Pianist, composer, educator, and author Dr. Rea Beaumont is set to release her latest album, Enjoy The Journey. It’s the sixth album for the Toronto-based artist, along with a number of singles released digitally.
Rea is a faculty member at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, alongside her career as a performer and recording artist. We spoke to her about her music.
Rea Beaumont
She studied at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, the University of British Columbia, Royal Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music, Osgoode Hall Law School, Le Centre d’Arts Orford, and The Banff Centre for the Arts. Rea earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, Master of Music, Bachelor of Music in Music Education (Hon), Artist Diploma, ARCT Diploma, and a Certificate in Entertainment Law.
She’s received the SOCAN Foundation/ MusCan Award of Excellence for the Advancement of Research in Canadian Music, a national award, and her book Composer Barbara Pentland: The Music and the Message was a finalist for an IAWM Award. As a scholar, her research has been presented in North America, South America, and Europe.
Rea Beaumont: The Interview
“My sister was studying piano and I heard her. My grandmother played violin, my grandfather played guitar,” she explains. While they weren’t professional musicians, Rea grew up around music, and came to love the classical albums her father played.
Piano, for me, I think was the instrument that I connected with the most,” she recalls. Both the way it looked and the way it sounded intrigued her. “The tone colours, as well, for me. I explore a lot of tone colour.” That fascination still informs her work. “You get a full orchestra with piano.”
The album came together as a collection of works over time. “I actually started writing the violin and piano arrangements for the French folk songs […] back in 2021,” she says. “I was knee deep in archives for some time,” she says, “It has a rich heritage.” Three ended up on the album, one dating back to the Middle Ages. “I thought the three would make a nice set.”
While there are many existing treatments of the material she researched, most of the arrangements are very much influenced by Romantic chordal structures. “I wanted to do something that paid more tribute to the [original] folk songs,” she says. The result is more of a composition/reconstruction than a simple arrangement. The violin (performed on the album by Christopher Verrette, a member of Tafelmusik) replaces the voice. “That was a bit of a deconstruction on my part.”
She maintained many of the original elements, like call and response common to 15th century songs. One of the selections on the album, En Roulant Ma Boule, is a tune that was sung by the famed voyageurs as they paddled their way through what would become Canada. The other songs include La Liptitou, based on the amusing tale of a father who won’t let his daughter marry the village tailor, and A La Claire Fontaine, a ballad where a young man mourns the loss of his love.
The folk songs make up one of the three sections of the album. The others, Time Will Tell and Green Pieces, are Beaumont’s original compositions. Time Will Tell is a cycle about searching for what’s really important in life. “I think it was a continuation of our realization during COVID-19, during the pandemic, that […] life was precious. It directly addresses that,” she says.
Green Pieces is a set of compositions that were commissioned by the University of British Columbia’s Green College, when Beaumont was composer-in-residence there during 2023. It’s a tribute to the Pacific Northwest.
“It was spectacular to have that time, space, and a beautiful environment.” Living in the area while she wrote infused the work with her impressions of place. “It took a while to really pinpoint what I wanted to highlight.”
The trio of pieces includes Mountain Morning and Western Waters. While Western Waters is, appropriately, more fluid in style, Mountain Morning was inspired by her views of the nearby mountains to the north, particularly after a rain. “It never fails to be breathtaking.”
Vancouver Vibe is the fastest and most upbeat of the three, reflecting the energy of the city. It’s the advance single from the album.
“Vancouver has its own vibe,” she says. “I think it comes from the beautiful surroundings.” She was smitten with the city’s outdoorsy vibe and social energy, the coffee shops and night life. “The people are very positive,” she says. “I wanted to pay tribute to all that is very cool and very different about Vancouver. It’s quite a gem.”
A Musical Mix
Her style is individual, and could fall into the fluid neoclassical niche. She draws from a number of sources of inspiration.
“I was trained in classical music as a young age,” she says. She switch to jazz while at the University of Toronto, then to composition, and education. She studied composition with the late Phil Nimmons, who she credits as a strong influence on her development, along with Edward Laufer and his his Schenkerian Analysis, and others. “I had a lot of incredible influences.” That includes in the world of classical music, as well as jazz and pop. “All different genres; I try to blend as much as possible,” she says. Add to that the use of contemporary techniques like string brushing.
“My process is that I will have a concept — usually it’s something that’s programmatic, or a melody will come to me.” That’s the initial spark, and it’s worked out in pencil and paper. After a period of development, it begins to gain momentum. At that point, notation software takes over — but the old school ways are still valuable. “I’m forever attached to the piano and pencil.” It was Phil Nimmons who taught her to create beautiful handbound music engravings (high quality drawings intended for reproduction). “He had high standards, but it was worth it.”
Working on it by hand creates a different relationship to the music. “It’s more than just a melodic line,” she says. “It’s something I want to say.”
Part of her message about Vancouver, for example, is about appreciation. “To encourage people to value what’s there.”
Each of her albums has been anchored by ideas that come from the world we live in. The first, A Shrinking Planet (2006) was inspired by NASA’s earthrise photos, a sense of global interconnectedness, while the second, Creating a Landscape (2009), which featured the world premiere of Anton Kuerti’s Six Arrows, looked to draw attention to environmental issues. Violinist Christopher Verrette also worked with Rea for her 2022 post-COVID album Awaken.
It’s about connecting music to the contemporary world.
“Hopefully we can make a difference in the time we have.”
- You can check out Vancouver Vibes on Spotify [HERE].
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