The Northwest Guitar Festival performance of PRISMOPHONY guitar quartet

The Northwest Guitar Festival has been a real pleasure. Taking place in Victoria, BC, Canada from April 9 - 11, the festival features a guitar competition, concerts, and master classes. I have been Guest Composer at this edition. Here's a brief report from the first two days.

My presentation "The Music of John Oliver" was a success and I think prepared the participants in the festival (and audience) not only for the appearance of my music on the program, but also other contemporary works. I was glad to hear from audience that they were fascinated by my story of a life in music that begins with classical guitar, moves to electronic music, operas and symphonies, and then back to classical guitar, with the influence of all of these filtering back into some of the new guitar music.

The performance of my guitar quartet PRISMOPHONY by Alex Dunn and friends on Friday night was excellent. The audience appreciated my spectral canon technique that is featured in three of the work's four movements. It's wonderful to create musical structures that take the listener on a journey to a rarified sonic place that might be called "avant-garde," but to do so in a sonic context that baths the listener in resonant sound that is soothing, yet in constant motion.

Last night featured great performances by two outstanding guitarists: Stephen Lochbaum and Janet Grohovac, playing beautifully programs of challenging favourites of the guitar repertoire. Both former Alex Dunn students, their tone and approach to phrasing show the power and strength we might expect from his best students.

2 pm concerts by Continuum Consort, Victoria Guitar Trio, Oberon Trio and Duo Verdejo all offered varied and mixed programming, with a lot of new music. No time for a "review" but suffice to say that there were no real disappointments in any of these concerts.

Must run. More activities today.

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Hot Tempered Clavier recording released on Bruce Mather Double-CD

Listen to Fantasie No. 1 from the Hot Tempered Clavier by John Oliver.

Bruce Mather’s new Double-CD “Music in thirds and sixteenths of tones” features my Hot Tempered Clavier, a reworking of the famous Bach Well-Tempered Clavier for Mather's 16th of tone piano. (That would be 96 keys per octave. The piano has a range of one octave.) In this work, I “compose the temperament.” Bach's goal in his Well-Tempered Clavier was to play music in any key on a single keyboard, using the new equal-tempered tuning system. (Previously, musical tunings were purer in sound but instruments needed to be retuned if the music was in a different key.)  I have taken the first and second of the Bach preludes and fugues and reworked them so that the temperament moves from 12-tone equal-temperament (ET), through various divisions (24, 48, and 96 divisions) into what I call “spectral tuning” at the cadences. Your ears will stand up on end!

Also contains music by Wychnegradsky, J.E. Marie, J. Burke, M. Patch, G. Tremblay, J. Desjardins, M. Gonneville, O. Gagnon, J. Winiarz, and Bruce Mather himself.

The CD is published by SNE (SNE-667-CD) and can be purchased by emailing the company: sne_poirierATsympaticoDOTca

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French painter Claude Nguyen inspired by Oliver's composition Dust for clarinet and surround audio

French painter Claude Nguyen has started a blog where he will detail the paintings he will create as a direct result of detailed listening to my composition Dust for clarinet and surround audio. Although the site is live now, it will fill up with content as the project progresses throughout the spring months.

Le peintre français, Claude Nguyen, lance un blog ou il présentera ses peintures d'après ma composition DUST pour clarinette et support audio. Le blog détaillera son progrès dans les mois qui viennent.

Triple Gold

From Vancouver Sun music critic David Duke's blog. Read the full article.

Reviewer David Gordon Duke was unable to attend the premiere of my composition Five-ring Concerto last night but did write a review of the dress rehearsal. Since David was unable to hear the performance, you are invited to leave your comments at the end of his blog post if you did see the performance.

EXCERPTS:

Since I’ve yet to master the art of being in two places at the same time, it looked like the Turning Point’s triple bill of Schoenberg/Adams/Oliver was going to go unheard Wednesday evening, when I was already booked to review the Moscow Chamber Choir (see Friday’s edition for the review).

But with the premiere of John Oliver’s Five-Ring Concerto and an opportunity to hear John Adams’ new Son of Chamber Symphony at stake, I asked permission to attend the final rehearsal for the program in the afternoon.

Going to rehearsals is one of the best ways there is to learn a new work—if you can be there through the whole process. Compared to the now-or-never situation a critic faces in performance, it’s a luxury to hear new music emerge over the long haul. Alas, the best I could do on Wednesday was hear a mosaic of bits and pieces being polished to perfection, not a full run through.

Even so, I left all the more envious of listeners who were able to hear the new works given a Vancouver launch. The common denominator is that both are thoroughly contemporary—and thoroughly enjoyable…

…I’m willing to bet that Oliver’s concerto, with or without the sports connection, is an Olympic legacy, not just an Olympic pièce d’occasion. 

View Original Article

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Turning Point Ensemble's three podium pieces

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, February 24, 2010, the Turning Point Ensemble will premiere my new work, Five-ring Concerto, which they commissioned for the Cultural Olympiad (Vancouver Playhouse, 8 pm; tix here). On the program, audience will also hear Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony for 15 soloists and John Adams' Son of Chamber Symphony. This unique program features three works of approximately the same length with similar goals: active, engaging and challenging chamber music. All pursue an active and ever-changing discourse. It's the kind of intelligent music that makes you smile because of the incredible invention throughout. Although intelligent in design, cerebral it is not.

There are many challenges for the musicians. All three works could be named "concerti" in the sense that all the musicians must step up to the plate, bring a common intensity of effort to carry it off. Every musician is engaged in the conversation. There are lots of solos tumbling through the music, in all of the pieces, and amazing ensemble moments. Those familiar with the music of Schoenberg and Adams will be happy to hear this caviar of their output and some echoes of their other works.

I am very pleased with my entire experience working with the Turning Point Ensemble and their conductor Owen Underhill. The sports theme of my own work has been fun to work with and has established an inspired atmosphere. This band is ready to rock the Playhouse on Wednesday night. I hope to see you there.

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Red Chamber performs Oliver and Cage on Cross-Canada Tour

Red Chamber, a Vancouver based Chinese plucked string quartet, is launching its spring tours across Canada. The tours will include concerts on Vancouver Island, the Maritimes, Toronto, southern Ontario, and Northwest Territories. Billed as “Secret of the Chinese Court and Passion of the World”, the concert program is a mix of stunning melodies of ancient China with fiery picking of North American folk tunes. The concerts also feature Canadian compositions written for the group, including John Oliver’s A Dream of Africa (2008), Moshe Denburg’s Dark Red Ruby, (2009), Farshid Samandari’s Of Water and Stone, (2009) Craig Day’s Gu Shi, 2007, and Randy Raine-Reusch’s Daton Jelut (2008). Red Chamber will perform a special concert of Canadian compositions at UBC’s Noon concert series on March 31st. The program also includes John Oliver’s arrangement of the first movement of Three Dances, a landmark work by John Cage (1945), played on the prepared Chinese plucked strings.

For more details, please visit Mei Han's web site.

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My Comment on Greg Sandow's blog

American music critic Greg Sandow is promoting his new book Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music on his blog. He declares he is interested to find solutions to declining audiences for classical music and invites readers to contribute their success stories. Sounds like a plan. I haven't read his book yet, but had this to say about his blog post:


Young people are certainly used to what us older folk might call "multimedia." The solution to classical music's "problem" is simple: engage young people in your productions – young in age or young in spirit. And I don't mean just the obsessed young classical musician. I mean people who live and breath the present. Many sensitive contemporary composers are available to be part of this solution. For classical music to move forward, it has to, well, move forward! The past century is unique in its capacity to archive and create "a canon" of "classical" music." But the music of the past cannot, by itself, speak to the present and the future. Some sentiments, as expressed through music, speak to us over centuries. Others do not. The history of music is a story of change. It should come as no shock that humanity will continue to want from culture something that reflects the time and situation in which we live now. The core of the solution: creative people and programming that artistically mixes the past with the present in productions that enhance the meaning of the works presented by the use of processed image and sound.


Read his blog post here.