Music for the Winter Solstice at Heritage Hall

In what has quickly become a Music on Main tradition, Artistic Director David Pay once again programmed a year-end evening of music to celebrate the winter solstice at Heritage Hall. Back to lead the audience through the chorus of her haunting Winter Carol, the final piece on the program, was former MoM composer-in-residence Caroline Shaw. Joining Shaw on stage were local singer-songwriter Veda Hille, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, and guitarist Adrian Verdejo.

The quartet, in different configurations, took the audience through an eclectic line-up of music, including two additional carols: Alfredo Santa Ana's spare and spine-tingly A Short Song for the Longest Night of the Year; and new MoM composer-in-residence Nicole Lizée's cheeky jingle Solstice Noir. Iwaasa rained down liquid sunshine in a stirring rendition of Denis Gougeon's Piano-soleil and later joined Shaw, on violin, for a beautiful rendition of Arvo Pärt's classic Spiegel im Spiegel (the Little Chamber Music Series That Could's Diane Park was in the room and I couldn't help thinking of our own danced performance to the same piece for the summer solstice of 2015). Verdejo performed two solos: John Mark Sherlock's Musiquita; and the world premiere of Rodney Sharman's for Guitar. And the incomparable Hille took her own turn at the piano, reprising two recent favourites: Let Me Die, from Onegin, her recent musical hit with Amiel Gladstone; and Eurydice, an adaptation of a Rilke sonnet that she wrote for Pay's Orpheus Project at the Cultch a couple of years back.

All of this flew by in a compact 90 minutes and was a great way to warm both the body and the soul on an unusually cold solstitial night in Vancouver. As Pay noted in his comments at the top of the evening, some rituals deserve to be repeated.

P.

PuSh 2012 Review #9: Turning Point's Colourful World at SFU Woodward's

These are some of the colours I heard last night at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Woodward's, where the magnificent Turning Point Ensemble performed a full evening of music as part of the PuSh Festival.

Morton Feldman's "Short Trumpet Piece," a solo overture played by Marcus Goddard from the back of the auditorium, heralded bright sunbursts in advance of "Rain Coming," a short orchestral work by Toru Takemitsu that was as changeable in its tonality as Vancouver weather, and that put me in mind of the way the German painter Gerhard Richter is able to capture the complexity and startling vibrancy of so many shades of grey.

Next up was a 1915 cello sonata by Claude Debussy. In this intimate and playful work in three movements, the call and response between Ariel Barnes on cello and Jane Hayes on piano, particularly in the middle movement when both set about plucking their instruments in striking ways, conjured a dance of light and shadow, as when late afternoon sun filters through a leafy tree on a windy day and dapples the sidewalk in constantly shifting patterns.

Then came the centrepiece of the evening, the world premiere of Rodney Sharman's Chamber Symphony. Written in two movements, the first was a weird and wonderful jangle of dissonant sounds, like silvery icicles crackling in a wintry landscape that can't decide if it's warming up or getting colder. Things definitely get hotter in the second movement, a rousing take on the scherzo form, the strings now alighting a red flame beneath the other instruments.

After intermission there were two more works by Takemitsu and Debussy. Takemitsu's "Archipelago S." positioned the ensemble in five separate instrumental groups--including clarinetists François Houle and Caroline Gauthier in the upper balconies stage left and right--lonely islands connected by a deep blue sea of sound. And finally we heard Debussy's "Jeux," newly arranged by Michael Bushnell. Listening to its bright tempo changes (and influenced no doubt by the original Ballet Russes commission), I couldn't help seeing tennis whites, albeit requisitely dotted with strategic grass stains.

A most enjoyable evening of music, and a fitting tribute to Milton Wong, to whom the concert was dedicated.

P.