The Water speaks. Let love pull you below.
The Happenstancers, Toronto’s progressive chamber music ensemble, will current their subsequent live performance below the title The Two Deaths of Ophelia. The live performance takes place June 19, and can characteristic the music of composers Linda Catlin Smith, Ann Southam, and Thomas Adès, and the world premieres of latest works by Ryan Chase and Toronto composer Luis Ramirez.
Ophelia is one among Shakespeare’s iconic tragic heroines, and infrequently used as a type of metaphor for what is taken into account female. The Two Deaths Of Ophelia reimagines her character in a sonic portrait that works by way of the themes of affection and need, insanity and loss of life.
The sound world created by the music of the 5 composers mimics the character of water — robust but erratic, sensuous and compelling.
Incorporating two world premieres, the live performance unfolds in a type of double-bill.
The Two Deaths Of Ophelia
“We’re enjoying with ideas this June,” says conductor Simon Rivard in a press release. “String quartet, tragedy, track cycle, melodrama — each classical music and theatre make use of standardized kinds, utilizing acquainted archetypes to hold audiences to unfamiliar and sudden locations. Can the identical story be instructed twice? Can it stay the identical? What if the narrator is modified?”
The world premieres body the twin strategy.
- Torontonian Luis Ramirez has created a brand new work for 3 strings and three winds. It’s based mostly on imagining the very second when Ophelia is suspended in time simply as she’s plunging into the water of the stream.
- Ryan Chase‘s Now Surprise Nyce and Straunge begins with three texts by Geoffrey Chaucer, and units them to surrealistic music to be sung by soprano Reilly Nelson.
“With these initiatives we discover layers of concepts throughout the chamber music live performance — one other acquainted construction! — however on the floor this live performance can also be simply a chance for our ensemble to interact with highly effective and iconic music,” says Happenstancer inventive director Brad Cherwin, “works that we would not have the chance to carry out in any other case.”
Additionally on the invoice is Claude Vivier’s monumental Bouchara, carried out by soprano Danika Lorèn. Vivier wrote the work, which he subtitled “chanson d’amour”, in 1981 for a blended chamber ensemble of woodwinds, percussion, strings, and voice.
“Vivier’s otherworldly musical language has turn out to be an emblem of greatness within the Canadian classical canon, and has influenced numerous composers since,” says Lorèn. “Bouchara is one among Vivier’s most religious and shifting chamber works; a real gem in our nation’s wealthy historical past of classical innovators.”
Program in full:
- Linda Catlin Smith: Stare on the River
- Linda Catlin Smith: The River (Canadian premiere)
- Shawn Jaeger: Love Is (Canadian premiere)
- Ann Southam: Rivers (alternatives)
- Wolfgang Rihm: Ophelia Sings
- Oliver Knussen: Ophelia Dances
- Charles Wuorinen: Bearbeitungen über das Glogauer Liederbuch
- Thomas Adès: Arcadiana (alternatives)
- Luis Ramirez: new work, title TBD (world premiere)
- Ryan Chase: Now Surprise Nyce and Straunge (world premiere)
- Krzysztof Penderecki: Abschied
- Claude Vivier: Bouchara
- Virginia Woolf: Recitations, from chosen letters
Personnel
- Simon Rivard, conductor
- Reilly Nelson, Ophelia One
- Danika Lorèn, First Ophelia
- Jesse Blumberg, Hamlet One
- Dion Mazerolle, First Hamlet
Musicians:
- Strings: Luri Lee, violin; Sienna Cho, violin; Hee-Soo Yoon, violin and viola; Hezekiah Leung, viola; Peter Eom, cello; Travis Harrison, double bass; Lenny Ranallo, guitar
- Keyboards: Joonghun Cho; Wesley Shen
- Winds: Chris James, flutes; Aleh Remezau, oboes; Brad Cherwin, clarinets and inventive director; Nicolas Richard, bassoon; Ryan Garbett, horn; Declan Scott, trumpet
- Percussion: Nikki Huang; Thomas Li
- Billy Wong, lighting
- Fish Yu, electronics/sound
- Hoi Tong Keung, manufacturing supervisor
Discover extra particulars in regards to the June 19 live performance, and tickets, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
