REVELATIONS is the fourth iteration of the West End Micro Music Festival (WEMMF), which takes place over two weekends in November. On November 22 and 23, the Ecstatic Voices repertoire showcases choral works, and on the 29 and 30, I Saw a New Heaven blends voices and instruments, and acoustic and electric music through the ages.
Simon Rivard, Music Director of the Edmonton Opera, returns to the Festival to lead both programs.
Here’s a closer look at what’s in store.
ECSTATIC VOICES
The first program spotlights choral and vocal works of the 20th and 21st century, pieces that offer listeners a bold and transcendent experience. An eight-person vocal ensemble forms the basis of the performance, drawing works that will challenge listener expectations, and take historic forms in new directions.
The Program
Pieces by Canadian artists Cassandra Miller and Claude Vivier are featured in the concert. Originally composed for 16 voices, Cassandra Miller’s The City, Full of People comes from Miller’s meditations on the Tallis Lamentations, which she first heard at a church service as a teen. Specifically, she zeroes in on the last refrain, Ierusalem, Ierusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum. It’s a lament for an empty city, and Miller uses that sense of yearning to colour her own music.
Vivier’s Cinq Chansons pour percussion take the idea of song into a different direction. It is written for a collection of percussion instruments that includes a variety of gongs and bells from Thailand, China, Japan and Indonesia. Vivier wrote it at the suggestion of percussionist David Kent, who had just returned from Indonesia with a cache of gongs and other small percussion instruments. It premiered in June of 1982, and consists of five songs: Chanson du matin, Chanson à midi, Chanson au soleil, Chanson à la mort and Chanson d’adieu.
In his program notes, the composer says, “Cinq chansons pour percussion literally means just what the title suggests. The term ‘chansons’ is used in the Asian sense and describes five musical statements based on a few notes each.”
The work will be brought to life by virtuoso percussionist Aiyun Huang.
The Program
- Caroline Shaw: Partita for 8 Voices (2012)
- Cassandra Miller (Canada): The City, Full of People (2023)
- Thomas Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah (1569)
- Luciano Berio: The Cries of London (1976)
- Claude Vivier (Canada): Cinq Chansons pour percussion (1980)
The Artists
- Conductor — Simon Rivard
- Voice 1 — Sydney Baedke
- Voice 2 — Reilly Nelson
- Voice 3 — Danika Lorèn
- Voice 4 — Whitney O’Hearn
- Voice 5 — Marcel d’Entremont
- Voice 6 — Elias Theocharidis
- Voice 7 — Bruno Roy
- Voice 8 — Graham Robinson
- Percussion — Aiyun Huang
- Lighting Designer — Billy Wong
- Sound Design/Tech — Fish Yu
I SAW A NEW HEAVEN
The second program adds the sound of an electric guitar to an ensemble of Toronto’s more adventurous vocalists and orchestral musicians.
It spotlights the Canadian premiere of Windsor-born Kati Agócs’ Voices of the Immaculate, performed with soprano soloist Reilly Nelson. For the lyrics, Agócs places texts from the Book of Revelations against accounts by survivors of abuse at the hands of members of the clergy.
Against the works of contemporary composers, the concert juxtaposes the ethereal Medieval songs of Hildegard von Bingen as performed on solo electric guitar to open and close the program.
Von Bingen was a Benedictine abbess who lived and composed in Germany. Born in 1098, the polymath led a long and productive life as a writer, philosopher, religious mystic, and even a medical practitioner, in addition to the music she composed for liturgy, and one musical morality play. Ordo Virtutum, with 82 songs, is often cited as the earliest example of a non-liturgical musical drama.
Many of her works were transcribed during her lifetime, and more of her works of sacred monophony exist today than of any other composer of the Middle Ages. A total of 69 of her pieces remain, of which she wrote both the words and music.
The voice of the guitar brings modern colours and timbres to her music.
The Program
- Hildegard von Bingen: O Viridissima Virga, arr. Shibe for electric guitar (ca. 1140-1179)
- Sofia Gubaidulina: From the Visions of Hildegard von Bingen, arr. for voice and electric bass (1994)
- Sofia Gubaidulina: An Angel..(1994)
- Cassandra Miller: Perfect Offering (2021)
- Kati Agócs (Canada): Voices of the Immaculate (2021)
- Hildegard von Bingen: O Choruscans Stellarum, arr. Shibe for electric guitar (ca. 1140-1179)
The Artists
- Conductor — Simon Rivard
- Soprano — Reilly Nelson (Agòcs)
- Soprano — Danika Lorèn (Gubaidulina)
- Violin — Julia Mirzoev, David Baik
- Viola — Hezekiah Leung
- Cello — Peter Eom
- Electric Guitar/Bass — Lenny Ranallo
- Piano — Joonghun Cho
- Flutes — Sara Constant
- Clarinets — Brad Cherwin
- Lighting Designer — Billy Wong
- Sound Design/Tech — Fish Yu
Find more details and tickets for the West End Micro Music Festival and both programs to be performed at Redeemer Lutheran Church [HERE].
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