Program notes

Aljira (1995) for orchestra

Aljira is the aboriginal word for "land of no time." This work is a journey through a slowly changing landscape marked by discrete "sound objects" which appear and reappear, like farmhouses and cornfields, in a ride through the countryside. At the end of the trip, the landscape has undergone subtle transformations and we find ourselves simultaneously someplace else and at the same place as where we started.

and blue sparks burn (2002) for violin and piano

And blue sparks burn was commissioned by Friends of Today's Music of the Music Teachers' Association of California for premiere at the 2002 MTAC Convention.

The work was conceived in October of 2001, soon after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington, D.C. While the nation was mourning the tremendous and senseless loss of lives, I was haunted by the images of dust and eerie calm that permeated the news coverage in the aftermath of the disaster. This is my personal response.

Between you (1992) for orchestra

". . . good orchestral music is continually changing in the arrangement of the instruments, and often in the type of texture as well." - W. Piston in Orchestration.

Whether goaded by textbooks spewing conventional wisdom or inspired by my natural propensity for not heeding advice, I began composing this work with a set of notions which seem opposed to the traditional ideals of orchestral music. Despite the availability of an orchestra's large instrumental forces, I sought an intimate rather than an extroverted or virtuosic expression -- an expression devoid of heroic climaxes and dramatic turns, and an expression that mirrored the subtle changes and nuances that pervade our daily lives. I wanted the listener to perceive the musical events I had placed in the temporal landscape as though he were taking in the view on a Sunday drive. Events happen in succession, yet the enjoyment of the journey itself, with its changing scenery, is the foremost concern rather than the arrival at one's ultimate destination. In creating distinct musical materials that interact within this time canvas, the timbral colour of the instruments and their registral placement are considered an intrinsic part of their identity. "Fields" of colour in this work play a role similar to those in the colour-field paintings of the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko. Interest is generated by the nuance of colour within each field, and by the interaction and juxtaposition of different-coloured fields. Since timbre is in itself an integral part of the subject matter in music of this kind, Mr. Piston's advice on orchestration could not be heeded in the way he meant.

This one-movement work consists of three main sections, each subdivided into similar halves. Lines, clusters, and interlocking parts form the basis of the work's entire musical material.

Changes (1990) for fl, cl, perc, pno, vln, vc & cb

Commissioned by the Vancouver New Music Society, Changes was composed in the summer of 1990 in Newhall, California. It was my first commission and I was encouraged that Owen Underhill and the VNMS was showing such faith in me, after having presented my first professional performance the previous year.

Early that summer, I was invited to Sapporo, Japan, for a gathering of composers from the Pacific Rim countries. The experience of being in the company of many composers whom I admired and respected, and hearing gagaku, an ancient Japanese court music, for the first time had a profound effect upon me. The opening movement owes a great debt to this mystical music.

A reviewer who attended the premiere in October of 1990 described this set of five eclectic miniatures as "continually oppos[ing] fixed rhythms against liquid ones, hard timbres against soft," noting a "compressed style of utterance." The first, third and fifth movements are related as are the second and fourth. The work transforms itself from the initial opening in which each instrument's dedicated materials function as component parts of a musical whole to that of a whole music embodied in one part in the final amplified contrabass solo movement. I learned to play pizzicato bass harmonics that summer, koto-style, with the instrument lying on its side on the floor.

Although I didn't know it at the time, Changes would have a tremendous impact upon my later work. I look back fondly now on the piece as representing a significant "coming together" in my compositional aesthetic.

Come as you are (2000) for pipa and nine instruments

Come as you are was commissioned by the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, with financial assistance from the Canada Council. This work urges each performer to "come as you are," with parts that highlight the unique qualities of their respective instruments. I have stripped the work to its stark essentials. Materials evolve, but in static tableaux enveloped by silence.

Common Ground (1993) for orchestra

Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for performance at their 1994 New Music Festival, Common Ground is a loud, hyper-kinetic fanfare, full of boisterous "sound objects" that jostle for attention and elbow for "air time." In using materials that sound, in turn, primal and urbane, I aimed to create a musical quilt, a patchwork of inviolable musical entities whose diverse natures would be united, and by juxtaposition, strengthened, in a single, integrated whole.

D'où venons–nous? (2008) for chamber ensemble

As part of a group meditation inspired by Gauguin’s celebrated masterpiece, D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?), my work is a reflection upon the timeless universality of our origins and the eternal beauty and mysticism of the question. I can only answer in the intangible, in the abstract allusions of music, for in my life, there have been no absolutes of geographic place from which I come. With each assimilation, I see my past from yet another perspective, cloaked in a new veil of light. From this prism of experience, I invent my own past, cast it in an imaginary and surreal glow, and nurture it to warm my heart.

D'où venons-nous? for chamber ensemble was commissioned by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal and artistic director Véronique Lacroix for premiere on May 14, 2008, in Montréal, QC.

Ecology of Being (2020) for voice, violin and piano

Ecology of Being​ for voice, violin and piano was commissioned by Duo Concertante, with financial assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts. The poems by Shannon Webb–Campbell are drawn from her books: ​Still No Word,​ ​I Am a Body of Land​ and a forthcoming collection​.​ My intention was to create a sonic space where words and music enhance the meaning of what is said and left unsaid. We all bear the responsibility of caring for our environment and for each other.

Premiere performance – presented as a video during the summer of COVID-19 – by Clara Steeves (voice), Nancy Dahn (violin) and Timothy Steeves (piano) on 14 August 2020 at the Tuckamore Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Foreign Affairs (1994) for fifteen instruments

Much of Foreign Affairs is silent. After the opening plaintive soliloquy of the temple bowls, the second movement enters attacca. A conspiratorial muted timpano ushers in pods of sounds that are restrained at first, but gradually build in power and complexity. There follows strong contrasts between these accumulating densities and the more isolated moments for solo instruments before the materials retreat into the silence whence it began.

Foreign Affairs was commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and Artistic Director David Stock, with financial assistance from the Canada Council.

From Dusk to Dawn (1997) for fl, ob, cl, 2 vln, vla, vc, cb

From Dusk to Dawn was commissioned by New Music Concerts with financial assistance from the Canada Council and premiered by New Music Concerts on June 15, 1997, at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, with conductor Robert Aitken.

I had in mind a two-movement work: a still, lyrical first movement with subtle shifts in harmony followed by a bustling, lively second movement with restlessly shifting colours and rhythms. Sometime while working on the second movement, the work suggested otherwise, and from the midpoint of that movement, the work essentially goes backwards. The third movement, thus, reflects the first. For me, the differences in harmonic and melodic colouring of the two outer movements suggest the parallels between that of pre-dawn light and twilight. The movements are entitled: Dusk, Dance and Dawn.

In the Breath of the Night (1999) for string orchestra

Commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, In the Breath of the Night was completed in the summer of 1999. The two movements of the work are in contrast to each other. While the introductory meditative vision is a transparent, brooding glimpse of the static essence of night, the robust second movement evokes a festive spirit, a hallucinogenic mirage of a dance hall evening enveloped in still desert air. The language of this work evolves from static cluster-like harmonies in the first movement to a rhythmic drone-based second movement with layers overlapping and coinciding, alternately in pantonal accumulations and hyper-Schoenbergian chromaticism. Much to the composer's surprise and bemused interest, this more restless tonal language has crept in recently. Whether this represents a diversion in her compositional language or a progression into a more forward-driving style, the composer is warily surveying the scene of this recent compositional turn.

Inner Voices (1995) for orchestra

In composing Inner Voices, I set out to juxtapose "fields" of colour in a way very similar to that of some abstract paintings or photographs. The subject of the work is therefore not a figurative or narrative idea but is rather about the interactions and proportions of the "colour fields" themselves. Just as I have chosen to elevate one aspect of music -- colour -- to predominate as a work's focus, I have also chosen to present these colours upon a flat aural plane. This is analogous to a painting without perspective, where there is no background or foreground, and where the flat canvas does not depict an illusory three-dimensional world.

In Inner Voices, there is no hierarchy represented by melody and accompaniment. Each colour field has its own unique instrumental colour (quite often that of one family or kind of instrument) and musical material. This is presented successively or simultaneously with other colour fields. Even when two fields are sounding together, each field's internal rhythm and phrase structure remain independent of each other, with neither being subservient. Thus they exist as parallel ideas, sometimes intersecting and creating friction, sometimes existing in harmony.

The title of the work, Inner Voices, suggests two ideas. The first highlights what I think is a third aspect of the work: the often intertwining lines within the colour fields. The variation of rhythm and/or instrumental colour of these lines adds richness to the texture and makes the colour vibrate with subtle nuances of the same hue. The second and more immediate allusion of Inner Voices, relates to the spirit of the work, more readily identifiable in the ebb-and-flow of the colour fields as they sound to me -- drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes conflicting, sometimes confirming.

Inner Voices was commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and the Saskatoon Symphony, where I was composer-in-residence for the 1995-96 season.

Lacrymosa (1996) for soprano, clarinet and piano

I enjoy setting Latin texts and have waited for the right moment to set this beautiful passage from the Requiem mass. Commissioned by Jeunesses Musicales of Canada, Lacrymosa was premiered in January 1997 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. The Kutan-Moisan-Baril trio, who premiered the work, presented me with the ideal instrumentation and interpretive skill to convey the intimacy and longing embodied in the text.

Essentially I was striving for an affecting work of simple intimacy that speaks to the heart.

LATIN TEXT:

Lacrimosa dies illa, / qua resurget ex favilla / judicandus homo reus. / Huic ergo parce Deus, / pie Jesu, Domine, / dona eis requiem. Amen.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

This day full of tears / when from the ashes arises / guilty man, to be judged: / Lord, have mercy upon him. / Gentle Lord Jesus, / grant them rest. Amen.

Living Things (2013) for wind ensemble

We moved to a new house this fall. In our back garden we found a profusion of blossoms and intertwining vines that had grown wild through the summer. It is here that I found the inspiration for Living Things. With each plant complementing the next, the garden is beautiful because of the unique qualities that each living thing brings to its interactions with others. At times, the form or shape of an object remains the same while the color changes. At other times, similar objects appear, but the time elapsed between their appearances is altered. There are multiple layers and ideas in this work: a landscape of sound objects, a didgeridoo-like bass part, and sweeps of color that form the living whole. The opening is indebted to the ethereal chords of the sho, a Japanese mouth organ from the ancient gagaku court orchestra.

Living Things was commissioned by artistic director Daniel Gordon for the Adirondack Wind Ensemble. It received its first performances in Lake Placid and Plattsburgh, NY, on January 25–26, 2014.

Map of Reality (2009) for string quartet

Map of Reality is a five-movement structured improvisation, the three-page score of which is comprised of performance instructions regarding specific pitches, rhythmic gestures, timbres and formal contours. Although there is a fair degree of freedom for the performers, the resultant sound palette, shape and expressive intent are consistent between different interpretations. Map of Reality was commissioned by the Cecilia String Quartet, in collaboration with the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Common Sense Composers Collective. It was premiered on January 11, 2010, at Rolston Hall at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta. A recording appears on Spark, a CD by the Friction Quartet featuring the Common Sense Composers Collective on Innova.

Night on Earth (2001) for English horn and SATB choir

I began composing the songs of Night on Earth in Barcelona, Spain, during my sojourn there in 2001. Inspired by the sensuality of Lorca's poems and immersed in the visceral conviviality of Spanish life, I chose four texts that captured the poetic and surreal aspects of the diverse landscape.

Dance of the Moon in Santiago pays homage to the passion of flamenco. This is a passion so contagious that it expresses itself in spontaneous eruptions in Andalucian towns as well as in calculated street performances at Catalonian tourist haunts.

Night on Earth was commissioned by oboist Lawrence Cherney and Soundstreams, with financial assistance from the Canada Council.

One Voice (1991) for flute solo

I composed this set of three pieces while I was learning to play the flute from Patti Monson at Yale University. I found that all manners of extended techniques, including pitch bends, whistle tones, multiphonics and cross-fading between registers, came so much more naturally to the novice flutist than any traditional flute technique. It occurred to me then that learning to play the Western flute the "correct" way involved training to eliminate from one's playing those very properties of the flute's tonal and timbral palette which were intrinsic to the instrument and to which I was most attracted. In this work I wanted not so much to exploit extended techniques than to make use of the instrument's entire range of colors. It was the result of time spent not practicing what I was supposed to.

Pax (2019) for Bb trumpet & SATB choir

Pax​ for trumpet and choir was commissioned by Alan Klaus, with financial assistance from the Bruneau Centre for Excellence in Choral Music. The Latin text, ​Da Pacem Domine ​(Give peace, Lord), is a hymn based on biblical texts. In ​Pax​ (Peace), the trumpet and choir weave melodies and harmonies that intersect on different planes at times, whilst working together to be at one. The composition takes as inspiration plainchant melodies of the Medieval era.

Premiere performance by Alan Klaus, trumpet, and the Memorial University Chamber Choir, directed by Jacub Martinec, in November of 2019, in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Roar (2003) for orchestra

Roar roars. The title takes its inspiration from the timbrally rich low brass "roar" of its opening. The work is a giant aurora borealis, a landscape of colors continually juxtaposed and superimposed. In a sense, this is an electro-acoustic piece rendered by orchestral instruments.

This work forms the fourth in a series of five commissioned works that form a larger orchestral cycle: Between you (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra), Common Ground (Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra), Inner Voices (National Arts Centre Orchestra, Saskatoon Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony), Roar (Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony), and Aljira (Oregon Symphony).

Roar for orchestra (2003) was commissioned by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony for the 2003 Open Ears Festival in Kitchener, Ontario. Premiere performance by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony on May 7, 2003, at King Street Theatre in Kitchener, Ontario. Daniel Warren, conductor.

Rush (1997) for pipa and string quartet

Rush was commissioned by the Vancouver Recital Society for the 1997 Vancouver Chamber Music Festival with financial assistance from the Canada Council. The work was completed during the early summer of 1997 while I was in residence at the Djerassi artist colony in Woodside, California.

With the recent migration of virtuosic pipa players and composers from China to North America, there has been an explosion of contemporary music incorporating the Chinese lute. Among traditional Chinese instruments, the pipa's sound colour, playing techniques and expressive potential lend themselves especially well to Western orchestral or string quartet instrumentations.

I began work on this piece after renting a pipa and taking a few lessons on the instrument. What attracted me most were the flamenco guitar-like qualities of the instrument's most idiomatic techniques as well as its ability to inflect or bend pitches, an element also characteristic of Chinese speech.

In order to develop a feel for the sound of the pipa, I listened to recordings and live performances of Classical Chinese pipa literature, which is predominantly diatonic in nature. Thus, I found it ironic that this two-movement work ended up containing some of the most chromatic passages in all my pieces.

San Rocco (1991) for oboe d'amore, SATB chamber choir and chimes

San Rocco is a centuries-old village set upon a hilltop near the Mediterranean coast of Italy. As may be likely in any place where the passing of time has been borne well by its inhabitants, the tranquil life there struck me as at once possessing the aura of both antiquity and modernity, a place of seeming timelessness - a place where the daily rituals of the past thousand years have been etched and where time has passed but has yet to be felt.

The work is in the form of four static tableaux, based on three separate musical materials for the oboe d'amore, choir, and percussion, respectively. The text is comprised of fragments from the Latin mass.

Shall We Go? (1996) for baroque ensemble

Shall We Go? is a quote from Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. I've always liked the rhythm, the circularities, and the time-sense of Beckett's works. This title seemed appropriate.

This work was composed as part of the collaboration between the Common Sense Composers Collective and American Baroque for the concert and CD: "New Music for Old Instruments," released on Santa Fe New Music in 2002.

sky so empty (2000–1) for string quartet

sky so empty was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet with financial assistance from the Canada Council.

I remember walking down the street in Paris with David Harrington and mentioning that I had been meaning to write a postcard to my mentor, Mel Powell. He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to tell me that Mel had died just a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I knew somehow. I rarely write postcards. In the years in which this work was conceived, memories of beloved individuals had been stirring in all our hearts. It was difficult to see the vast sky as anything but empty. This work is for Mel Powell, Jacob Druckman, and Earl Kim, to whom I owe my deepest gratitude for their inspiration, encouragement and support.

Solace (2002) for string quartet

Solace was commissioned by the St. Lawrence String Quartet with a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation of Harvard University.

Ancient Polynesian mariners travelled to Easter Island in the South Pacific more than a thousand years ago, leaving vestiges of their culture in the form of massive stone moai (mo-eye). On the isolated inland site of Ahu Akivi, these giant stone heads stand sentinel, facing west toward the sea. Their faces are, at once, human and godlike. They are not watching over the land, with their backs against the water. They are staring beyond. Perhaps they are seeking solace or remembering their home. If we only knew their thoughts ...

Solstice (1994) for picc, oboe d', perc and pno

Composed for the debut concerts of the Common Sense Composers Collective, Solstice was first performed in Hartford, Connecticut and New York City on the occasion of the summer solstice.

I consider Solstice to be one of my most intimate pieces. In terms of the materials -- each instrument plays only a few pitches throughout -- it is also one of my simplest, with silence playing a central role. The piece unfolds as one long phrase, revolving around an oboe d'amore melody inspired by the music of the hichiriki in the Japanese Gagaku court orchestra. The notes spin out in ever-widening circles, always returning to repose in the notes of the piano. Gradually more and more is revealed until the oboe d'amore drops out. The piccolo comes in to close the piece.

Solstice is recorded on the debut CD of the Common Sense Composers' Collective on CRI's Emergency Music.

Speaking in Tongues (1993) for 15 instruments

Composed for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne of Montreal for Forum 93, Speaking in Tongues is a set of nine miniatures for fifteen instruments. All but one of the subtitles are derived from two poems by E. E. Cummings and a quote by French poet Jean Baptiste Rousseau: "Le masque tombe, l'homme reste, et le héros s'evanouit." The peculiar fragmentation and interspersion of these images reflect the structure of the work and are inspired by John Cage's Silence and Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler.

A recording of Speaking in Tongues by the NEM appears on the Forum 93 disc on the UMMUS label.

Still (2000) for fl, perc, vln, vla (or cl) and vc

Still was commissioned by flutist Robert Cram with financial assistance from the Canada Council. The three-movement work, performed without break, describes an arc from introspective stillness to a breathless flight back into stasis. The materials used in each movement are seemingly discrete, however, as they are continually juxtaposed and re-ordered creating cycles of re-contextualized elements in the foreground of a slowly evolving harmonic process.

Tempered Glass (1989) for a/fl, cl, perc, pno/cel, vln, vc

Drawing inspiration from the contradictory qualities of glass, its fragility and strength,Tempered Glass traces the evolution of a musical role reversal between the melodic and percussive voices.

Trace (2006) for flute and piano

Trace was commissioned by flutist Marya Martin for the Flute Book for the 21st Century project as part of Meet The Composers, Inc.'s, New Music New Donors initiative. Ms. Martin’s objective was to create a collection of eight diverse contemporary works that would introduce pre-professional students to new techniques and expressions.

This work traces the evolution of two musical materials in each of the instruments within a suspended space, or "ma," the Japanese sense of space and silence that is as integral to the music as the events that envelope it.

Now published as part of Theodore Presser's "Eight Visions” anthology for flute and piano, the collection is also available on Naxos, as recorded by flutist Marya Martin. The publication was recently selected by the National Flute Association as one of the winners of its Newly Published Music Competition.

two sides to the wind (1990) for flghrn/tpt & orchestra

When I started work on this piece, I was fascinated by the music of the mButi pygmies, the ragas of Northern India, and of Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and Sinner Lady. Whether these influences have found their way into this composition I cannot say, since the musical materials usually demand my exclusive attention once the work has begun. And I, willingly and unwillingly, follow their sometimes ecstatic and often tormented paths.

two sides to the wind is an homage to the concerti of earlier times when composer and performer were one and improvisation within 'composed' works was common. Unfortunately the growth of composition and performance as separate art forms have left the composer only to create and the performer to interpret.

This two-movement concerto was inspired by and written for those versatile performers who possess the ability to create and interpret. It was composed in deference to two improvisatory traditions: American jazz and Indian classical music. The first movement is a structured improvisation based upon the North Indian raga, Piloo, in combination with my own melodic material. It is a long, substantive introduction to the brisk, virtuosic second movement. The two movements are performed without a break.

When soft voices die (2000) for piano solo

When soft voices die was composed in November of 2000 when I was in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The work is dedicated to my mentors -- Jacob Druckman, Mel Powell and Earl Kim -- to whom I owe my deepest gratitude for their inspiration, encouragement and support. These three extraordinary composers died within a few years of each other between 1996 to 1998. I miss them dearly.

Woman: Songs on poems by Sandra Cisneros (1997) for m-sop (or sop), fl, vla & vc

A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs / Well, If You Insist / Loose Woman

When I came upon a collection of poems by the Mexican-American poet Sandra Cisneros in the summer of 1996, I immediately knew that I wanted to set them to music. Having recently completed a serene and ethereal Lacrymosa for a vocal trio, the inevitable antidote was to set the sassy, earthy voice of Cisneros' heroine. Each song portrays a woman's different moods, sometimes contradictory and at other times fleeting. For "Loose Woman," my model was the song "Big Spender," a striptease from the Broadway musical Sweet Charity. The text of "Loose Woman" presented me the opportunity to compose a feminist equivalent of that number, projecting female sexuality in a positive rather than subversive "femme fatale" manner. To me, the devilish feminism of "Loose Woman" as well as the other poems from the collection represents a celebration of a woman's newfound confidence in her independence.

Woman was commissioned by NUMUS of Kitchener, ON, with financial assistance from the Canada Council.