Happy Anniversary to the AGA with FREE concerts!

It’s been one year since we opened the doors of your new AGA. Come celebrate our anniversary!


Join us for a day of treats, live presentations and the release of the limited-edition AGA building book! While you’re here, don’t miss the opening weekend of our exciting new exhibition, BRIAN JUNGEN.

Free anniversary cupcakes, coffee and tea for the first 500 visitors.

Presentations

11:30 am Citadel Theatre Young Companies: Musical Selections

1 pm Edmonton Symphony Orchestra: E-Swat

2 pm Alberta Ballet: The Making of a Ballet

3:30 pm Edmonton Opera: Arias by Edmonton Opera Chorus Members

Free admission, Manning Hall

Exhibition Tours

1:30 pm HENRI MATISSE: A Celebration of Light and Line
3:30 pm BRIAN JUNGEN

Free with admission

Book signing with architect Randall Stout 2-4 pm

This commemorative, limited-edition AGA building book documents the various stages of construction of the new AGA and features a photo essay by renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Available at Shop AGA starting January 29.

184 pages, full colour, hard cover

Brunch at Zinc

Reserve your seat today for a special first anniversary brunch menu at Zinc – call 780.392.2501 or book online at zincrestaurant.ca

Drop by on January 30 to receive a token of our appreciation – show your Membership Card and receive a ‘stick with your AGA’ magnet set*.

Plus, don’t forget as a Member you receive 10% off on all products at Shop AGA, including the hot-off-the-press, limited edition AGA building project book!

* While supplies last

Art Gallery of Alberta 2 Sir Winston Churchill Square, Edmonton AB T5J 2C1 Phone: 780.422.6223

Colin Currie, percussion, and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra

Scottish solo percussionist Colin Currie plays with the ESO this Friday and Saturday which includes the ESO premiere of "Rough Music". Friday is the "late night percussion" concert with Ed Mann, guest percussionist, and the program notes are so interesting for this show that I thought I would share them with you ... for tickets and more information click here.

Symphonies of Hidden Fire (2003 ESO commission): 1st movement “Fury”
Allan Gordon Bell (b. Calgary, 1953)

Allan Gordon Bell received a Master of Music degree from the University of Alberta, following studies with Violet Archer, Malcolm Forsyth, and Manus Sasonkin. He is currently professor of music at the University of Calgary. Symphonies of Hidden Fire was commissioned by the ESO in 2003, and tonight we will hear the first movement of the three-movement work. Here is how Mr. Bell describes it: “The piece is a ‘sounding together’ of my musical responses to four poems. The first, an excerpt from the work of the 19th-century Persian poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, provides the piece with its title and the short phrase that opens each movement. The first movement is fast and savage. With is brass and percussion themes, the movement is a relentless outburst. It is a response to an excerpt from Federico García Lorca’s The Song of the Rider: In the black moon a shriek – and the long horn of the bonfire”

G-Spot Tornado (arr. Askin)
Frank Zappa (b. Baltimore, MD, 1940 / d. Hollywood Hills, CA, 1993)

The title “G-Spot Tornado” was just the kind of thing Frank Zappa loved. An outspoken critic of the Parents’ Music Resource Council (the mid-80s American organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of future Vice President Al Gore, which tried to clamp down on perceived obscenity and other “objectionable” material on recordings), Zappa earned a parents’ advisory sticker for this 1986 album Jazz From Hell all because of this song title. The ironic thing, of course, is that the song itself is purely instrumental – there are no lyrics to object to, only a song title.

Beyond that, Jazz From Hell was experimental even by Zappa standards. Abandoning the company of other musicians, Zappa used a Synclavier music system to create the solo recording. G-Spot Tornado, as he conceived it, wouldn’t be possible for humans to play anyway. He was happy to be proven wrong, when he and Ensemble Modern performed it as part of the Yellow Shark tour and subsequent recording (1993). It was the last album released prior to Franz Zappa`s death.

The ESO is pleased to present Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow – A Tribute to Frank Zappa, featuring local musicians and musicians who played with Frank Zappa. Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 7:30 pm. Tickets on sale now at the Winspear Centre Box Office and online

Ghanaia
Matthias Schmitt

The percussionist and composer Matthias Schmidt wrote Ghanaia after a trip to the country Ghana in North Africa. He was very taken with the rhythmic intensity and hypnotic complexity of the marimba music he heard there. In this piece he uses melodies and counterpoint used in Ghanaian music and fuses them with more Western European ideas with very interesting results.

Nagoya Marimbas
Steve Reich

Steve Reich's Nagoya Marimbas was written in 1994, in honour of the opening of the Shirakawa Hall in Nagoya. Having established the harmonic intentions of the work and its rhythmic language, the two marimba players embark on a “close canon” to the end of the piece; the second player plays precisely the same music as the first player half a beat behind him. The result is a bewildering collage of sound that immediately intrigues the ear. In this version the first marimba part is provided by a backing CD.

Fire over Water (from I Ching)
Per Nørgård

This final movement from the quartet of pieces I Ching is an often dramatic and bewildering tour de force, written largely for 9 drums and very specific metal sounds. This angry scurrying is interrupted only by the charming (by contrast) central section on the vibraphone. Percussion is very important for this composer and he has written extensively for the instruments. Obvious also are his inspirations from ethnic, popular and world music, as well as his rhythmic inspiration from the human body's rhythm, which involves various rhythmic "phasings" (heartbeat, breathing, eye-blinking, etc). These layers of rhythms are united in this work, which was a visionary addition to the repertoire.

6 Miniatures for Marimba: selections
Matthias Schmitt

6 Miniatures for Marimba uses a very pianistic approach to the marimba to form a colourful set of pieces. Structurally, the outer movements share much material, as do movements two and three. Movement four is a very serene moment, with an interesting combination of fast but very quiet music while the fifth movement is a simple chorale, in anticipation of the extrovert finale.

Trilogy
Dave Maric

Trilogy was commissioned in 2000 by percussionist Colin Currie for a series of solo recitals planned for December 2000 and January/February 2001 at venues in Glasgow, Tokyo, New York and Chicago. Currie initially wanted a short piece that brought the styles and sounds of modern electronic dance music into the world of contemporary classical percussion through the use of a pre-recorded backing CD. A huge library of percussion samples was then created from Currie's own large selection of instruments. But it became clear rather quickly that the super imposition of these sounds, together with a live percussion part, could produce an interesting texture that would inspire a slightly more ambitious work than that which had originally been requested.

The result: a three movement work which covers a great deal of stylistic ground (referring to the music of five continents) and explores many different approaches to structure (ranging from the freely improvised to the mathematically binding). The live percussion part is scored for marimba, vibraphone, crotales, and a large array of untuned percussion.

Rough Music – Concerto for Percussion
H.K. Gruber (b. Vienna, 1943)

First performance: October 30, 1983 in Vienna
This is the ESO premiere of the piece

Program note by the composer

Early in the 1970s my colleague Gerald Fromme, who is principal solo timpanist in the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) suggested I write a concerto for him. The request fascinated me, but raised fundamental questions to which I had no immediate answer. One of the aspects of the dissolution of the 'tonal' system was the emancipation of rhythm and the consequent liberation of the percussion from its largely subordinate or even menial tasks. While on the one hand I welcomed this liberation, on the other I have always found that tonality is for me an indispensable means of expression.

Since my soloist would, by definition, have to have a decisive role in the development of themes, I was drawn to Alban Berg's idea of Hauptrhyhmus (“Leading rhythm”). The soloist would take command by a series of signals, based on rhythmic ideas and embracing metrical and formal structures, while the orchestra would form a kind of echo-chamber for developing the percussionist's material in intervallic and harmonic terms. But how was the interaction of soloist and orchestra to be defined, if not in terms of the concerto ideals of the past? The question continued to puzzle me for several years.

In 1981 the Austrian Radio, without knowing of our discussions, commissioned me to write a concerto for Fromme. Before I could start on it I had to write an orchestral piece, to which, on its completion, I gave the title Charivari. Curious about the origins of a word generally associated with the Parisian magazine in which Doré, Daumier and others satirized the Second Empire, I turned to the dictionaries and was astonished to discover that the medieval ritual to which it referred involved primitive forms of percussion. As a means of venting their disapproval on individuals who stepped out of line (generally out of the marital line) villagers would “serenade” the hapless sinner at midnight by banging pan lids, crashing tin trays, rattling bottles and even pulling the tails of cats which protruded from specially constructed boxes. The French exported Charivari to Canada and Louisiana, where it became known as Shivaree; the Basques knew it as Toberac (like Charivari an onomatopoeic word) and the English as “Rough Music” or “Skimmity riding”; while the Germans - who shared the French taste for tormenting cats - called it Katzenmusik.

What this deep-rooted custom seemed to offer was not an excuse for folkloric exploration, but a dramatic and formal basis for the concerto as concerto. The heterogeneous sound elements - tuned and untuned, aggressive and moderating - that are marshaled together by the demagogic “drummer” represent in the first place a concentration of forces which gradually find their allies and fellow-travelers in the orchestra.

The first movement, Toberac, is the simplest of the three, structurally, expressively, and instrumentally. The solo part begins with the Hauptrhythmus and is restricted to two melody instruments – xylophone and marimba.

In the second movement, Shivaree, the untuned percussion takes over, and is doubled by the orchestra, whose harmonic structures eventually give rise to the vibraphone's lyrical answer. Although there are no specifically American allusions in this movement just as there are no Basque ones in its predecessor the violence of its developments may serve as a reminder that the “innocent” revelry of Shivaree was not without relevance to the latter-day processions of the Ku Klux Klan.

While the first two movements may be heard as abstract manoeuvres, the third is concrete and specific. The subtitle “for Henri Sauguet, at the tomb of Mister the Poor Man” refers not only to the doyen of French composers - who was born in Bordeaux in 1901 - and to his mentor, Erik Satie, but to an aesthetic implicitly opposed to all forms of violence, whether physical or spiritual. From the “white” harmonies of the opening music there gradually emerges a ghostly outline of Satie's waltz-song Je te veux. Its untroubled mood and its purely formal implications govern the ensuing music and eventually allow for a second allusion - this time, to the waltz from Sauguet's ballet Les Forains. Rejoinders from the orchestra and from the soloist's arsenal become ever louder and more brutal until finally the two melodies are silenced ... and yet the echoes from them linger on, in the whiteness of their peaceable harmony.

Program notes © by D.T. Baker except as noted, with generous assistance from Opus 3 Artists

Adventures in Fringe Theatre presents Mozart: Ze Komplete Hystery

Adventures in Fringe Theatre presents

Mozart: Ze Komplete Hystery

January 20 – 30, 2011

Written & performed by Rainer Hersch

Westbury Theatre

Showtimes 8pm

Single tickets Adult $25.20 Student/Senior $21


Rainer takes his musical character-playing into the realm of pure fantasy with riotous consequence in a display of costume comedy and piano playing you have never heard. Whether you are a music professor or can't tell a Mozart string quartet from string cheese, relax: Rainer Hersch will make you laugh. Really laugh.

Concert Listings Jan 17-23

FREE Monday Noon Music UofA every Monday at noon in Convocation Hall. A different program each week, the Monday Noon Music series features everything from western classical to world music. This quick 45-minute concert leaves you just enough time to get back to class or the office before the noon hour’s even over. Don't forget your lunch!

Thursday January 20, 2011 7:30pm Quartango (Montreal) Shedding new light on the tango. Arden Theatre.

Friday January 21 to Saturday January 29, 2011 The Music Man. MacEwan Theatre with performers from the St. Albert Children's Theatre. Book, music and lyrics by Meredith Wilson, John L. Haar Theatre. Contact Tix on the Square for showtimes.

Friday January 21, 2011, 9:30 pm Edmonton Symphony Orchestra Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre. Late Night Percussion: William Eddins, conductor, Colin Currie, percussion. Calgary composer Allan Gordon Bell’s Symphonies of Hidden Fire, Rough Music – a percussion concerto by H.K. Gruber and music by Steve Reich, Per Nørgărd, and Matthias Schmitt.

Saturday January 22, 2011, 8pm Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre. William Eddins, conductor , Colin Currie, percussion. H.K. Gruber: Rough Music: Concerto for Percussion, Stravinsky: The Fairy’s Kiss: Divertimento, Beethoven: Symphony No. 4.

Sunday January 23, 2011 11am Edmonton Opera Brunch: The Abduction from the Seraglio Alberta Ballroom, Crowne Plaza, Chateau Lacombe.

Sunday January 23, 2011 11am brunch, 12pm Evgeny Starodubtsev, piano. 2009 Honens Laureate. Arden Theatre.

Sunday January 23, 2011 2:30pm Megalopolis of the Enlightenment – A Concert of Chamber Music From 18th Century London. Henri Gauci, baroque flute, Tammy-Jo Mortensen, harpsichord. Music by Charles Dieupart, George Frederic Handel, Johann Pepusch, John Loeillet and Giacobbe Cervetto. Robertson-Wesley United Church 10209 - 123 St. $15.00 for adults, $10.00 for students and seniors and all proceeds will be in support of the Robertson-Wesley Music Society.

Sunday January 23, 2011 3pm UofA music - MACH 4, Bill Street, saxophone, with friends. Convocation Hall.

Sunday January 23, 2011 3pm Concordia Concert Choir Hymn Festival. Holy Trinity Anglican Church

Tonus Vivus' CD "Cult Figures" is on NAXOS' Top 15 Releases in 2010

Tonus Vivus – Society for New Music's CD, "Cult Figures: Electroacoustic Music from Canada", has been chosen by Naxos America as one of the best CDs of 2010! The disk, released on Centrediscs in 2008, and now available internationally (including iTunes) features 11 compositions by the Society's members.

The disc offers a thoroughly assembled collection of Canadian electroacoustic music spanning over four decades, from Michael Horwood's Monday Afternoon of 1966, cre-ated using some of the earliest techniques developed in the electroacoustic field, to Ian Crutchley's technologically advanced Arco/Lyrically, realized in 2008. In addition to these two pieces, the listener will find on "Cult Figures" music by such composers as Reinhard von Berg (after whose work the CD is named), Rolf Boon, Aris Carastathis, Piotr Grella-Mozejko, Michael Matthews, Robert Morin, Don Ross, and Helve Sastok. All of them are individual statements, which, to quote the liner notes, "encapsulate all of the species and genres in the entire spectrum of electroacoustic music history, from the early 'slice and splice' tape techniques … to computer-generated synthesis". This aes-thetic variety makes "Cult Figures" not only fascinating to listen to, but also highly in-structive, perfect both for private recording libraries and schools.

The Naxos America staff are enthusiastic about the disk, referring to it as, simply, "AWESOME", the opinion shared by those Naxos customers who have already sampled the music: "a highly recommended collection that will take the adventurous listener on a rewarding musical journey, one in which the navigational signposts are grounded in defiantly non-traditional notions of harmony, melody and rhythm".

The CD is available from several online retailers, including:
Tonus Vivus Society
Canadian Music Centre

For more information please contact: Piotr Grella-Mozejko piotr.mozejko@gmail.com

Deadline for Nominations: Mayor's Celebration of the Arts

The deadline for nominations for the 2011 Mayor's Celebration of the Arts is January 14, 2011.

The Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton (PACE) is accepting nominations until Friday - click here to download the 2011 nomination form.


Remember for a complete submission you need to include:

• Complete contact information for the nominee and nominator
• A description of why the nominee is deserving
• The nominee's CV
• At least one letter of support
• The nominee's work samples (in the case of an artist)

Concert Listings January 10-16

FREE Monday Noon Music UofA every Monday at noon in Convocation Hall.   A different program each week, the Monday Noon Music series features everything from western classical to world music. This quick 45-minute concert leaves you just enough time to get back to class or the office before the noon hour’s even over. Don't forget your lunch!

Thursday January 13, 2011 8pm Tales from Ukraine Lucas Waldin, conductor, Cheremosh Ukrainian Dance Company, Ukrainian Male Chorus of Edmonton, Gene Zwozdesky (Minister of Alberta Health and Wellness), narrator. Music includes Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky's Ukrainian Symphony No. 2. Winspear Centre.

Saturday January 16 7:30pm and Sunday January 16, 2011 2pm An Evening with Chopin with the Cite Ballet and the Young Ballet Company of Saskatchewan. Reception and silent auction with the Strathcona String Quartet on the 16th. Tim's Centre for the Performing Arts, UofA. Contact Tix on the Square.

Sunday January 16, 2011 3pm Robertson-Wesley United Church Alberta Baroque Society. Brilliant Baroque: Robin Doyon, Trumpet. Music: Torelli Concerto for Trumpet in D Major, Corelli Concerto Grosso in B Flat Major, Hertel Concerto for Trumpet in D Major, Telemann Tafelmusik Suite III

Support the Winspear and the ESO with a wine tasting and auction

January 28, 2011 7pm in the lobby spaces of the Winspear Centre

Join the Winspear Centre for Music and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in welcoming the Naramata Bench Wineries from BC’s Okanagan valley and enjoy an evening of tasting award winning wines.

Meet winemakers, sample delicious hors d’oeuvres, and listen to the sounds of Sandro Dominelli performing smooth jazz with members of your ESO.

Host Terry David Mulligan will keep things moving along as you partake in live and silent auctions; all in support of the Winspear Centre and your ESO.

To elevate your wine tasting experience, purchase tickets for the VIP tasting where you will taste exclusive library wines and receive an education from the winemakers themselves. Limited amount of VIP tickets available.

$90 per person
$150 VIP Tasting per person, starting at 6 pm 
(Buy now - VIP tickets over 75% sold!)
Must be 18 years of age and older to attend this event.
For more information on this event, click here.
Featured wineries:

Elephant Island Orchard Wines
Hillside Estate Winery & Bistro
Kettle Valley Winery
La Frenz Winery
Lake Breeze Vineyards
Laughing Stock Vineyards
Poplar Grove Winery
Red Rooster WineryTherapy Vineyards
Township 7 Vineyards & Winery
Van Westen Vineyards
Nichol Vineyard & Estate Winery

Concert Listings - Jan 3-9

Monday January 3, 2011 9pm BEAMS music - Ningali and flEm -travails of two cities. Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus, 8120 101 St, tickets $5.

Friday January 7, 2011 8pm Tonus Vivus - Boulez is Alive - Aventa(Victoria's contemporary music ensemble) Muttart Hall, Alberta College. $10, $20.

Saturday January 8, 2011, 8pm Edmonton Symphony OrchestraEnmax Hall, Winspear Centre. Gregory Vajda, conductor, Dubravka Tomšič, piano. Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2, Dvořák: Symphony No. 6, Coulthard: Canadian Fantasy.

Sunday January 9, 2011 3pm Royal Canadian College of Organists concert series. Gregor Simon (Germany). First Presbyterian Church. Contact Tix on the Square or Arnold Rumond 780-454-3882.

Sunday, January 9, 2011 Northern Alberta Concerto Competition (NACC) Final Round (strings, woodwinds and brass), Muttart Hall, Alberta College, open to public, tickets $10 at the door. Contact the Alberta Registered Music Teachers' Association (ARMTA) for more information.

Review - Jason Cutmore, pianist

Holy Trinity Anglican Church was packed this afternoon to hear Edmonton born pianist Jason Cutmore in a subtle program of primarily French, Spanish and Viennese Romantic music.


I know I should refer to him as "Mr. Cutmore", but his performance was so intimate that I feel I can call him by his first name.  Perhaps it was the warmth of the home town crowd, but it is rare to feel like you are listening to a performance invisibly in a musician's private space.  


Jason's quiet strength is immediately palpable in his ability to be truly authentic in his playing and it seemed like he had an inner dialogue with the music. Indeed if you were sitting close enough, you could hear Jason singing along!


A gifted ability for melody, rich textures and evenness of colour and tone gave a depth and maturity to the program of Satie, Albeniz, Severac, Pärt, and Schubert.  It is refreshing to hear a young artist have a soft and sensual touch instead of the mathematical intensity so often heard in young pianists.  This aspect made me want to hear some Chopin or Liszt ... oh wait, there's always "YouTube"!  Here is Jason playing Liszt's powerful Après une Lecture du Dante, from his Years of Pilgrimage, Book II: Italy.  


However, most striking to me about Jason's playing was his sense of liberty with time and metre - a rubato or robbed time in the truest sense which fills the listener with longing in each sustain.  This mature musical sensitivity was the most powerful part of the performance and was especially effective in the  haunting lyric of the Gnossienne No.1 by Erik Satie and Für Alina by Arvo Pärt.


A short word about Für Alina - a two page masterwork of Pärt's Tintinnabuli style, whose difficulty can be easily overlooked and was expertly and sensitively delivered.


Jason was most involved with the Cerdaña Suite by Déodat de Severac, especially the second movement The Mule-Drivers before the Christ of Llivia, which he personally described in the introduction as a "lamentation or meditation on a crucifix".  This section was particularly moving, and Jason obviously has a personal connection with this work; I hope he will record this rarely heard composer in the future.


Jason can be heard on his debut CD, an album of Spanish music by Manuel de Falla on Centaur Records, and in upcoming concerts in Ontario and the United States.