week, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra announced its Education and Music Alive series on-site at Benson Public School in Windsor – and it wasn’t your standard season announcement, either. Instead, the event promised a chance to see WSO music director John Morris Russell in action during a special conducting workshop, working with a group of Benson students from grades 6-8 to show them the basics of conducting.

The Orchestre symphonique de Longueuil will kick off its 25th season with an outdoor concert on August 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the Parc de la Cité in Saint-Hubert – a site able to accommodate up to 20,000 audience members! The concert, led by OSL music director Marc David, will feature tenor Marc Hervieux and the repertoire will celebrate classical and popular works from Quebec and the Francophonie. As a prelude to the concert, members of the Orchestre symphonique des jeunes de la Montérégie (led by Luc Chaput) will give a short performance.

The Regina Symphony Orchestra has announced details of this summer’s outdoor concert, set to take place in Wascana Park on Sunday, August 22nd. The program, led by RSO music director Victor Sawa will feature music by Mozart, Brahms, celebrated film composers, and Tchaikovsky’s inevitable 1812 Overture, as well as an ode to the Saskatchewan Roughrider centennial! It’s an action-packed day, with pre-concert family entertainment from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the RSO performance running from 5 to 7 p.m. And this year, the event is even more special than usual, as a number of sponsors have teamed up to allow the orchestra to make the concert a free admission event. For more information, please visit here.

The brass quintet of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra continues its free concert tour of Windsor and area this August, with Quintets and Sunsets, part II! You can hear the group perform favourites from Gershwin & Berlin to Mozart & Handel on August 14 at 7 p.m. at Navy Yard Park in Amherstburg, and on August 15 at 7 p.m. at Coventry Garden in Windsor East.

The University of British Columbia School of Music is presenting a special concert series in BC’s lower mainland in collaboration with the Taipei National University of the Arts from July 16 to 25. The TNUA is the most prestigious training institution for the arts in Taiwan, and has enjoyed a formal partnership with UBC since 2007. The series includes performances with the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and what’s billed as a “the largest gathering of bassoonists to play on a stage in Canada!” with student bassoonists from UBC and TNUA, along with members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Opera Orchestra, and National Broadcast Orchestra, all accompanied by a choir and dancers. “This is a great event and further strengthening of our wonderfully productive and stimulating relationship. We are delighted to welcome the students and faculty to Vancouver again,” said Martin Berinbaum, Director, UBC Summer Music Institutes. For more information about the concerts, you can visit here.

And as for summer concerts in the future…earlier this month, the board of directors of the Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières confirmed its support for the construction of a new amphitheatre, to be built on the shores of the St. Lawrence River by the city of Trois-Rivières. Board chair Jean-Marc Vanasse underlined the central role that the facility will play in allowing the orchestra to offer a summer season; for his part, music director Jacques Lacombe highlighted his interest in turning the new facility into a venue for collaboration between the orchestra and the other performing arts. For more information, please visit here.

Meanwhile, the National Arts Centre and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra have decided not to proceed with Project Niagara, a combined effort to launch an international summer music festival in Ontario’s Niagara region. Citing “a complex economic and political environment that made it difficult to secure government capital funding for the Project”, NAC President and CEO Peter Herrndorf stated “it’s been an extraordinary labour of love for everyone involved. And we very much hope that others will follow in our footsteps to pursue this dream in the years to come.”

The Windsor Symphony Orchestra has announced that its recording of Aurora by composer Jordan Nobles has been selected by the CBC to represent Canada at the 57th session of the International Rostrum of Composers in Lisbon, Portugal. “This is a wonderful honour,” said Nobles, when informed that his piece had been selected. “We’re very proud to present this recording, with the WSO members & Maestro John Morris Russell. We believe it will result in many contemporary music broadcasters around the world increasing their knowledge of Canadian music,” says CBC music producer David Jaeger.

Aurora, an 8 minute work for strings and percussion, was performed as a part of the Windsor Canadian Music Festival on February 5, 2010, at the Windsor Armouries. The concert was broadcast in March, and is available on cbc.ca’s Concerts on Demand. According to the composer, “its inspiration came not only from the slowly shifting shapes & colours that one can see in the Aurora Borealis, but more so from speculation about the mystery of whether there are sounds when it appears over northern skies. [My] idea was that the Aurora might be an entity that hovers over our heads, trying to communicate with us. Therefore, the orchestra members are not only required to play their instruments, but also to whisper texts, just loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be understood. The resolution of the idea is that the Aurora is ultimately unable to communicate any kind of message beyond the expression of its physical beauty.”

The International Rostrum of Composers is an annual forum organized by the International Music Council to promote contemporary creation in music via radio broadcasting and to provide contemporary musical creations the largest possible number of broadcasts worldwide. The works presented at the 2009 Rostrum received over 450 broadcasts by the participating radio networks as well as by other broadcasting organizations. On May 31 to June 4, the 2010 Rostrum will gather representatives from 34 national radio networks from four continents to present some 70 works composed within the last five years. These works will be presented in concerts and broadcasts by participating and other interested radio stations throughout the world. The winning composer and the winning composer under 30 will be announced in a press conference on June 4.

Late last week, Joseph L. Rotman, Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, announced the reappointment of Robert Sirman as Director and CEO of the Canada Council for a second four-year term. Mr. Rotman characterized this as “excellent news. Mr. Sirman’s leadership over the last four years has been exemplary…Under Mr. Sirman’s leadership, the Council underwent two significant reviews: a Special Examination by the Auditor General of Canada, which said the Council was doing a good job of managing its affairs, and a Strategic Review of all of its programs, which resulted in the 2010 federal budget stating that the Council’s programs were aligned with the priorities of Canadians. The Board and I look forward to drawing upon Mr. Sirman’s wealth of experience and expertise in our continuing efforts to ensure that Canadians enjoy an abundance of arts experiences of exceptional quality across the land.”

Congratulations to Maestro John Morris Russell, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, who has been presented with the Herb Gray Harmony Award by the Multicultural Council of Windsor, recognizing the diverse and inclusive concert series and musical programs he has developed to celebrate and promote multiculturalism in Windsor/Essex. In the announcement of the award, he was cited in this way: Maestro Russell is an advocate for Windsor/Essex and strives to reach out to all members of society. Music has given him a means of connecting with the residents of Windsor/Essex and increasing the quality of life. His diverse programming has given cultures a voice and a way through which to educate others. His education concerts specifically target students to create an awareness of other cultures early on and give composers from different cultures a medium to present their work. John Morris Russell has made Windsor/Essex a welcoming place for artists from different cultures and a city with diverse artistic talents.

The Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition in piano has announced its 2010 winners. The laureates include grand prize winner Claudia Chan, a 20-year-old pianist from Ottawa currently studying in Toronto; second prize and Brandon Prize winner, Andrea Lodge of Bonavista, N.L.; third prize winner, Christopher Morano, originally of Sault Ste. Marie ON.  As well, the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian League of Composers presented its Friends of Canadian Music Award to Montréal-based conductor Véronique Lacroix - also founder and artistic director of the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal – who has conducted over 200 Canadian works during her career.

At least three Ontario orchestras will be announcing their 2010-11 seasons this week, including Sinfonia Toronto, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Windsor Symphony Orchestra.  Might it be that they are launching now to maximize subscribers’ opportunities to renew before the 8% provincial tax increase kicks in on May 1?  We’ll summarize highlights in next week’s issue of Orchestra News, but in the meantime you can visit their websites here:

Sinfonia Toronto
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Windsor Symphony Orchestra