Canadian Tawnie Olson is one of three composers featured on the latest album by four-time GRAMMY-Award winning choir The Crossing. The album, the choir’s 37th recording, and titled At Which Point, was released on the New Focus label on April 4.
The Crossing is a professional choir based in Philadelphia that specializes in new music, led by conductor Donald Nally. Their most recent GRAMMY win was just a few weeks ago. Other composers on the recording include Ayanna Woods and Wang Lu. Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky is a work in five movements, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Competition, a fund established in 1983 at Brigham Young University in Utah.
We caught up with Tawnie to talk about the piece.
Composer Tawnie Olson
Olson earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Calgary, followed by a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music, and a doctorate in music composition from the University of Toronto. She also holds n Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Her compositions have garnered numerous prizes and accolades, including winning the 2021-2023 National Opera Association Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competition for her opera Sanctuary and Storm, with a libretto by Roberta Barker. She has also won a 2019 Copland House Residency Award, and the 2015 Iron Composer Competition, among others.
Tawnie’s music has been performed and recorded by ensembles across the globe, including releases by percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum, the Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm City Girls Choir, Parthenia viol consort (with bass-baritone Dashon Burton), bassoonist Rachael Elliott, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Chronos Vocal Ensemble, soprano Magali Simard-Galdès, clarinetist Shawn Earle, oboist Catherine Lee, and Shawn Mativetsky, McGill University professor of tabla and percussion.
Other recent commissions include Salve Mater, a piece commissioned by Tafelmusik for their Chamber Choir in 2022.
The Interview
“I was interested in composing as a child,” Olson recalls.
She wrote music for fun, and began taking lessons, but her first teacher focused on learning to play. Writing music wasn’t something she envisaged for herself.
In high school, she studied with a piano teacher who didn’t know much about composition. “My piano teacher would say I can’t really help you with that, let’s do scales,” she says. At the same time, that same teacher eventually sent her to another instructor who could teach both piano performance and composition.
“When I was a child, there was such a mystique about composing,” Olson says. It’s essentially why it took her years to come to the conclusion it’s what she wanted to pursue. “It’s a language, so why can’t we just speak in that language?”
Noted composer, flutist and teacher David Eagle (2007 to 2014) was her instructor in music theory.
“He also assigned some composing exercises in class.” He liked what she’d done, and encouraged her. “I had trouble seeing myself as a compose at that point.”
It was essentially happenstance that set her on that course.
“I thought I would pursue flute at first,” she says. That idea, however, came to an end with an injury to her hand. The injury was misdiagnosed, she reports, but at the time it diverted her from performing to composing. As she points out, however, choosing one over the other has only been the norm for about the last century or so.
“Classical performers who aren’t organists aren’t taught to improvise, and that’s kind of the gateway into composition,” she says. It’s true that the composer/performer combination has become much more common over the last couple of decades. “A lot of that has been eroded now,” Olson adds.
“Despite my envy, I think that’s a really fantastic trend.”
Beloved Of The Sky
About half Olson’s compositions are vocal or choral in nature, and another half instrumental. She working on a string quartet currently.
“I love writing for the human voice,” she says. “In this particular piece, I was very much interested in exploring the creative process.”
Tawnie Olson’s Beloved of the Sky is inspired by Canadian artist Emily Carr, but less by her iconic paintings and other visual arts than by her writings. In her journals, Carr documented her observations and artistic process.
While the final movement does touch on Carr’s paintings — it’s titled “I made a small sketch”, after one of the artist’s journal entries about making a sketch based on a walk in the woods — the piece overall is less focused on Carr specifically as it is on the creative process in general. Emily Carr was a thoughtful choice of subject.
“I really wanted to do ti through the lens of a woman,” she explains, “someone recognized for excellence in her field. Yes, Emily Carr, but it isn’t solely about Emily Carr.”
The first movement is titled “I went down deep”. “I feel like many people who are creative could resonate with that,” she says.
The process of creating is deeply personal, and connects to ideas, thoughts and feelings inside the artist, including dreams. The second movement is titled “I woke with this idea…” and describes a morning when Carr woke with the idea of mixing complementary colours, mixing red into greens, then into yellows and purples.
“I was taken with that idea.” Sometimes, those spontaneous ideas don’t lead anywhere in particular, but they’re always worth working on. “You wake up with something — you want to work on it right away, but you don’t really know the outcome,” she adds. “There are so many ways that people are creating.”
The third movement is titled “Oh, that lazy, story, lumpy feeling” and, as in Carr’s journals, deals with artist’s block. It’s both humorous and sad, and as Olson points out, chronologically, that moment of deep existential dread comes just before a prolific period where Emily produced what many consider her best work. She captures that dread and up and down emotion in the music.
“In that moment, it feels real.”
The Crossing
Tawnie entered the Barlow Music Competition, which calls for works written with specific ensembles and soloists in mind, a roster they rotate over the years. For the 2018 competition, it was a piece for chamber chorus.
“If you were selected, you would write a piece for them,” she explains. “I threw my hat in the ring. Somehow they picked me.”
The piece will be also be performed by two other chamber choirs aside from The Crossing, Seraphic Fire, and the BYU Singers.
“It was a very big honour, and a wonderful surprise for me.”
- You can stream or purchase the album [HERE].
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.