On February 27, Toronto’s Soundstreams plays host to the Vancouver Chamber Choir and music director Kari Turunen in a concert of works by visiting composer Tarik O’Regan, and six brand new works by participants in Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Emerging Composer Showcase.
The RBC Bridges Composers are: Rebecca Hass, Oskar Österling, Josema García Hormigo, Katharine Petkovski, and Mari Alice Conrad.
We asked Soundstreams Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney and composer Tarik O’Regan about the concert.
Soundstreams Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney; Q&A
What does the Vancouver Chamber Choir bring to Toronto audiences? What are their notable qualities?
The venerated Vancouver Chamber Choir is under new artistic leadership — Finnish director Kari Turunen — following the retirement after 46 years of their great founder and music director Jon Washburn. Kari has brought a whole new repertoire to the VCC, not only from his own country Finland, but from a whole spectrum of other cultures. This will be their first Toronto concert under his leadership.
Song and storytelling are linked in the music that’s been programmed (for the first half). Why do you think this is a combination that cuts across cultures across the globe, and across centuries? Is it a kind of essential human quality, to tell stories in song?
Great choral music is one of the richest and most rewarding forms of storytelling from diverse heritages. The VCC program brings to us spellbinding stories from Ireland, Antarctica, Métis Nation and Finland in works by four composers never performed before on Soundstreams’ stages: Tarik O’Regan, Riikka Talvitie, Nico Muhly, and T. Patrick Carrabré.
All of the featured works are settings of stories of mystery and adventure: Rough Notes by Nico Muhly sets words by Captain Robert Scott from the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica; and Tarik O’Regan’s The Spring (from “The Colloquy of the Ancients”) follows two aged Irish warrior-heroes, inexplicably still alive as they travel across Ireland in search of faith.
Histoire des Métis: The Freedom Songs by T. Patrick Carrabré, is an important and powerful collection of pieces, based on Métis stories that are rarely told or known, while Riikka Talvitie’s Kuun kirje, which translates to “Moon song,” is a work at once both mysterious and sensuous.
A great choral ensemble like the Vancouver Chamber Choir is the perfect vehicle to breathe life into these compelling stories with passion and a full spectrum of expressiveness.
How important is it to connect the RBC Bridges program with ensembles like the Vancouver Chamber Choir? It must be an invaluable opportunity for the emerging composers.
Soundstreams believes that new works deserve the best possible premiere performances, whether the composers are established or emerging. Works from the traditional repertoire have had the benefit of multiple performances, often over long periods of time, and interpretations of those works also achieve a collective maturity over time. New works have no such context as a reference point, so premiere performances have the responsibility to realize a new work in the most compelling way artistically and technically.
Emerging composers rarely have the opportunity to work with professional instrumental or vocal ensembles, let alone larger ones like choirs and orchestras. We have made it a practice wherever possible to engage professional existing ensembles to be in residence for Bridges. Past ensembles have included the Gryphon Trio, TorQ, Cecilia Quartet and the Rolston Quartet. It’s such an incredible gift this year to be able to offer emerging composers a larger professional ensemble like the illustrious Vancouver Chamber Choir to premiere their new works.
And there’s even more! By engaging high-quality professional ensembles, we open up the door to the possibility that they will engage further with the emerging composers after Bridges: either by incorporating the new works into their repertoire; or by commissioning them to write new full-length works.
Composer Tarik O’Regan: Q&A
What can you tell us about the 2025 RBC Bridges Composers you have been mentoring — Mari Alice Conrad, Rebecca Hass, Josema García Hormigo, Oskar Österling, Katharine Petkovski, and Mees Vervuurt?
I’m very much looking forward to spending time with these composers. Each of them brings a singular voice and a fresh perspective to composition. They are curious, brave, and deeply committed to exploring new ways of expressing ideas through music. Their work, though varied in style and background, resonates with a shared desire to engage with contemporary issues and emotional truths.
I strongly suspect that mentoring them will be as much a learning process for me as it might be for them; I hope our exchanges will open up new avenues of thought for all of us, and I’m sure they will inspire me to reconsider aspects of my own musical practice.
What will the mentoring process entail?
Mentoring is not only about imparting technical skills or compositional techniques; it’s about nurturing an open dialogue where ideas, influences, and experiences intersect. In our meetings, I hope to delve into everything from form and structure to the intuitive, almost ineffable qualities that give music its emotional impact.
As a London-born composer based in the US, with dual Arab and Irish heritage, you’ve chosen art music (classical music) as the medium for expression, and your work has been widely performed. What do you think appeals to (or connects with) audiences across cultures (in your music)?
I’ve always believed that music is a universal language, albeit with different dialects. Growing up in London and now living in the U.S., I find that my music naturally has become a tapestry of diverse influences. I strive to write music that touches on the human experience in a way that is both personal and universally accessible. I work with themes of longing, transformation, and the beauty of our shared existence — qualities, I hope, which speak to audiences regardless of cultural background.
It seems that contemporary classical music has opened up a great deal over the last decade or so in terms of popularity and awareness, both for audiences and young artists. Is that your impression? Is there a growing appreciation for it?
There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re witnessing an exciting renaissance in contemporary classical music. Over the last decade, the genre has not only become more visible but also more vibrant. Audiences are increasingly open to exploring music that challenges traditional boundaries, and young artists are boldly reimagining what classical music can be. The fusion of traditional techniques with innovative ideas, often propelled by new technologies and global interconnectedness, is drawing fresh ears and minds to the concert hall. It’s a thrilling time to be involved in this musical landscape. I am very, very lucky to be able to spend time with six of these innovators in the field.
What can you tell us about The Spring, and the other two pieces that will be performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir?
What binds them all is transformation and introspection.
The Spring is a musical rendering of the opening passages from the Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients), an important Middle Irish narrative dating from the 12th or 13th century.
In its entirety, the text follows two aged Irish warrior-heroes (Oisín and Caílte, inexplicably still alive centuries after the famed battles in which they fought) as they travel across Ireland with the newly-arrived Saint Patrick.
Only the very opening of the legend is covered in The Spring, yet the kernel of the story that is to unfold is found here. Instead of Patrick merely converting the two pagan warriors, he is encouraged to listen to Caílte’s poem about a pure spring of significant importance to the warriors’ tribe (the Fían). Here the secular/sacred osmosis begins as the great Saint is asked first to listen to the historic tales of his new land before offering the tenets of his new religion to the inhabitants.
Musically The Spring is a concatenated sequence of self-enclosed musical segments linked together by a recurring theme. First heard at the very opening and last iterated in the final bars, this motif is the melodic glue that holds the narrative elements together.
Regarding Turn, I came across this painting of Albert Verway (1865-1936) in the Rijksmuseum when I was working on a project with the Dutch National Ballet. I was struck by it, partly because of the imagery, but also because I realized I simply didn’t know any Dutch poets or poetry. So I went out to find a collection of Albert Verwey’s poetry, and fell in love with one called Cirkelloop. Something about the “spark without goal” (with which the poem commences) seemed very evocative of the artist’s lot in life. Looking back on the piece from San Francisco, where I live now, it seems quite poignant in a new light. The tech world, so dominant here, seems very goal — and solution-oriented — especially AI. I’ve always enjoyed being free of “purpose” (or, indeed a goal) as a composer. And as AI encroaches more and more into the realm of the creator, it seems to have missed a trick: a spark it may be, but it is all about fulfilling some kind of goal.
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I listen to the stillness of you (setting a D. H. Lawrence poem) forms the central moment of repose in a much larger work called Mass Observation, which is a meditation on the histories of our varied ambivalent relationships with surveillance in its myriad guises. The use of technologies that sate our desires to be watched and heard (safety, tracking, empowerment, and pride) has, in some sense, always been able to be weighed against our anxieties around invasions of privacy (physical and psychological harm, hacking, subjugation, and embarrassment).
The work takes its title from the British social research organization, Mass-Observation, which aimed to record everyday life in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1937, Mass-Observation controversially paid investigators to anonymously record people’s conversation and behaviour at work, on the street and at various public occasions including public meetings, sporting, and religious events.
The Performance
Leading up to the concert, starting on February 22, there will be a series of workshops revolving around the music and more, including Tarik O’Regan’s workshop on Composition and Process at the Canadian Music Centre. Find out more [HERE].
Find details about the February 27 concert at Christ Church Deer Park [HERE].
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