Douce Dame Jolie et Le Piano Parlant

The Canadian/Brazilian pianist, Luciane Cardassi, recently organized and performed a solo concert for piano, electronics and voice called Le Piano Parlant, which featured works of Brazilian and Canadian composers in the same night, and introduced the audience to a fine balance among these three distinct sound sources.

The concert was performed at The Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity , which provides artists from all over the world with an incredible infrastructure and an almost self-sufficient development of resources and spaces for artists to compose new works.

I was lucky and honoured to have a piece premiered in this concert along with compositional grandfathers on mine, such as Armando Albuquerque . My piece was the only premiere in the program: Douce Dame Jolie had been commissioned for a performance Luciane was organizing for a music competition in New York City for piano and electronics. Her program was not selected, but Luciane decided to use my piece for this concert she was organizing in Banff, solely, for piano, electronics and spoken voice—a true one-woman-show!

A fortunate coincidence ended up happening between my work and the concept of the concert—Le Piano Parlant. Before knowing about my work’s participation in this concert, I composed this piece called Douce Dame Jolie, inspired by a medieval song of same name, written by composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377). And because of this choice, besides being the only piece in the program having French text (which matches the name of Luciane’s concert), Douce Dame also featured little loudspeakers playing part of the electronics in the piece from inside of the piano, and interacting—to a certain level—with Luciane’s playing (which matches, as well, the idea of a talking piano).

This post is a big thank you for Luciane Cardassi, one of the best pianists of experimental/contemporary music I know. I feel truly honoured to have my piece played by her.

If you would like to know more about Luciane, I invite you to access her page: https://lucianecardassi.com

If you would like to read more and local news about this concert, Le Piano Parlant, visit: http://www.rmoutlook.com/article/Collaborations-from-across-the-Americas-20170427

 

Birthday Celebrations

My birthday this year, in which I am completing 27 years of age was full of things to celebrate. One of them was the 100th anniversary of the female right to vote in British Columbia.

On April 5th, 1917, a segment of Canadian women won the right to vote in British Columbia. On April 7, 2017, the Association of Canadian Women Composers presented women’s chorus Ensemble Laude, the Emily Carr String Quartet, soprano Elizabeth Gerow and pianist Jannie Burdeti for a concert celebrating this historic event, featuring music by Canadian women from the seventeenth century onward with an emphasis on composers from British Columbia.

I was invited by the Association of Canadian Women Composers to help organizing this event, which made composers, performers and audience members proud, both to be part of this historic moment, and to be part of this celebratory event. And it was a very meaningful to me, particularly, to be able to contribute to this successful acknowledgement, to help presenting pieces which were premiered almost one hundred years after they were written, and to be connected to BC history it in such an important and coincident way: my birth.

A Place to Listen: Season 5, Concert 4

The fourth concert of A Place to Listen’s 5th season will feature Victoria-based soprano and composer Maria Eduarda Mendes Martins, in a programme of works for unaccompanied voice

Maria Eduarda will sing her own hour-long composition ‘Vida’; in the programme note, she writes: “This piece reminds me of the life of our children, which barely changes before the eyes of the ones who see them grow, but which becomes sensitively transformed for someone who leaves our environment and returns some time after.”

She will also present Chaya Czernowin’s “Adiantum Capillus-Veneris,” an ‘etude in fragility’ which walks a delicate line between voice and breath.

Admission is by donation, hope to see you there!

Oak Bay New Music Festival 2017

 

The Victoria Composers Collective starts the 2017 season with a New Music Festival happening at the traditional district of Oak Bay, in Victoria BC.

The Oak Bay New Music Festival is happening at St. Mary’s Anglican Church, on February 11th, at 8:00 PM, and it features experimental music for chamber ensembles, written and performed by local composers and musicians!

Why Can’t Minimal: Do This?

On Friday, September 30 at 8:00 p.m. the Victoria Composers
Collective will come together to present Why Can’t Minimal: Do This?: a concert of new works that explores minimalism in music. Inspired by John G. Hampton’s exhibition Why Can’t Minimal, the composers collective has carefully crafted pieces that reflect upon minimalism in music and respond to artworks included in the exhibition.

Tickets are $16 General or $11 Students/Seniors/Members in advance through brown paper tickets or $20 General, $15 Students/Seniors/Members at the door.

Music of Today:

Composed around 1365 by Guillaume du Machaut, this is considered as the first Mass setting written by a single composer in the history of humanity. It was composed for the cathedral of Reims (city where Machaut was born and passed away), and possibly performed for the Saturday Lady Mass.

The group who is performing this version of the Mass is called Ensemble Organum. They are specialized in singing early music in Corsican style.

Personally, what I am amazed by in this style of singing, is the sense of life and “freshness” that all the ornaments sang mainly with a throat-voice quality bring to this piece throughout its entireness.