Conducting convergence innovation

Creative Sparks was launched at MaRS on Wednesday, May 7, as a component of the Esprit Orchestra’s 2008 season and the New Wave Composers Festival. It was conceived by Esprit’s Music Director and Conductor, Alex Pauk, and it was an exemplary model of the themes that MaRS embraces: convergence, innovation, creativity and collaboration.

The project brought professional composers together with Toronto Area high school and middle school students to mentor the burgeoning compositional and performance talents. The idea was to stretch the boundaries between the students’ understanding of what orchestral music is and what it can become. Students were encouraged to consider the traditional sound of an orchestra being enhanced by technology, amplified sounds that would not usually be part of a score and MaRS as the performance platform.

The concert used the MaRS Atrium to its full capacity. Musicians were stationed on bridges and walkways, in the lower concourse and throughout the main floor spaces. It was surround sound at its finest. Over 180 student and professional musicians, 50 choir members and a host of proud parents, teachers and Esprit followers became an organic audience that moved with the sound — literally.

It was a night of Canadian and world premieres and collaboration was the theme for the evening. Nowhere was it more evident than in the moving Threnody composed by R. Murray Schafer. Originally written in 1966 as an anti-war protest, the spoken text comes from children’s eye-witness accounts of the atomic bombing of Nagaski. It is an uncomfortable work, juxtaposing young voices with mature themes from the string and brass sections. Improvisation from the orchestra leaves the audience torn between the hard truth of the words and the freedom of the music. Schafer updated Threnody in 2008 as a result of his participation in the Creative Sparks program working with the orchestra and choir of St. Elizabeth Catholic High School in Thornhill under the direction of John Lettieri.

Stay tuned for great sounds emerging from North Toronto Collegiate. Their stunning Themes and Variations was a collaborative effort of eight students under the mentorship of composer Scott Good. Duncan Jennings’ Theme became the sounding board for his fellow composer’s imaginations and wild ideas. Inserting electric guitar and percussion (sounding a lot like pots and pans crashing together) into a melodic string theme made for complicated and exciting music. Not exactly something you can hum along to but also not easily forgotten.

Two real treats of the evening were The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives and Falcon’s Trumpet, another composition by R. Murray Schafer. The Ives piece was played from the “pit” or the lower concourse of the MaRS Atrium. Here, the sound travelled brilliantly throughout the house as the strings played a consistent soft melody from below - then comes the trumpet played from high above on the 2nd floor bridge, followed by the flutes, clarinet and oboe that just seemed to come out of nowhere and move faster and louder as the piece went on. The Esprit Orchestra musicians and the student string performers from Claude Watson School of the Arts, North Toronto Collegiate and Etobicoke School of the Arts handled this delicate piece with ease. Falcon’s Trumpet was composed with featured trumpeter Stuart Laughton (one of the original members of the Canadian Brass) in mind. This dual of “birds” with the trumpet leading the charge starts with solo bars where you can picture the graceful arc of a bird soaring in the sky. Return calls from the other players make for a powerful back and forth as the struggle for power begins. Schafer refers to the piece as “non-synchronous” as if taking place outdoors where you cannot orchestrate the sounds and timing - with the orchestra placed throughout the entire MaRS atrium you felt like you were in the middle of something happening around you simply as an observer to something greater.

Congratulations to all involved in this unique and exciting converging of talents. By bringing new music to new spaces expands all of our minds as the lines of creativity are blurred and that fine line between art and science is less of a line. I hope that this is only the beginning for MaRS — home to Convergence Innovation — as an amazing venue for musicians to explore their creativity and debut new works.

There is one last chance to catch the Esprit Orchestra and the New Wave Composer’s Festival. On Sunday May 11th at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts 8:00pm Concert; 7:15 pm pre-concert composers talk. The special guest artist is Ryan Scott, percussion. The concert will also be recorded for a future broadcast on CBC Radio 2, The Signal and Sunday Afternoon in Concert.

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