Opening Gala - Glenn Gould Studio - 250 Front St. West

Joseph Macerollo and Ina Henning accordions
Accordes string quartet
Ryan Scott solo percussion
Gregory Oh, piano
Xin Wang soprano
New Music Concerts Ensemble
Robert Aitken direction

Ann Southam (Canada 1937–2010)

      Quintet for piano and strings (1986)

        (NMC commission)

Andrew Staniland (Canada 1977)

     Pentagrams: 5 Pieces for 2 accordions (2010)

        (world premiere, NMC commission)

Alice Ping Yee Ho (Hong Kong/Canada 1960)

     Ballade for An Ancient Warrior

     for solo percussion, soprano and ensemble (2011)

        (world premiere, NMC commission)

Nicolaus A. Huber (Germany 1939)

    Auf Flügeln der Harfe for accordion (1985)

Hope Lee (Taiwan/Canada 1953)

    Secret of the Seven Stars

    for accordion, percussion and string orchestra (2011)

        (world premiere, NMC commission)

Programme Notes

Ann Southam ~ Quintet for piano and strings (1986)

Ann Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1937 but lived most of her life in Toronto. After completing musical studies at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music in the early 1960s, Ann Southam began a teaching and composing career which included a long and productive association with modern dance. As well as creating music for some of Canada’s major modern dance companies and choreographers including The Toronto Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman, Dancemakers, Patricia Beatty, Christopher House and Rachel Browne, she was an instructor in electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and has also participated in many “composer-in-the-classroom” programs in elementary and high schools. While a great deal of her early work had been electroacoustic music on tape, in later years she became increasingly interested in music for acoustic instruments. Ann Southam composed concert music for a variety of acoustic instruments and instrumental ensembles, working with such artists and ensembles as Eve Egoyan, Christina Petrowska Quilico and Arraymusic. She received commissions from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the CBC, and was performed in Canada, Europe and the U.S. She was a member of the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian League of Composers and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was the recipient of the Friends of Canadian Music Award in 2001. Ann Southam passed away November 25, 2010.

QUINTET is composed in one movement. It opens with an extended contemplative piano solo based on five notes – a two-note melody and a three note chordal accompaniment – which are presented in a simple and consonant relationship. Following this a longer melodic line shared by the violins introduces seven new notes into the musical situation, thus gently dislocating this consonant frame of reference and establishing a twelve-tone row. In this way the strings expand the musical material and make possible a change from the consonant character of the piano alone to the energetic dissonance of the whole ensemble using the twelve-tone row.

During the course of the piece two further piano solos again present the initial five-note material, this time in a celebratory manner and in such a way as to include the entire row without disturbing the consonance.

QUINTET moves through dissonance and consonance, energetic activity and melodic expressiveness, exploring different aspects of a twelve-tone row which developed out of the initial relationship between piano and strings. It returns in the end to the contemplative five-note piano solo with which it began.

— Ann Southam (1986)

Andrew Staniland ~ Pentagrams (2010)

Composer Andrew Staniland has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. The New Yorker magazine has described his work as “an alternately beautiful and terrifying instrumental meditation”. His music is regularly heard on CBC Radio 2 and has been broadcast internationally in over 35 countries. His work has received numerous accolades, including the 2009 National Grand Prize in EVOLUTION, a contemporary music competition presented by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre, top prizes in the SOCAN young composers competition, and the 2004 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music. His music has represented Canada at both the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (Paris, 2007) and the ISCM World Music Days (Hong Kong, 2006).

From 2006–2009 Andrew Staniland served as Affiliate Composer to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has also been in residence at the Centre du Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (Paris, 2005) and Affiliate Composer to the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa, 2002-2004). Andrew’s roster of commissioning bodies continues to expand, with new projects involving Les Percussions De Strasbourg, Duo Concertante, and New Music Concerts.

In addition to his work as a composer, Andrew has developed and implemented a variety of innovative educational initiatives, including a “Composer in the Classroom” project bringing classical composers into Canadian public schools. Andrew also performs himself, both as a guitarist and working with new media (computers and electronics). Andrew is currently on faculty at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland.

Pentagrams unfolds in 5 separate movements titled 1) Squeezebox Train, 2) Doves, 3) Supertertian Stackgroove, 4) Evolution Drone, and 5) Jeux.

If there is a quintessential organizing principle for the musical language of the work, it would be the number 5. Like many of my works, Pentagrams draws inspiration from some of the fascinating cultural aspects of  numbers. Interestingly, the Pythagorean view of the universe was based on the belief that numbers were the key to nature. In modern times, they still enjoy a good deal of cultural and superstitious cachet. For example, the pentagram (a five-pointed star that is formed by drawing a continuous line in five straight segments, often used as a mystic and magical symbol) is seen  on the wings  of the USAF, and is of course the shape of all things “star”: “5 star general”, “reach for the stars”. Each of the five movements in this work explores a specific musical inspiration drawn from the number 5. However, this is all technical speak. At the heart of this piece are the wonderful musicians it was written for – Ina Henning, and her teacher and mentor Joseph Macerollo. The mentor-prodigy relationship is a primary driver of the types of ensemble writing explored in the work: lead/follow, teach/learn, call/respond, and so on.

Pentagrams was written for and dedicated to accordionists Ina Henning and Joseph Macerollo. It was commissioned by New Music Concerts with funding from the Ontario Arts Council.

— Andrew Staniland

Alice Ping Yee Ho ~ Ballade for An Ancient Warrior (2011)

One of the most acclaimed composers writing in Canada today, Hong Kong-born Alice Ping Yee Ho has written in many musical genres and received numerous national and international awards, including the du Maurier Arts Ltd. Canadian Composers Competition, MACRO International Composition Competition, Luxembourg International Composition Prize and International League of Women Composers Competition. Critics have called her music dramatic and graceful, while praising its “organic flow of imagination,” colourful orchestration, and emotive qualities. Influences evident in her proudly eclectic approach include Chinese folk and operatic idioms, Japanese Taiko and African drumming, and jazz. Her ongoing goal is to explore new musical styles that are provocative to the ears. “Colours and tonality are two attractive resources to me: they form certain mental images that connect to audiences in a very basic way.” [AH]  

Ms. Ho’s works have been performed at national and international new music festivals: ISCM World Music Days, Winnipeg New Music Festival, Asian Music Week in Japan, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Kitchener Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, etc. They have also been played by major ensembles, including the China National Symphony, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, Radio Television Symphonic Orchestra of Serbia, Florida Orchestra, the Winnipeg, Regina and South Dakota Symphonies, Polish Radio Choir, Luxembourg Sinfonietta, Amsterdam’s Nieuw Ensemble, and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne in Montreal.

Inspired by the legendary Song Dynasty (1127-1279) female warrior Liang Hongyu, this composition is written in reverence for her life. In Liang’s early age, her father and brother were killed during military action and at one time she fell into prostitution in a state brothel. Against all odds, she grew into a strong and determined combatant with incredible drumming techniques. Liang’s drum rolls boosted the morale and defeated the invaders, ethnic Jin troops from the North. A resourceful and brave first female general, she trained female troops and fought the Jin with her husband Han Shizhong. Liang battled to her death at the age of 33.

This work is designed as a showpiece for solo percussion, female voice and mixed chamber ensemble. The composition unfolds in a series of imaginary scenarios of grim war scenes, combat, festive rituals, marriage, and ceaseless fighting till death. The music evokes dramatic elements of Peking Opera and, at times, the sounds of traditional Chinese instruments.

This work was commissioned by Toronto’s New Music Concerts through a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

— Alice Ping Yee Ho

Nicolaus A. Huber ~Auf Flügeln der Harfe (1985)

Nicolaus A. Huber (born 15 December 1939 in Passau) is a German composer. From 1958 to 1962 Huber studied music education at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and subsequently composition with Franz Xaver Lehner and Günter Bialas. He pursued his education further with Josef Anton Riedl, Karlheinz Stockhausen and, above all, with Luigi Nono. From 1974 until his retirement in 2003 Huber was Professor of Composition at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.

Riedl and Schnebel inspired Huber’s vocal and linguistic experiments. Riedl in particular encouraged Huber’s radical tendencies. His treatment of musical material was most strongly formed by his contact with Stockhausen, while Nono inspired in him an acute historical and political (Marxist) awareness, particularly evident in his second compositional phase, beginning around 1969. Huber took part in Stockhausen’s composition project Ensemble at the 1967 Darmstädter Ferienkurse, an experience that gave him an appreciation of the potential for improvisation – a factor that marks not only his compositions for conventional forces, but also his mixed and multi-media experiments. Stockhausen’s influence can also be seen in Huber’s exploitation of space and the incorporation of extraneous elements, such as vocal utterances in instrumental music, as a means of heightening expression. His period of study with Luigi Nono in 1967-1968 was even more influential on Huber. Nono encouraged Huber to seek a more thorough-going means of eradicating tonality, through a study of psychology in order to better understand human responses.

Auf Flügeln der Harfe is inspired by the poem of Heinrich Heine, Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, using the same title, but substituting the word “harp” for “voice“. Employing the harp as a starting point conceptually, this composition for concert accordion actually avoids the stereotype figurations that have been frequently utilized. Instead, the basic figure that reoccurs throughout the piece and borrowed from harp technique is the harp bisbigliando. The repetitive note patterns build up horizontally to various vertical chord formations. Dynamic extremes range from notes as pppp into silent air pressure to ffff with exaggerated bellow exertion, the frequency of which leads to extreme physical player exhaustion. The expressivity of air-generated tones requires an extremely differentiated dynamic range and a temporal separation of bellow and key rhythms. Wave patterns move linearly (12345) or organically in Fibonacci numerical relationships (12358 etc.) in order to supply the DNA of the creative process. The form is a continuous time-line of 47 eighth note lengths always grouped together in new ways: accordion plus composition as breathing box.

— N.A. Huber (1985), translation by Ina Henning

Hope Lee ~ Secret of the Seven Stars (2011)

Hope Lee is a Canadian composer of Chinese origin. As a “cross-cultural explorer”, her work often reflects her interdisciplinary interests and her views of creativity as an endless adventure of exploration, research and experimentation; a challenge to one's breadth and depth. “Things change constantly and continuously” she says, “therefore each work should be approached from a fresh angle. Growth is a natural phenomenon reflected in my compositional technique. Not unlike disciplined organic growth - a most fascinating phenomenon – it is the secret of life, the source of true freedom.”

Hope Lee received formal music training at the McGill University in Montréal and at the Staatlich Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany as a recipient of a DAAD scholarship and a Canada Council Grant. Her main teachers in composition are Bengt Hambraeus, Brian Cherney and Klaus Huber. During this period, she also attended the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Durham 1979 Oriental Music Festival in England. Both events were important in shaping her musical development. Between 1987-90, she studied Chinese traditional music and poetry, as well as computer music in Berkeley, California. Hope Lee has been invited to the first International Woman Composers Conference in Berlin, to the Künsterlerhaus Boswil in Switzerland, Die Hoege in Germany as artist-in-residence, visiting composer at the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Queen’s University and University of Calgary and engaged as visiting professor at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music in China.

Since 1979, Lee has researched into ancient Chinese poetry, music history, theory, and in particular the ideology, philosophy and notation of guquin (Chinese 7-string zither) music. The knowledge absorbed and material collected have integrated and become an important part of her creative voice and up-to-date, she has completed ten pieces in a projected eleven-piece cycle: In the Beginning was the End (accordion, harpsichord, 1989), Hsieh Lu Hsing (guzheng, di/shao/erhu, 1991), entends, entends le passé qui marche... (piano and tape, 1992), Tangram (bass clarinet, harpsichord and tape, 1992), Voices in Time (large ensemble, tape, electronics, 1992-94), arrow of being, arrow of becoming (string quartet with optional live electronics, 1997), Fei Yang (string quartet, accordion, 2001), Parting at Yang Kuan (er hu, guzheng, marimba, 2004), four winds from heaven (women’s choir, 2005) and and the end is the beginning (accordion solo, 2008). The complete catalogue of Lee’s works is published by Furore-Verlag in Germany.

... a starry night...vast peace, majesty of the universe...the puny individual below, gazing... dreaming, longing...distant place and time...awe and wonder...heartbroken, suffering...

Secret of the Seven Stars is the tenth piece in the Voices in Time cycle for various ensembles based on Lee’s study of classical Chinese literature, poetry and legends, the ideology, philosophy and notation of guqin music. With each work representing a dynasty, this cycle is a personal reflection and musical transformation of the voices of poets, musicians, philosophers, heros and heroines, whose lives and work have threaded the cultural tapestry of an ancient civilization.

Thanks to the Canada Council Grants to Professional Musicians, Classical Music of All World Cultures Program which provided me the opportunity to participate workshops at the Tomatis Listening Centre in 2008 as part of my research into Music and Healing and to formalize the concept of the last three pieces in the cycle; thanks also to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for providing funds for both the preparation of performance material and for traveling to the world premiere in Toronto and the European premiere in Germany.

— Hope Lee