Jocelyn Morlock

I love Vancouver on days like today. We’ve got Balinese gamelan, wildly diverse chamber orchestra pieces, and music for virtuoso sho (Japanese mouth organ) plus, well, everything else! Alas, all the concerts are tonight, so it may be challenging to decide which one to hear. Maybe these will help:

Gamelan Gita Asmara – Balinese music and dance, often in gong kebyar style. (That means “to burst into flames”…)

Quebec via Paris, Montreal via India, Manitoba via Montreal, Germany via, um, Germany…VSO at the Annex presents Streams of Consciousness – music by Serge Garant, Gabriel Dharmoo, Gordon Fitzell, and Wolfgang Rihm.

Gabriel Dharmoo – Moondraal-Moondru

Wolfgang Rihm – Nach-schrift

Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra
Virtuoso player Naomi Sato, who performs with VICO tonight, demonstrates the Sho (this is an amazing sound. I covet it.)

Oh yes. And I have proof:

If you only have tonight to go to a concert (say you’re going out of town forever, tomorrow, or giving up music for a very late Lent or something) go hear Stellaria sing Josquin. I usually limit myself to “new music” postings, but Josquin is my favourite renaissance composer, and Stellaria is a really new ensemble, so I’ve given myself license to break my rule. I can’t be there and I’m sad to miss it, so I’m exhorting the rest of the Vancouver listening world to go in my place. Josquin!

If you have a bit more time in town, here are two wild and wonderful events, that are continuing for a while:

Tan Dun’s opera, Tea: A Mirror of Soul, put on by VOA. The water-instruments are thrilling, and what a gorgeous production. I heard the dress rehearsal. I desperately want a water gong. And whatever that other bowed awesomeness is…Opens tonight, shows are May 4, 7, 9 and 11. Bowed-water-thingywoo-oh-yes

The wildly successful, and really fun, Do You Want What I Have Got – otherwise known as the Craigslist Cantata – lyrics by Bill Richardson, music by Veda Hille. I heard the 2012 Vancouver show, just realized it is back (I’m slow, but I was out of town) and plan to go hear it again. On until May 18. Cat…hats…(attend and all will be revealed)

If you absolutely must stay home, you might want to check out Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning unusual and extremely nifty Partita, performed by the gloriously-named vocal octet, Roomful of Teeth. Teeeeeeeth!

So, Juno-Award-Winning performers Duo Concertante played my brand-new violin and piano piece, Petrichor, last night in Kitchener-Waterloo! This is slightly too short notice to make it to that concert. (Oops.) But, if you are in Toronto tonight (April 27), or in Lunenburg the night after (April 28), you can still hear it. Tonight’s concert is at the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto, at 7:30 pm, and proceeds from the concert will go towards their nifty new piano! Music by David Jaeger, R. Murray Schafer, me, and I don’t know who else; but I believe all of us composers will be in attendance, and there’ll be food and beverages, so it should be fun.

Duo Concertante plays at St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg at 7:30 pm tomorrow night – they’re presented by Musique Royale in a concert that will be recorded for future broadcast by CBC. A bit more info is found here.

Tomorrow night (Saturday, April 20, 2013), Paolo Bortolussi and the Vancouver Island Symphony, conducted by Pierre Simard, will be premiering my new flute concerto, Ornithomancy.

Here’s the program note, and page one of the score, in case you are curious:

Ornithomancy is the practice of divination by observing the activity and flight patterns of birds. Though I’m not convinced of their ability to predict the future, I have a long-held fascination with birds of all kinds. Their energy, flight and songs are beautiful and strange, and thus a fertile subject for a flute concerto.

In keeping with the idea of bird-like flocking activities, rather than one extended cadenza, this concerto features various short solos and cadenza-like passages that include soloistic playing from various members of the orchestra.

Ornithomancy is a single-movement piece, about 15 minutes long, in three roughly equal sections. The first section is somewhat slower and more mysterious than the rest of the piece – in mood, it is somewhat sneaky, and the music is quite chromatic. The next section of the piece is fast and nervous (one might even say flighty), rhythmically punchy and precise. In the final section, there is a sense of sense of expansion, flight, and reverie.

Every now and then (well, once…) I post “music that makes me happy to be alive” – music that I want everybody to listen to, in hopes that somebody who hears it will love it as much as I do. Given the infrequency of my posts on this subject, I’d better double up and share two rather different pieces of music, both of which I am veritably crazy about: Darknesse Visible by Thomas Adès, and Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland.

The Adès is an arrangment, or as he puts it in the score, “an explosion” of John Dowland’s “In Darknesse let Mee Dwell,” written in 1992 when Ades was 21 years old (!) The colours he gets out of the piano are wonderful, and rather odd. The Copland is the 1945 orchestral suite from the eponymous ballet, whose Allegro section (2:46 – 5:30) is outrageously joyful…but don’t take my word for it, listen to these!

Thomas Adès – Darknesse Visible (solo piano)

Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring (orchestral suite from 1945)

Tomorrow’s (Tuesday, March 26, 2013) concert of my music at The Cellar, presented by Music on Main, is officially sold out. I’m off to have supper and freak out, before tomorrow’s day of rehearsals.

Details about the concert are here, if you are going and want to see the program. I’ll put some more excerpts onto my soundcloud page soon, since many of the pieces on tomorrow’s concert aren’t represented there yet.

‘Tis a bit of a busy week here in Vancouver, especially for me: the VSO Jean Coulthard readings are tomorrow (Yay, talented students who are having orchestra pieces read by the Vancouver Symphony!), on Thursday March 21 I am giving a talk at the CMC, and on Tuesday March 26 there is an entire concert of my music, presented by Music on Main. In between those two me mee meeeee events there is Sonic Boom! Tons of new music, all happening this week!(No, I am not directly involved in Sonic Boom, wouldn’t that be a bit excessive? Though I do have a piece for on the Vetta series, Thursday at 2pm, Friday at 8pm…see the upcoming page for info…)

Most significantly, though, there is my lovely and rather woolly roommate, his new post about concerts, me, insomnia, and of course, The Scarf. (Please read his blog post for further enlightenment…)

The dulcet tones of flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor, and pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, are excerpted below:

Cello soloists Ariel Barnes and Joseph Elworthy join conductor Les Dala and the Vancouver Academy Orchestra (VAMSO) in tomorrow night’s concert at the Orpheum. Sunday February 24th, 7:30 pm. Facebook event page is here.

From the VAMSO page: From the New World: VAMSO Concert with double Cello guests

Tickets on sale now! Please join us for the next VAMSO Concert, entitled From the New World, featuring VAM Executive Director Joseph Elworthy and Faculty member Ariel Barnes. Vancouver-based composer Jocelyn Morlock features the duo in her work entitled Aeromancy. Also on the program are Dvorak’s most inimitable work, his Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), inspired by New America of the 1900s, and Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger, the Prelude to one of the most ambitious operatic works in the Romantic genre.

Ahem.

If you’re in Montréal on Tuesday February 12, don’t miss ECM+, Ensemble de flûtes Alizé et chœur de jeunes flûtistes being directed by Véronique Lacroix in Les Quatre Éléments!

Mardi 12 février 2013, 19h30, Salle de concert du Conservatoire – 4750, rue Henri-Julien, Montréal. (Note the start time is 19h30, not 2000.)

Tickets are $20 regular, $12 students/composers/other musicians.

ECM+ Facebook page is here, and web page for this concert is here.