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Cover story Modulus Festival: Just the place to explore new worlds Music on Main offers a mix-and-match approach to selecting artists and pieces for the four-day music event

David Gordon Duke Special to The Sun

hat’s new in music is, by defini- tion, one of the overriding con- Wcerns of David Pay’s Music on Main enterprise — a cocky, quasi-alterna- tive presentation company with an eclec- tic approach to artists and repertoire. Usually ensconced at Heritage Hall, a Belle Époque former post office and Finland’s Kaija Saariaho is known here one of the architectural treasures of for the Canadian Opera Company’s East Vancouver, MoM gets the fall performance of her L’amour de loin. music season underway with a week- end-long sonic party, the Modulus Fes- tival. For yet another year, the event slides neatly into the post-Fringe time A treat for slot, before the fall parade of music gets truly underway. Saariaho fans Part of the MoM fun, and certainly part of its programming agenda, is a This year has been a banner year for serious mix-and-match ethos. This local fans of Finnish composer Kaija year’s festival runs a stylistic gamut Saariaho, who turns 60 on Oct. 14. from a mainstream Mendelssohn string Vancouver audiences get to hear a quartet to an almost new, somewhat good bit of her work this month. Three conceptual, piece in surround-sound at Kevin Winter/Getty Images works — Leino Songs, Adjo, and Chang- The Roundhouse. Musician Richard Reed Parry will offer a free encore performance of Drones/Revelations. ing Light — are to be performed on a Kicking off Modulus on Sept. 27 is program featuring work by female com- multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed gaining popularity with presenters ‘cool’ are not exactly big in my vocabu- posers offered by the Nu: BC Collective Parry, whose musical resume boasts his as they are faced with greying classi- lary,” he said) but he admits the lure of at the Roy Barnett Recital Hall on Fri- bona fide talent for melding orchestral cal audiences, changes in broadcast- high calibre performance is enough to day evening at 8 p.m. and indie rock sensibilities. As part of ing, recording, and advertising, and the draw him out of his comfort zone. And Sept. 29, Music on Main’s Mod- both Grammy-winning Arcade Fire and perennial quest for new and sometimes “If you can inveigle me into going ulus Festival includes an all-Saariaho symphonic outfit Bell Orchestre, both different audiences, they must take care somewhere new for something I know evening at Heritage Hall. hailing from Montreal, Parry has done not to alienate their existing patrons. and like, I’m willing to stay for some- UBC-trained composer Gregory Lee more than flirt with mainstream pop MoM composer-in-residence Morlock thing I don’t know,” he said. Newsome studied privately with Saari- influences. But he could easily be con- says the eclectic approach at Modulus is With its brave new Modulus lineup, aho, who trained at Helsinki’s Sibelius sidered the very model of the modern effective because it has been borne out Music on Main is optimistic more will Academy and has been based in Paris post-classical composer with his two of a genuine desire to present the work follow suit. since the 1980s. works bookending the festival. in a new way rather than employed as a “I had composition lessons with Kaija Parry’s work For Heart and Breath mere marketing tool. in 2001. We met in her Paris studio weaves throughout the opening night “I like the way Music on Main is com- At a Glance overlooking the Centre Georges Pompi- concert in three parts, featuring perfor- fortably inclusive,” she said. Adding Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. dou and IRCAM. She’s quiet and seri- mances from Los Angeles-based Calder to MoM’s formula for success are the ous, but warm, gentle, and encouraging, Quartet — itself a genre-bending ensem- logistics: audience members often get Modulus Festival too,” Newsome said. “She offered spe- ble that has performed everything from to the venue early for drinks, and hang Sept. 27: Music by Richard Reed Parry, cific insight into my music, but she also classical recitals at Carnegie Hall to out after the music stops to discuss the Michael Finnissy, Jocelyn Morlock, and refined my approach to composition — indie rock with The National. performances. Olivier Messiaen a lasting gift.” Also on the bill is Michael Finnissy. In While the company’s mix-and-match Sept. 28: The Calder Quartet; Music by Newsome, who’s now based in new music terms, Finnissy is old school, approach should find favour with a Andy Akiho, Henryk Górecki, and Felix Toronto, was involved with several Saa- a product of the Royal College of Music number of different musical constitu- Mendelssohn riaho events earlier this year, and has a lecturing at the University of South- encies, traditionalists are also coming keen appreciation for her work. ampton. His website candidly describes Calder Quartet will perform an untitled work by Andy Akiho, a piece by Henryk Górecki and Mendelssohn’s F minor String Quartet. around. Sept. 29: One Night Stand: The Music of “Timbre is a critical aspect of Kaija’s him as: “A virtual failure in commer- Patron and UBC professor emeritus Kaija Saariaho music. Listen for instrumental colour, cial terms, but who the hell cares either two-piano extravaganza Vision de String Quartet. another work by Richard Reed Parry. audience in sound. Richard Sprately is a supporter of pro- All concerts at Heritage Hall, Main at such as an airy flute or a noisy cello, way?” Exactly; he’s unquestionably one l’Amen. (One of its few Vancouver per- Saturday evening features Finnish Drones/Revelations draws on ideas and How does Parry feel about the multi- grams like the Vancouver Recital Soci- 15th, 8 p.m. solo or in combination. She has a char- of the most respected British composers formances was a definitive reading by composer Kaija Saariaho (see side- techniques from the worlds of electro- focus of the festival and his place as a ety’s Beethoven Violin Sonatas proj- Tickets $35/$15 acteristic sense of gesture, with use of of his generation. Two Finnissy works the late French composer and his pia- bar), one of the stars of her generation, acoustic music and performance art. featured composer whose work erases ect and MoM’s chamber music at The glissando, tremolo and trill, and an (Mercy and Mankind and Sesto Libro di nist wife, who played Visions at SFU who turns 60 this year. Long impor- This will be the first performance done many of the traditional boundaries that Cellar Jazz Club, all the while defining idiosyncratic use of dynamics, more to Gesualdo) are on tap. for, I regret to note, a painfully tiny tant in the international avant-garde, with the spatial setup Parry envisioned. separate musical idioms? Very good himself as a “slightly reformed musical Festival Extras change instrumental timbre than to cre- There’s also a premiere by this year’s audience). she became better known to Canadian The work features 15 cyclists — riding in indeed. For him festivals like Modulus ultraconservative.” Sept. 28: Music for Zheng and ate drama. But there is a dramatic arc Music on Main composer-in-residence Friday is all about the string quartet audiences in part through the Canadian the dark on glowing tires — each carry- are just the place for new audiences to The self-confessed chamber music Electronics. Heritage Hall, 10:30 p.m. to her music, especially her vocal music, Jocelyn Morlock, with her two Tom with the return of Calder Quartet, offer- Opera Company’s 2000 performance of ing a boom box playing the composer’s explore new worlds —“a way of keeping fanatic is quick to point out the “hip- Sept. 30: Richard Reed Parry’s Drones/ and almost all of her work has a sense of Cone Songs. ing an as-yet-untitled work by Andy her provocative L’amour de loin. score. The post-industrial environment an ear to the ground for the fresh, the ster factor” of Modulus’s indie-infused Revelations, The Roundhouse, 3 p.m. relentless, muted intensity.” The program concludes with a rarely Akiho, the Quasi una fantasia of Henryk Sunday sees a festival encore, a free of the Roundhouse should be perfect new, the alive and exciting.” mashups doesn’t much appeal to him heard classic: Olivier Messiaen’s 1943 Górecki, and Mendelssohn’s F minor performance at the Roundhouse of for a piece that physically envelops its But while the mashup strategy is (“As I head into my mid-70s, ‘hip’ and Composer-in-residence Jocelyn Morlock. David Gordon Duke, Special to The Vancouver Sun