Spanning

Jan 25, 2025   8:00 pm

January 25, 2025

Temerty Theatre, Royal Conservatory of Music

Presented by The 21C New Music Festival

Continuum features renowned flutist and core ensemble member Leslie Newman. Leslie takes centre stage as soloist in the seminal chamber work Terrestre by internationally acclaimed composer Kaija Saaiaho. The ensemble also presents the world premiere of a captivating piece by Canadian composer Kotoka Suzuki, along with extraordinary works by Carolyn Chen, Anna Höstman, Jocelyn Morlock, and Ana Sokolovic.

Kaija Saariaho (FI)
Terrestre

Anna Höstman (CA)
After the Rain

Kotoka Suzuki (CA)
Snow Descending Under Moonlight*

Ana Sokolović(CA)
Portrait Parle

Jocelyn Morlock (CA)
Verdigris

Carolyn Chen (US)
Birría

* world premiere

Tonight’s Musicians

Leslie Newman, flutes
Anthony Thompson, clarinet
Carol Lynn Fujino, violin
Paul Widner, cello
Gregory Oh, piano
Ryan Scott, percussion
Sanya Eng, harp
Rob MacDonald, guitar
Brian Current, conductor

Programme Notes

Kaija Saariaho (FI)
Terrestre (2002)

Terrestre is a reworking of the second movement of the two-movement flute concerto dedicated to Camilla Hoitenga, Aile du songe (Wing of Dream). The titles of the two works derive from the collection of poems by Saint-John Perse, Oiseaux (Birds), which already served as a source of inspi­ration in the solo flute piece Laconisme de l’aile. The poet speaks of the birds’ flight and uses the rich metaphor of the bird to describe life’s mysteries through an abstract and multi­di­men­sional language.

Unlike Olivier Messiaen, Saariaho is more interested in the idea of the bird than in its singing. Terrestre falls into two parts. The first, “Oiseau dansant” (Dancing Bird), refers to an aborig­inal tale in which a virtuosic dancing bird teaches a whole village how to dance. The second section, “L’Oiseau, un satellite infime,” is a synthesis of the previous parts of the concerto. In the poet’s words, the bird is a small satellite in a universal orbit. That poetic image brings to mind words that Saariaho wrote at the beginning of her career: “My wish is to go further, and deeper.”

© 2003 by the Carnegie Hall Corpo­ration

 

Anna Höstman (CA)
After the Rain (2021)

 

Kotoka Suzuki (CA)
Snow Descending Under Moonlight (2024)

This work is inspired by the intricate and symmetrical structures of ice crystals that make up snowflakes and the collective patterns of snow as it descends from the sky. Although all ice crystals produce six-sided crystals, they generate infinite patterns and shapes as they interact, expand, fragment, and spin to form new crystals depending on temperature changes and impurity levels. These micro and macro interactions of ice crystals and snowflakes motivate this work.

The six instruments are positioned symmetrically on opposite sides of one another (flute/cello/vibraphone & clarinet/violin/piano) and frequently grouped in various symmetrical pairings of two or three instruments (e.g., flute/clarinet, violin/cello, and piano/vibraphone). Throughout the piece, variations and rotations of a hexachord, along with carefully placed sound spatialization, are used to evoke the shifting formations, movements, and rotations of ice crystals and snowflakes.

 

Ana Sokolović (CA)
Portrait Parle (2006)

The piece is inspired by a tableau from the French Police Department around 1900 used to identify persons. It is divided into twelve sections, each representing a part of the face. Each section includes up to forty small photographs, which illustrate in detail different types of ears, eyelids, chins, noses, etc. This board is only a poetic trigger. The harmonic material is derived from clusters.

 

Jocelyn Morlock (CA)
Verdigris (2005)

Verdigris is written in the style of a postlude. It is melancholy and full of existential solitude, like a lone bird crooning to itself in the night.

 

Carolyn Chen (US)
Birría (2021)

In considering how to make an Angeleno companion piece to the Capricorn movement of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis, I thought about how goats intersect with life in L.A. I live in Highland Park, a largely Mexican-American neighborhood since the white flight of the mid-1960s, following the completion of the Arroyo Seco parkway in 1940. Despite the rapid gentrification of the 2000s, this neighborhood is still home to numerous purveyors of Mexican cuisine, which can include bírria, a stew from Jalisco traditionally made with chili-pepper-based goat meat adobo. In Spanish, “bírria” describes things without value or quality. The dish’s name originates with the Conquistadors who, facing an overpopulation of tough and odiferous goats that they did not know how to eat, gave them to the native people, who marinated the meat in indigenous styles and cooked it underground, with delicious results.

This piece takes inspiration from this origin story and the cooking process of bírria – measuring dry ingredients, blending the salsa, marinating, and pressure-cooking. I imagined the gradually unwinding music box spinning into the whirling of a blender. I also had in mind ‘La Negra’ and other examples of son jalisciense, and songs by Lila Downs, Natalia LaFourcade, and Mexican Institute of Sound. Though the setting and ensemble here is of course very different, I tried to capture the sense of joy in some of this music.

 

Spanning is the featured cover story The WholeNote Dec/Jan issue! Composer Kotoka Suzuki speaks with Wendelin Bartley about her Continuum commission for this concert. View digital edition of the Dec/Jan issue here.