Canadian Tawnie Olson is considered one of three composers featured on the most recent album by four-time GRAMMY-Award successful choir The Crossing. The album, the choir’s thirty seventh recording, and titled At Which Level, was launched on the New Focus label on April 4.
The Crossing is knowledgeable choir based mostly in Philadelphia that focuses on new music, led by conductor Donald Nally. Their most up-to-date GRAMMY win was just some weeks in the past. Different composers on the recording embrace Ayanna Woods and Wang Lu. Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky is a piece in 5 actions, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Competitors, a fund established in 1983 at Brigham Younger College in Utah.
We caught up with Tawnie to speak concerning the piece.
Composer Tawnie Olson
Olson earned a Bachelor of Music diploma from the College of Calgary, adopted by a Grasp of Music from the Yale Faculty of Music, and a doctorate in music composition from the College of Toronto. She additionally holds n Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Her compositions have garnered quite a few prizes and accolades, together with successful the 2021-2023 Nationwide Opera Affiliation Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competitors for her opera Sanctuary and Storm, with a libretto by Roberta Barker. She has additionally received a 2019 Copland Home Residency Award, and the 2015 Iron Composer Competitors, amongst others.
Tawnie’s music has been carried out and recorded by ensembles throughout the globe, together with releases by percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum, the Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm Metropolis Women Choir, Parthenia viol consort (with bass-baritone Dashon Burton), bassoonist Rachael Elliott, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Chronos Vocal Ensemble, soprano Magali Simard-Galdès, clarinetist Shawn Earle, oboist Catherine Lee, and Shawn Mativetsky, McGill College professor of tabla and percussion.
Different current commissions embrace Salve Mater, a chunk commissioned by Tafelmusik for his or her Chamber Choir in 2022.
The Interview
“I used to be excited about composing as a toddler,” Olson recollects.
She wrote music for enjoyable, and commenced taking classes, however her first trainer centered on studying to play. Writing music wasn’t one thing she envisaged for herself.
In highschool, she studied with a piano trainer who didn’t know a lot about composition. “My piano trainer would say I can’t actually assist you with that, let’s do scales,” she says. On the identical time, that very same trainer ultimately despatched her to a different teacher who may train each piano efficiency and composition.
“After I was a toddler, there was such a mystique about composing,” Olson says. It’s primarily why it took her years to return to the conclusion it’s what she needed to pursue. “It’s a language, so why can’t we simply communicate in that language?”
Famous composer, flutist and trainer David Eagle (2007 to 2014) was her teacher in music concept.
“He additionally assigned some composing workout routines in school.” He favored what she’d finished, and inspired her. “I had hassle seeing myself as a compose at that time.”
It was primarily happenstance that set her on that course.
“I assumed I might pursue flute at first,” she says. That concept, nonetheless, got here to an finish with an harm to her hand. The harm was misdiagnosed, she stories, however on the time it diverted her from performing to composing. As she factors out, nonetheless, selecting one over the opposite has solely been the norm for concerning the final century or so.
“Classical performers who aren’t organists aren’t taught to improvise, and that’s type of the gateway into composition,” she says. It’s true that the composer/performer mixture has turn out to be way more frequent during the last couple of many years. “Lots of that has been eroded now,” Olson provides.
“Regardless of my envy, I believe that’s a extremely unbelievable pattern.”
Beloved Of The Sky
About half Olson’s compositions are vocal or choral in nature, and one other half instrumental. She engaged on a string quartet at present.
“I really like writing for the human voice,” she says. “On this specific piece, I used to be very a lot excited about exploring the artistic course of.”
Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky is impressed by Canadian artist Emily Carr, however much less by her iconic work and different visible arts than by her writings. In her journals, Carr documented her observations and inventive course of.
Whereas the ultimate motion does contact on Carr’s work — it’s titled “I made a small sketch”, after one of many artist’s journal entries about making a sketch based mostly on a stroll within the woods — the piece general is much less centered on Carr particularly as it’s on the artistic course of basically. Emily Carr was a considerate alternative of topic.
“I actually needed to do ti by way of the lens of a girl,” she explains, “somebody acknowledged for excellence in her subject. Sure, Emily Carr, nevertheless it isn’t solely about Emily Carr.”
The primary motion is titled “I went down deep”. “I really feel like many people who find themselves artistic may resonate with that,” she says.
The method of making is deeply private, and connects to concepts, ideas and emotions contained in the artist, together with desires. The second motion is titled “I woke with this concept…” and describes a morning when Carr woke with the thought of blending complementary colors, mixing purple into greens, then into yellows and purples.
“I used to be taken with that concept.” Typically, these spontaneous concepts don’t lead anyplace particularly, however they’re at all times value engaged on. “You get up with one thing — you need to work on it immediately, however you don’t actually know the end result,” she provides. “There are such a lot of ways in which individuals are creating.”
The third motion is titled “Oh, that lazy, story, lumpy feeling” and, as in Carr’s journals, offers with artist’s block. It’s each humorous and unhappy, and as Olson factors out, chronologically, that second of deep existential dread comes simply earlier than a prolific interval the place Emily produced what many take into account her finest work. She captures that dread and up and down emotion within the music.
“In that second, it feels actual.”
The Crossing
Tawnie entered the Barlow Music Competitors, which requires works written with particular ensembles and soloists in thoughts, a roster they rotate through the years. For the 2018 competitors, it was a chunk for chamber refrain.
“Should you have been chosen, you’d write a chunk for them,” she explains. “I threw my hat within the ring. One way or the other they picked me.”
The piece will likely be even be carried out by two different chamber choirs other than The Crossing, Seraphic Hearth, and the BYU Singers.
“It was a really massive honour, and a beautiful shock for me.”
- You may stream or buy the album [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
