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West Coast String Summit 2023
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Meredith Bates & Alex Abahmed (Vancouver) • Nicolas Caloia & Malcolm Goldstein (Montreal) • Eyvind Kang (US) • Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal) • Quatuor d’occasion (Montreal) • Sapphire Haze (Vancouver) • Josh Zubot Strings (Vancouver)
Concerts at 8pm each night
Artist chats take place March 9 – 11 at 7:15pm each night
Roundhouse Arts & Recreation Centre
Vancouver New Music, Vancouver Improvised Arts Society and NOW Society partner to present the first West Coast String Summit from March 9th to 12th, a new annual celebration of creative music and the power of strings. The West Coast String Summit brings together quartets, ensembles, duos and solo string players for collaborative, eclectic explorations of string music: from contemporary string quartets to improvisation to string and electronic duos.
Join musicians from Vancouver, Montreal and the US for four days of concerts, open chats and a special workshop with renowned composer and musician Malcolm Goldstein.
FREE EVENT! Everyone is invited to sit in as an observer for the workshop taking place on Friday, March 10 from 1 to 3pm at The Roundhouse. No registration required; feel free to just show up.
A solo performance on Viola d’amore by Eyvind Kang.
Eyvind Kang—a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger—works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. Wary of the divisions of music by nation, Kang makes “people music” influenced by geology, collective memory and sonic possibility. He has worked with Jessika Kenney, Laurie Anderson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Bill Frisell, and many others. Since 2020 he has focused on the Viola D’Amore.
Inertia is an electroacoustic work for solo violin and electronics. The piece consists of live violin, pre-recorded samples, real-time effects processing and a sound palette inspired by film music/sound and Arab music.
Inertia is an electroacoustic work for solo violin and electronics. The piece consists of live violin played by Meredith Bates, pre-recorded and processed samples, real-time effects processing and a sound palette inspired by film music/sound and Arab music. It’s the second track on my album, Thonis, under the alias AHA and published by Syrphe. The album is named after the ancient port city Thonis-Heracleion, which was found in 1999 sunken beneath the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria, Egypt. It was created by a continuous attempt to retrieve something intangible that had been lost and was inspired by the desire to reconnect with an alternative existence.
Every piece has been some form of outlet for me. It’s always clear to me, when looking back, how the work I was doing is affected by life events or mental states. I believe that the piece reflected my inability to focus on anything that needs to get done and the frustration that comes with that. Inertia was initially intended to be played with a homemade accelerometer meant to give Meredith agency over the electronics by transducing the movements of her bowing arm into a MIDI message. However, creating the device and ensuring it worked was a great distraction from writing a piece of music. The newest iteration of the piece doesn’t include the accelerometer as it no longer has a use in the score and may be used to write something new where it can be integrated more thoughtfully in the future. The piece was recorded during a performance at Simon Fraser University’s Music and Sound Festival and was edited afterwards into what is heard on the album.
– Alex Abahmed
www.syrphe.bandcamp.com/album/thonis
Josh Zubot Strings brings together the idiosyncratic talent of composer and improviser Josh Zubot with acclaimed musicians Jesse Zubot, Marina Hasselberg, Meredith Bates and James Meger.
Sapphire Haze is a composer-performer duo residing on unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm land (Vancouver, Canada). With Cindy Kao on violin and Aysha Dulong on electronics, the duo utilizes sound-to-colour synaesthesia as a compositional tool. They work in a hybridized model, and aim to blur the distinction between acoustic and electronic sound. Sapphire Haze explores how sound can embody lived experiences and can be utilized to express oneself.
As a duo, their work has been presented at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, Vines Art Festival, Modulus Festival, Gateway Theatre and The Fox Cabaret. Recently, they were the featured artist for Music on Main’s 2021/2022 Emerge on Main program, and made their international debut at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival in June 2022. Currently, they are sound designing with rice & beans theatre and devising an original interdisciplinary work with choreographer and dancer Natalia Martineau about where colonial imposition lives in our bodies.
https://sapphirehazemusic.com
Quatuor d’occasion’s Malcolm Goldstein and Nicolas Caloia perform as a duo on violin and bass.
Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice and strong advocate in new, experimental and classical music since 1999. Driving the hyper-creative Montréal scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an ethos of risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration, venturing boldly off the beaten track. With a rigorous eye for quality, they have nurtured a rich and diverse repertoire, regardless of trends. This has led to over 400 commissioned pieces, and some 500 premiered works. Their open, collaborative, artist-led approach has resulted in the realisation of numerous innovative and highly-praised productions, including inter-disciplinary projects with video, theatre and dance.
Water and Ockham’s Razor
Éliane Radigue
“Simplest is always the best!”
Here is how Ockham’s Razor, a problem-solving principle also known as the ‘law of parsimony,’ is presented by composer Éliane Radigue. The idea is attributed to medieval philosopher William of Ockham (XIV century), and can be formulated as such: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate; multiples should not be used without necessity.
Placed at the core of Radigue’s instrumental project Occam Océan, this principle becomes at once a performance guide for musicians, and a key structural element of the piece. During performance the razor is used as follows: if a section of the piece turns out to be less intense than what was initially planned, it is best for performers to skip right to the next section rather than to relentlessly try to “fix” something that is not picking up. Reversely, if a section sounds marvellous, musicians are encouraged to sustain it as long as possible, for the sake of pleasure…
In this way, each section of the piece is partly determined by that which—in the midst of performance—seems to be the simplest solution. For we are not talking here of scored music, but rather of an “intuitive compositional process,” akin to “oral transmission of ancient traditional music” (Sonami, 2017).
During their first meeting with Radigue, musicians choose a water-related image (hence the second part of the title). This image is very personal to each musician, and behaves like a scaffolding in the construction of the piece, somewhat replacing the written score. Once the piece is well structured, the image may be “left behind, in the drawer,” like a score when one knows a piece of music by heart. Each piece is thus tailored for each musician, and each musician has her and his own solo, named Occam*. By combining solos, Occam River duos are formed, Occam Delta for trios and quartets, Hexa for quintets, and so forth up to Occam Océan for large orchestra. Up to this day, there are 23 solos, and already more than 50 pieces created through these combinations. As Radigue puts it, it is but the beginning of a cycle creating an oeuvre “by nature unfinished, because [it is] unfinishable”… And this pleases her very much.
* Since all rules have their exceptions, not only is the Bozzini Quartet the only string quartet of the Occam project, but also the only Occam Delta not to be produced through the combination of solos and duos.
– Emanuelle Majeau-Bettez
Malcolm Goldstein – violin
Jean René – viola
Émilie Girard-Charest – cello
Nicolas Caloia – contrabass
Quatuor d’occasion performs Because a circle is not enough, music for bowed string instruments (2018-19), a program of works composed by Malcolm Goldstein in 2018-19. Presented as series of structured improvisations, these pieces are intended as a process of discovery, emerging in real time shaped by the structure and directives of each individual composition, and creative choices of the musicians.
The Quatuor d’occasion was formed in 2011 on the initiative of Malcolm Goldstein. Since then they have performed in most of Montreal’s experimental and improvised music venues. Meeting regularly for several years, the quartet’s musicians have developed a common discourse and created their own group sound.
Because a circle is not enough : an étude to focus the body/breath/gesture in relation to performed sound. Performed as a duo and by the entire ensemble.
reflections on a cavatina / adagio : phrases of timbrally varied, single sustained tones quietly expanded from a tonal centre.
Songs and interludes : a shifting of balance between tone and timbre phrases and events as rest points.
haiku sounding : songs with a structure analogous to the Japanese haiku form, transformed through the process of linkage to create a series of songs. To be realized by the full quartet and as a duet.
on and on and always slowly nowhere : Endless nuances within a single sound and gesture are revealed within a focused structure of long sustained bowings.
extraordinarily variable, this source : a flow of various fast staccato and spiccato articulations with modification of timbre and articulation, creating endless nuances within an on-going sound texture.
Statement and Responses : a structure that begins with several “statements” of brief timbre phrases analogous to spoken language, which then opens to “responses” of short phrases of repeated rhythmic patterns. This piece can also be realized as a dialogue between two musicians.
for the left hand alone : free-flowing and patterned rhythms performed with left hand pizzicato.
Storytelling : music that comes from the musicians’ experience(s) in life, recalled and realized in sound as episodes of sonic enactment.
décollage / collage : a melodic line that is endlessly transformed by omitting and replacing elements.
boundless the source, overflowing in song : the quartet musicians establish a texture derived from the performance activities explored in preceding pieces, from which each musician emerges with their own personal improvised song.
https://www.musiquerayonnante.org/quatuordoccasion.html
Tickets will be available only at the door, by donation.
An evening of improvised string exchanges featuring: Parmela Attariwala (viola), Nicolas Caloia (double bass), Sina Ettehad (kamanche), Émilie Girard-Charest (cello), Marina Hasselberg (cello), Lan Tung (erhu), Torsten Müller (double bass), and Josh Zubot (violin).
Registration for participants is now closed, but everyone is welcome to come and listen in on the workshop.
Free event – no reservation required!
The workshop, led by composer, improviser and violinist Malcolm Goldstein, will focus on listening internally to one’s own body/breath energies as expressed externally in sound/space through the enactment of gesture. Specific frameworks will be explored in which each musician can learn of their own ways of attention to reveal possibilities of improvisation, each their own way of sounding.
Questions? Email us at strings@newmusic.org
Excerpt of a solo performance on Viola d’amore by Eyvind Kang.
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
Videography: Mingtao Kong
Audio recording: Dan Kibke
Editing: Heather McDermid
