Glimmer: A personal and shared exploration of queerness is the title for the June 11 concert presented by Toronto’s New Music Concerts, spotlighting the work of composer Thierry Tidrow.
The concert event, presented in partnership with OperaQ and the Canadian Music Centre, and developed as part of the Canadian Music Centre, Ontario Region’s Chalmers Performance Space Artist in Residence Program, features the world premiere of Tidrow’s Glimmer for 3 high voices, flute(s), clarinet(s) and viola.
The concert-length work was commissioned by NMC. It brings text and music together in an organic mix, as created by an all-queer collaboration of performers and musicians, and developed through a series of workshops.
Nils Karlsson Däumling, a children’s opera by Thierry Tidrow, performed by Deutsche Oper am Rhein (2019):
Canadian Composer Thierry Tidrow
Award-winning Canadian composer Thierry Tidrow produces both instrumental and vocal music, with a leaning towards opera. His works often combine elements of lyricism and parody in a playful mode.
Thierry is a native of Ottawa, where he began studying music by singing in choirs, followed by studies in composition, music theory and early music performance at McGill University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree. He continued his studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where he received his Master’s degree in composition, and then at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, earning an Advanced Studies diploma.
He has collaborated with many performers and ensembles in both Europe and North America, including the Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, the Bozzini String Quartet, Continuum, hand werk, Ensemble Proton, Sarah Maria Sun, Johannes Fischer, Brian Archinal, and Heather Roche among others. He has been featured at several music festivals, including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival, the Festival Radio-France de Montpellier, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, and the Zagreb Music Biennale.
Thierry Tidrow: The Interview
How did he come to gravitate towards composition?
“I studied at McGill, and I was studying Early Music,” Tidrow recalls. Growing up in Ottawa, he sang in St. Matthew’s boys’ choir.
“I kind of toyed around with composition as a teenager,” he say, “but I thought I was going to become a countertenor.”
Singing per se is one thing; singing on stage in front of an audience is another. The realities of performing, where you’re practising and interpreting other people’s music, made him realize where his real interest lay. He wanted to create new music, and write new pieces.
“Just knowing that each project was going to be a completely new thing,” he says of the appeal. He took up several different instruments at the time. “I realized I was more toying with the instruments,” he adds. Seriously studying instrumental music means having a laser-like focus on just that.
“That’s also why I like doing opera. Every piece can be so different.”
He likens it to the role of a film director in a way, someone who can tackle a horror movie, then science fiction, then another genre at will. As a composer, he wasn’t forced to choose any single aesthetic or goal.
“For me being a composer, it’s like trying a different recipe each day.”
Glimmer
“I’ve known Brian Current for a while.” Composer and conductor Brian Current is the Artistic Director of New Music Concerts. Back in 2014, Continuum Contemporary Music commissioned a piece from Tidrow titled Au fond du Cloître humide. Current conducted the piece, which went on to win the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music that year.
“We stayed in contact.”
Current contacted Tidrow to write a new short piece around the theme of queerness as part of a larger program.
“I said sure… but if I explore this topic, I need to do something bigger than that,” Tidrow replied. The theme was multifaceted and dense. “I feel like I just wouldn’t do it justice,” he explains. “It became a concert length piece.”
As he points out, it will be performed by an ensemble of queer performers. “It has to be the perspective of various people.”
The instrumentation includes flutes, clarinets, and viola. “I wanted to have three instrumentalists and three singers. I like this idea of having a nice balance.”
The three instruments each have two different identities in the piece, as he describes it: flute, alto flute and piccolo; clarinet and bass clarinet; the viola remains the same, but “it undergoes a kind of transition,” he describes. “That was something that was kind of interesting to me conceptually.”
The three singers each have one monologue, and one song of their own. “One autobiographical, and one moment of focus on them as a soloists,” he says. “But for most of the piece they sing as a kind of three-headed chorus.”
A process of workshopping, including a week spent with the performers in January, added elements to the piece. “There’s these little elements that are autobiographical. The stories come out,” he says. “The texts are written by me, but workshopped with them.”
Final Thoughts
“I would like to say that the piece, in a way, is quite influenced by the times that we’re in,” Thierry says.
It’s impossible to escape the headlines, the uncertainty, and the rising wave of intolerance in the world.
“That’s kind of at the core of the piece,” he says. “It’s kind of asking — what will we do with these things that will paralyze us?” he adds. “It tries in the end to be life affirming.”
Taking stock, it’s clear that there are still things to be grateful for, and still progress that has been made.
“At the same time, we feel like the futures that we imagined for ourselves feel more and more limited.”
It’s that duality of hope and gratitude and celebration vs. bereavement and mourning that plays throughout the work. “I feel like we live in a world where we have a coexistence of these two feelings.” The darker emotions have to be acknowledged without giving in to despair. “Also to find the light and lightness.”
There is humour built into the piece as well. “Parody is very important to me.” He cites the late filmmaker David Lynch as a philosophical inspiration, someone who’s work was both silly and serious.
“It’s finding that sweet spot.”
The Concert
The performers include:
- Anika Venkatesh: Voice
- Brad Cherwin: Clarinets
- Danika Lorèn: Voice
- Hee-Soo Yoon: Viola
- Ryan McDonald: Voice
- Terry Lim: Flutes
The concert begins at 8 p.m., but the doors open an hour before.
- Pre-concert talk with composer Thierry Tidrow at 7:15 p.m.
- Young Artist Overture: Kaija Saariaho (FIN) Duft for solo clarinet, performed by Kailan Fournier at 7:45 p.m.
Find more details about the concert at Buddies in Bad Times theatre on June 11 [HERE].
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