Guest Musician Program at NSUC During recent months, our Music Director, Alison Nixon, has arranged for a series of guest musicians who specialize in playing unique instruments from different cultures.
OCTOBER Our multi-cultural Guest Musician Program was off to a beautiful start in October with Chinese music played by Muqing Zhao on the Erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument (pictured at right).
NOVEMBER In November we are honored to host Sutrisno Hartana, and his students who are playing some of the traditional Gamelan Instruments of Indonesia.
Sutrisno Hartana, master of Javanese gamelan music, and shadow puppets, performs internationally throughout Asia, Europe, and North America in both traditional and contemporary works. Mr. Hartana attended the Indonesian Dance Conservatory in Java and received his BA in 1992 from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta. In 2004, the King of Paku Alaman garnered him the title Mas Lurah Lebda Swara making him a court musician at the Royal Palace in Java. Mr. Hartana holds his MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of British Columbia and completed a PhD at the University of Victoria in the interdisciplinary program. He also directs and teaches gamelan at the Indonesian Consulate in Vancouver.
The instruments Sutrisno and his students performed on are collectively called the Gamelan, which includes these specific instruments:
The Kendhang Ageng Gender Barung The Rebab
Sarah Weiss (of Yale University, 2008) wrote: “On hearing Gamelan for the first time, some people are struck both by the complexity of the relationships between the melody lines of the different instruments and, if they are aware of the ‘rules’ of western harmony, by the almost ‘impressionistic’ tone clusters that can be heard if the listener hears the music vertically, or tries to interpret it ‘harmonically.’ Others focus on the mellifluousness of the sound and the soothing, meditative quality of some of the music. Still others are excited by the multileveled interlockingness of the texture, comparing it to the experience of listening to several, incredibly good jazz solo players improvising together.”
DECEMBER In December, we will welcome award-winning Hayley Farenholtz, who will be playing the Clarsach, (Celtic harp, pictured at right), for the December 13th and Christmas Eve service. Hayley is completing a dual degree in Music Performance and Music Education at the University of BC. She is trained in both the classical pedal harp and the Celtic lever harp. She is also an accomplished pianist.
Hayley is a four-time winner of the Royal Conservatory of Music Gold Medal for harp and she has received several awards and scholarships for music and performance, including the District 68 Dogwood Award, the D C & H L Knigge Entrance Scholarship in Music and the Norah Mansell Music Scholarship.
Hayley has performed with the UBC Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, the West Coast Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nanaimo Chamber Orchestra both as an ensemble member and as a soloist.
The Celtic harp is a triangular frame harp traditional to Ireland and Scotland. It is known as cláirseach in Irish and clàrsach in Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland and Scotland, it was a wire-strung instrument requiring great skill and long practice to play, and was associated with the Gaelic ruling class. It appears on Irish and British coins and coat of arms of the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and Canada.
JANUARY In January, we will welcome the drummer Albert St. Albert Smith, who will help us capture the spirit of a new year with his virtuosic drumming on traditional African drums and instruments. Mr. Smith has been a professional musician, performer, and composer for 45 years. He has performed, recorded and toured with choirs, theatre ensembles, orchestras and bands as well as touring projects throughout the world. Mr. Smith was a full-time faculty member and has taught courses in the school for the Contemporary Art at Simon Fraser University from 1981 – 2015. He is a gifted dance accompanist who uses his voice to characterize and embellish the quality of movement combinations with his music. He taught the art of Dance accompaniment using the Africa drum and the voice as instruments. Mr. Smith was the founding director of Simon Fraser University, Ghana Field School program in the Arts from 1999 through 2011. He developed the Ghana Field School with help of a Graduate Student from Ghana, Modesto Amegago. The SCA offered this Field School as three courses at SFU and the University of Ghana.
FEBRUARY In February we will welcome Bruce Henczel who plays the traditional Swedish instrument called the Nyckelharpa.
Bruce received his Master of Music in Percussion Performance from the University of B.C., and while there won the Concerto Competition. He has released two solo recordings, the first of which was given "a very strong four-out-of-five stars" by Rick Philips for CBC Radio 2. He has appeared on CBC Radio numerous times as a soloist and chamber artist.
In spring 2017, Bruce Henczel travelled to Kenya to teach music at the Imani Home of Love Orphanage.
Most instruments have a singular action or process to make sound. Guitars use strings. Trumpets have keys. Trombones have a sliding part that creates sound at various intervals. But the nyckelharpa has strings which are rubbed with a bow and has keys that are manipulated by the player’s fingers to also strike the strings.
The nyckelharpa also is known as the Swedish key fiddle and is a popular instrument used in traditional Swedish folk music. According to the American Nyckelharpa Association (ANA), a nonprofit that preserves and fosters the instrument, the instrument has evolved over the past 600 years. Today, there are at least four variations – a rarity for folk instruments.
Some of the earliest imagery of what looks like the nyckelharpa dates to the 1300s in Gotland, Sweden. Other appearances of the instrument popped up in art and text across Europe over the next couple of centuries. The ANA explains the instrument’s history in greater detail, digging through each iteration: from the Enkelharpa of the 1600s to today’s Modern Chromatic Nyckelharpa.
Today, the instrument still is used by many popular Swedish folk artists, including Väsen, a group of Swedish musicians who just wrapped up a U.S. tour. This stringed-instrument trio melds the sounds of the nyckelharpa, the viola and the guitar to give a modern twist to a traditional sound.
MARCH In March, we will welcome Farooq Al- Sajee, who plays the Oud, a traditional Persian instrument.
We treasure this opportunity to hear the ancient and modern music of Syria and the Middle East played by acclaimed Oud player and recent refugee Farooq Al-Sajee.