{"id":50455,"date":"2018-01-18T12:23:03","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T17:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=50455"},"modified":"2018-01-20T09:36:56","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T14:36:56","slug":"on-the-radar-why-were-excited-about-continuums-time-travels-light-this-weel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/01\/18\/on-the-radar-why-were-excited-about-continuums-time-travels-light-this-weel\/","title":{"rendered":"ON THE RADAR | Why We’re Excited About Continuum’s Time Travels Light This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fjola Evans (Photo: Eugen Sakhenko)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iconic landscapes and the<\/em> space permeate the Continuum Ensemble’s second program for the 2017\/18 season: Time Travels Light<\/a>.\u00a0 The concert opens with solo electronic percussion, progressing to a duo and a quartet by Andrew Staniland, and finally moving on to two premieres by Fj\u00f3la Evans and Michael Oesterle, set for an ensemble of six (TorQ Percussion Quartet<\/a> with Ryan Scott<\/a> and Rob Power<\/a>) plus six (the lower strings of Continuum).<\/p>\n

Drawing from the kitchen sink: Morse code, the sounds of insects and animals, a youthful impression of California past, visceral loneliness in the stark landscape of Iceland \u2014 this program is an inversion: percussion dominates and strings accompany. How did we get here?<\/p>\n

When artistic director Ryan Scott initially approached Fj\u00f3la for a piece for percussion sextet and members of Continuum a year or so ago, she, in return, proposed the addition of six lower strings.\u00a0 Always keen to investigate fresh ideas,\u00a0 Ryan decided to ask Michael Oesterle to rework his percussion octet California<\/em> to the match this instrumentation, and six+six became a major feature for Sunday\u2019s concert.<\/p>\n

The audience may not yet be familiar with Fj\u00f3la Evans, but this young Icelandic\/Canadian composer\/cellist moved from Reykjavik to Toronto when she was not yet a teenager, and grew up in the Junction. Currently a graduate student in composition at the Yale School of Music, Fj\u00f3la went to McGill for Undergraduate Cello Performance, where she realized that the Performance program\u2019s focus (orchestral training and the traditional solo career) did not inspire her: \u201cAnd when I didn\u2019t see myself doing either, I was on a mission to figure out how to become a musician without pursuing those two specific directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, her innate interest in improvisation (\u201cI was always interested in improvisation on the cello, though I did not know what improvisation meant then,\u201d) and in the collaborative process, led her to the digital composers’ studio at McGill, where Fj\u00f3la found her interest in contemporary composition.<\/p>\n

After graduating, Fj\u00f3la dug deep into the Montr\u00e9al pop music scene. Thanks to the massive creativity in the city inspired by the success of Arcade Fire, there were many opportunities for her to be involved in gigs and recordings as a ‘cellist, and through these gigs, she developed a keen interest in technology, timbre and sound, the recording process and the manipulation of it.<\/p>\n

When she moved to New York to study composition with Julia Wolfe of the Bang on a Can composers’ collective, Fj\u00f3la encountered many new inspirations, including the composers Molly Herron) and artist and instrument builder Merche Blasco. Herron\u2019s curation, New Music for New Instruments (2014) paired up instrument makers with composers: the idea of giving completely new instruments to composers carte blanche<\/em> led to some wild exploration of potentials \u2013 those of the new instrument itself, the composer, and of the performers.<\/p>\n

Merche and Fj\u00f3la presented Whirlpool for Three Sopranos and Theremin Orchestra (Merche made the theremins and Fj\u00f3la composed) for the ‘New Music’ show. Fj\u00f3la credits both technology and her artist and performers collaborators in encouraging composers to push the boundary: \u201cIt is a symbiotic relationship, as my music does not exist if people don\u2019t play it.\u201d<\/p>\n