Event #1
nostalgia
du Maurier Theatre Centre; November 1-4, 2000

- a new opera (presented in costumed concert version) by Robert W. Stevensoncast:

Cast:
Lorraine: Shari Saunders
Corkie: Michael Donovan
Cliff: Eric Shaw
Buck: Joel Katz
Glen: Martin Houtman

nostalgia is a two-act opera which explores the nature of memory and the dynamic of familial relationships by examining the life and struggles of a working class family.

nostalgia begins on a chilly Sunday evening in October. Family and old friends have gathered at the house still occupied by Iris Franklin after the funeral of her husband, Steve, a troubled and alcoholic social romantic who battled his way through life and made more enemies than friends. As the lights come up, everyone is saying their goodbyes before they head off into the crisp autumn air. Iris is handing out coats and accepting everyone’s final condolences, assuring each that she will be fine. After everyone has left, the house becomes quiet and still. Iris begins to tidy up, but as she moves through the house, memories begin to bubble up as she sorts through her life with Steve. Anecdotes and scenes from the past, juxtaposed with letters written home during World War Two, provide the framework for Iris’s assessment of her life. In Act One, letters written by Steve alternate with sequences showing the family’s life and the growing conflict between Steve and his sons. The act ends with the reminiscence and reenactment of an argument between Iris and her second son, whom she warns about becoming too much like his father. In Act Two, the anecdotes and memories focus on moments in which the sons gained a greater understanding of Steve. These memories, which again alternate with letters written during the war, focus on Steve’s anger, the outlets that he found for it in fighting and unionization, and how it affected his role in the family. The work closes as Iris reads the final letter that Steve wrote before coming home at the end of the war, expressing his hope for a familial peace which may only be attained after his death. “I feel lonesome and I am looking forward with the greatest of interest and a little anxious to get home.”

- commissioned with the assistance of the Toronto Arts Council and the Laidlaw Foundation

What the Critics Said:
Geoff Chapman, The Toronto Star: “The brooding score with lurching leaps, jagged outlines, and anguished tones standing alone was well performed...”

Concert #2
Schiphol: Netherlands Connections
Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre; February 23, 2001

Revenge! Revenge!! Revenge!!!*/James Rolfe (1996)

Melody?/Maarten Altena (1997)

Germ/Alison Isadora (1999)

Contact Chorales; Contact Melodies/Martin Arnold (1992)

Wrinkle/Allison Cameron (2000)

- guest artist: Richard Moore, hackbrett

Note by Allison Cameron

Tonight’s program brings together composers from two distinct communities: one in Amsterdam, and one in Toronto that share a common experience with Holland (besides having been to the airport). All of the composers on this program have had some relationship with a part of the Dutch contemporary music scene that belongs to “The Hague School,” a school of composers who were, among other things, heavily engaged with socialist (and anti-socialist) political activities in the 1960s; this was typical of many artistic movements in Holland at the time. Together, they and others established a Dutch aesthetic in contemporary music — one that was typified by blatant, aggressive gestures and stripped-down textures. In America, this aesthetic was considered influenced by rock music, but it was really heavily influenced by American jazz (big bands and endless unresolved seventh chords) and Igor Stravinsky (eight-note clusters that blurred major and minor harmonies) — creating textures built of dense, “crunchy” chords and using ensembles unconventional to the “classical” world of new music. This music was also interested in simplicity. For example, melodic material was reduced to five-note scales (partially influenced by Indonesian music), and rhythmic writing favoured repetition and pulse while it avoided complex groupings. When this style of music came to prominence in the 1980s, it hit a nerve throughout the new music world.

When I first heard the music of The Hague School in 1984, I was immediately entranced, like many composers, by its hard edges and its directness. By the time I was studying in Holland (1987), most of the composers who were part of this school had become more or less established: Diderik Wagennar, Cornelius de Bondt, Huib Emmer, Guus Janssen, Gilius van Bergeijk, and, of course, Louis Andriessen and many others. From this vantage point, each of them has had their own part in influencing a younger generation of composers from Holland and abroad.

Tonight’s concert brings together Dutch and Canadian works from a kind of post-Hague School perspective (if one can call it that). Although each composer has had a relationship with this Dutch aesthetic, it has not necessarily manifested itself in a direct influence. Some of the works exhibit a close link with the aesthetic choices of The Hague School, which is perhaps most obvious in the works by James Rolfe (aggressive, single-minded gestures) and Maarten Altena (a concern with the ambiguity of line). Other works exhibit an avoidance or a non-relationship with this aesthetic choice: Martin Arnold’s “Contact Chorales,” for example, specifically instructs the ensemble to avoid sounding like “the hard-edged chorales found in some new music from The Netherlands or downtown New York.” Alison Isadora’s work ventures into the sound world of gamelan, while maintaining a clarity and coolness that is ubiquitous in contemporary Dutch composition. In addition to the audible co-relations to other musics, however, each of these composers has brought their own voice to the table.

- supported by the Consulate General of The Netherlands — Toronto

What the Critics Said:
Tamara Bernstein, National Post: “...engaging, well crafted, and convincingly performed.”

Concert #3
Randonnée*
Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre; May 18, 2001

*Fr.: n. walk, ramble, hike

Randonée 1: Northwest Passage/Walter Zimmermann (1996)

1998/Gerald Barry (1998/2000)

Four Seasons, One Tree./Rodney Sharman (2001)

Visions of Time/Rose Bolton (2001)

The Love Shards of Sappho/Barbara Monk Feldman (2001)

- guest artist: Janice Jackson, soprano

Sharman’s work was commissioned with the assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts.

What the Critics Said:
Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail: “...when these knife-edged intervals are as perfectly, brazenly gauged as they were by ARRAYMUSIC, we embrace them with a primal, physical conviction of their justness. It’s hard to imagine this piece better played.”

For more information about ARRAYMUSIC's upcoming Young Composers' Workshop, click here.

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