Instead of Russian and flamenco

I have been deliciously, insanely busy this summer. Many of the projects I envisioned for my 'retirement', such as learning Russian properly and taking flamenco lessons, have been put on indefinite hold.

Ma il furto non m'accora - the loss doesn't disturb me, as Rodolfo sings to Mimi in a different context - because they've been utterly supplanted by the joys (and occasional agonies) of making music, writing it and performing it.

It's my immense good fortune to be blessed with magnificent musicians to work with. On October 4, with mezzo-soprano Marcia Swanston and the Blue Engine String Quartet, I will be performing in a concert of my own music - this is a first for me - as part of the St. Cecilia Concert Series here in Halifax. Marcia and Blue Engine were both part of Opera Nova Scotia's presentation of 'I will fly like a bird' in May of this year; they also took part in the Scotia Festival premiere in 2012. Their insight into my intentions and their poignant, heart-stopping performances constituted a powerful blessing.

The concert will include three of my vocal works, all new to Halifax: Canciones del alma, an evocation of spiritual experience through the metaphor of physical love, to a poem by San Juan de la Cruz, a 16th century Spanish mystic/monk/poet; Invocation to Aphrodite, to a poem by Sappho, greatest of classical Greek lyric poets; and Somnus et Amor, a hedonistic hymn to the joys of physical love, to the magical transition from lovemaking to sleep - and back again to love. This poem comes from the medieval Carmina burana manuscript, the same collection from which Orff drew his famous cantata of the same name. The fourth vocal work is my transcription of Haydn's cantata 'Arianna a Naxos' for voice and piano trio.

The event also includes the world premiere of my Piano Quintet, composed thanks to a grant from Arts Nova Scotia, and written with Blue Engine's expressive virtuosity, versatility, and matchless musicality in mind. I've given a detailed description of the work in the 'Program Notes' section of this site. For more information, please consult St. Cecilia's website: http://www.stcecilia.ca/home

Blue Engine and Chris Wilcox have also very kindly invited me to compose a new quartet, commissioned by Blue Engine, for the Music Room Chamber series. To compose a string quartet is the most exciting and demanding of challenges, not only because of the form's illustrious lineage, but because the relative homogeneity of timbre impels a concentrated emotional intimacy, a kind of distillation which requires maturity and truthfulness of expression. It is, after all, the medium to which composers from Beethoven to Murray Schafer (and beyond) have confided their deepest thoughts, intuitions and aspirations.

Preparation for this work involved immersing myself in the study of quartets of all kinds. Along with many new discoveries, the opportunity to deepen my acquaintance with this inexhaustible repertoire has been irresistibly inviting. New to me were the magnificent quartets of Grazyna Bacewicz; the terrifying and moving quartets of Helmut Lachenmann; the irrepressible vitality of both Ginastera quartets. And it was essential to plunge again into all six of Bartok's quartets, to continue to explore those of Ligeti, Penderecki, Murray Schafer, Carter; and to deepen my acquaintance with those of Schumann, Borodin.... and Beethoven.

The Music Room concert is scheduled for February 3; and I've recently learned that in January the extraordinary team of saxophonist Tristan de Borba and pianist Simon Docking will be giving the Canadian premiere of my 'A deep clear breath of life' in the same series!

And I would like to add an important postscriptum to my 'Pecorino' blog: my Insomnia, commissioned by Michael Couper and Jennifer Bill, for soprano voice, alto sax and piano will be premiered at Carnegie Hall on the afternoon of October 31.

http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2015/10/31/0200/PM/Michael-Couper-Saxophone-ChoEun-Lee-Piano/

I will have more to say about these events in a future blog, ideally to be written shortly after the October 4 concert.

So if Russian, classical Greek and flamenco have taken a back seat to all this, I certainly cannot complain, though I'm inclined to join in the immemorial kvetch about the shortness of life, not to mention the vertiginous brevity of every single day! And I'm full of gratitude to the incomparable artists who have immersed themselves in my work with such devotion and enthusiasm; to Larry Bent and Missy Searl of St. Cecilia Concerts, and to Chris Wilcox of The Music Room Chamber Series; and finally to my wife and life partner Jocelyne, who is an integral part of my creativity and the deepest source of my inspiration.