Photo by David Cooper CELEBRATING CANADIAN COMPOSERS Owen Underhill Monday • January 21, 2019 • 7∶00pm As a courtesy… Please turn off the sound for all phones and other electronic devices. You are welcome to take non-flash photos during applause between pieces, but please refrain from taking photos during a performance and between movements, thank you. We encourage you to post your photos and share your experience on social media using the hashtag #CMCBC CMC BC on Twitter: @MusicCentreBC CMC BC on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusicCentreBC Website: musiccentrebc.ca CMC National on Twitter: @CMCnational CMC National on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusic Website: musiccentre.ca ‘ Program Editor • Stefan Hintersteininger Program Designer • Tom Hudock Paper generously provided by C-PAC The Murray Adaskin Piano is maintained by Scott Harker of Harker Piano Services Letter from the BC Director It’s not possible to overstate Owen Underhill’s contribution to the musical life of Vancouver, to the province of BC, or to the cultural fabric of the nation itself. He is a prize-winning, Juno-nominated Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a celebrated and highly innovative Artistic Director of Turning Point Ensemble, renowned for deeply-researched and visionary programs. He has conducted more than 250 premieres by Canadian composers and is a respected member of the faculty at The School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, where he has served as Director of the School for the Contemporary Arts, and was recently Dean Pro Tem of the Faculty of Communication, Art & Technology. Early in his Vancouver tenure, he was Co-programmer of the New Musica series at the Western Front and began conducting concerts with Vancouver New Music and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. He was Artistic Director of Vancouver New Music from 1987 to 2000 and has conducted Turning Point Ensemble for the past fifteen years. He is also an accomplished flutist, (an enthusiastic percussionist!), an avid sports fan, and notably devoted to his family. He has also dedicated himself to creating opportunities for other composers, through more than twenty years of leadership at the Canadian Music Centre, through his conducting, and through his teaching. But to truly understand Owen is to recognize that beneath the thoughtful, ever-kind, and collegial intellectual we all know beats the heart of a fiercely rebellious iconoclast. Fostered through advanced studies with Czech avant-garde originalist Rudolf Komorous and electronic music pioneer Bülent Arel, The Globe and Mail’s Robert-Everett-Green says “Owen Underhill’s music is a sea of fluid contrasts: the busy clockwork time of action and dance and the suspended time of contemplation; bold gestures that cut across static, glassy textures; counterpoint one can see through, like a forest of bare trees, yet folded into consonances.” I hope you enjoy entering into Owen’s world of playful darkness as much as we have enjoyed getting to know his music over the past year of planning this concert. Sean Bickerton, BC Director Canadian Music Centre / Centre de musique canadienne – 1 – Looking Back, Looking Forward My thanks go to Sean Bickerton and the BC Region at the Canadian Music Centre for including me in their third Celebrating Canadian Composers season. My involvement with the Canadian Music Centre, starting with becoming a member of the BC Regional Council in 1989, has been fundamental to my sense of belonging in a comprehensive community across the country that values the quality and diversity of Canadian music and its place in a changing world. The Canadian Music Centre is truly a vital living network promoting the music of Canadians globally, and interacting locally through its regional centres. For many years, the BC Region has been a national leader in innovative programming and dynamic activism on behalf of Canadian music. This concert series underlines the legacy, commitment and accomplishment of Canadian composers in British Columbia, and the rich foundation that emanates from composers such as Murray Adaskin, Jean Coulthard, Rudolf Komorous, and Barbara Pentland. In my now four plus decades of composing, I have learned to move beyond the seemingly isolated position of the ‘solitary’ composer through embracing opportunities that have presented themselves to me from performers, collaborators, the distinctive artistic milieu here on the West Coast, and in response to my own life experience. This has resulted in a practice that includes music for dance, work with poets and writers, intercultural collaboration, and music for voices and instrumental combinations of all kinds. This particular concert is focused on smaller, more intimate works. I am very pleased to include two mini-premieres — the second and third piano bagatelle. The earliest work included is the Four Yeats Songs from 1987. Cathy Lewis premiered these songs as part of a dance/music collaboration, and also sang my music when we were both undergraduate students at the University of Victoria. I have been honoured to have a number of musicians who have taken a special interest in my music. Marina Hasselberg and Laura Vanek commissioned my Ten Miniatures for a 60th birthday concert of my music five years ago produced by their group NOVO Ensemble, and return to play the work again. Daniel Tones commissioned my vibraphone solo Cloud over Water in 2009 and has played it forty times since. Together we have toured the United Kingdom on two occasions, and the opening work on the programme, A/Symmetry Ritual, is something new for our duo that we first performed in Victoria one year ago. A refreshing component of the concept of this series is the inclusion of a work by an emerging composer chosen by the featured composer. Adam Junk has really risen to the occasion in this case, creating something new for the same ensemble as my Ten Miniatures and very cleverly connecting the two works. Finally, thank you to all those who are in attendance. I hope the mix of works on tonight's concert proves intriguing and thought provoking. — Owen Underhill • January, 2019 – 2 – Program A/Symmetry Ritual (2018) I. Prologue — Ceremony in Metal and Wood II. Melodies and Shakers III. Drums and Rattles IV. Ocarina and Flexatone — Call and Response V. Animal Farm VI. Ocarina and Slide Whistle VII. Frame Drum and Ratchet VIII. Slow March and Soliloquy with Bells IX. Epilogue Daniel Tones and Owen Underhill, percussion Three Bagatelles for Solo Piano* (2013-2018) Noel McRobbie, piano FEATURED EMERGING COMPOSER 10 Punctuations (2018) ? : ( & ) , ! ; @ . Composed by Adam Junk Laura Vanek, flute; Marina Hasselberg, cello; Noel McRobbie, piano Ow INTERMISSION Wo Four Yeats Songs** (1987) Poems by William Butler Yeats; Music by Owen Underhill I. Her Triumph II. The Fool by the Roadside III. Before the World was Made IV. A Cradle Song Catherine Fern Lewis, soprano; Marina Hasselberg, cello; Noel McRobbie, piano/harmonium – 3 – Cloud over Water (2009) Daniel Tones,vibraphone Ten Miniatures (2013) I. Royal Procession II. The Priest and the Bird III. Portrait of the Emperor IV. Music, Dance and Acrobatic Scenes V. The Melody of Rains VI. The Golden Deer VII. Ladies Hunting Tigers VIII. In the Garden IX. The Boat of Love X. The Wonder of Creation Laura Vanek, flute; Marina Hasselberg, cello; Noel McRobbie, piano. &47 * The second and third bagatelles are a premiere performance. ** Four Yeats Songs are set to music by kind permission of A.P. Watt Ltd., on behalf of Anne Yeats and Michael Yeats. – 4 – A/Symmetry Ritual (2018) A/Symmetry Ritual was composed especially for the duo with Daniel Tones, and was premiered at the University of Victoria in January, 2018. In nine parts, it utilizes a variety of percussion instruments and odds and ends including frame drum and bongos, alto melodica, bells, whistles, ocarinas, toys, and noisemakers. The work plays with symmetries and asymmetries, beginning with both players offstage, progressively moving to meet in the middle and then moving apart again. Three Bagatelles (2013/2018) These bagatelles are part of a gradually growing collection of intimate, relatively short piano solos that I am continuing to add to. The first one was written for my friend, the Slovakian composer Daniel Matej, on the occasion of his 50th birthday. The surprise birthday concert which included 30 works by Daniel’s friends was broadcast on Slovakian Radio and recently recorded on CD by pianist Ivan Siller. I have now added two further bagatelles which receive their premieres this evening. My thanks to Noel McRobbie for playing these three bagatelles as a set. 10 Punctuations (2018) Featured Emerging Composer: Adam Junk Punctuations (such as ? : ( & ) , ! ; @ . ) operate silently to clarify, separate, and continue our thoughts. However, each of these characters is sounded or represented in print and non-vocal languages such as morse code and binary. I have converted each of these characters’ codes into a tone row, creating 10 different rows, 1 for each of these 10 miniatures. These punctuation symbols have evolved over time to include their own content and character. I have approached this piece in a similar manner, taking these utilitarian innovations into the language and form of these miniatures. Punctuations deepen our understandings, further our use of other technologies, and reveal our world to us. After working with Owen on a piece based on the :) emoji, I now offer a piece based solely on punctuation itself. Written with gratitude in celebration of Owen Underhill. – 5 – Four Yeats Songs (1987) I wrote the Four Yeats Songs as part of a 1987 dance collaboration with my Simon Fraser University colleague, the choreographer Santa Aloi. The production, which included an elaborate set by Daniel Laskarin, was called Yeats, the Moon and the Tower. The songs are written for and dedicated to soprano Catherine Lewis. I. Her Triumph III.