Saturday March 31, 2012 at 8:00 pm
Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 West 41st Ave., Vancouver)
Tickets ($28/$18) available here

 
The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra brings its 10th anniversary season to a triumphant close with a concert featuring the 25-member ensemble and chamber choir Laudate Singers, premiering major new works commissioned by the VICO from Dutch composer Joël Bons and renowned Canadian composer Dr. Stephen Chatman.  The programme will also include a new Canada Council commission by Coat Cooke for intercultural orchestra, Moshe Denburg’s El Ginat Egozfor choir, erhu, zheng and marimba, and works featuring two world famous virtuosi - Guilian Liu will perform a solo work for pipa (Chinese lute), and Hossein Behroozinia, on barbat (Iranian lute), will lead an Iranian sextet..

 

 

Bons, Chatman and Cooke have worked closely with the VICO to create their new pieces, in a ground-breaking commissioning and development project funded by Arts Partners in Creative Development.  “Inter-cultural music-making involves combining instruments, musical traditions, techniques and aesthetics from all over the world into a cohesive, artistically effective whole,” says the VICO’s founding Artistic Director Moshe Denburg. “We are one of the only ensembles in the world doing this work on an orchestral scale. Thus, our work is not only to commission and perform new repertoire but also to develop the techniques necessary to perform that repertoire.”  Over the past several years, the orchestra has evolved an innovative, interactive workshop format, through which musicians, singers, conductors and composers work together to address artistic and logistical challenges, and “test drive” new ideas.

 

The result is fusion music on a grand scale... from Bons’ contemporary/experimental work for intercultural orchestra and Cooke’s combination of improvisational techniques with written composition (both of which will feature Bic Hoang on danbau, a Vietnamese string instrument), to Chatman’s new setting of The Rubai'yat of Omar Khayyam, which includes Persian, Chinese and Western elements, and requires the choir to sing a gamut of styles from traditional classical chorales to ragtime. With Imagined Worlds: Intertwined, the VICO presents an ensemble of 50 musicians, performing a programme of intercultural music that truly reflects the diversity, virtuosity and global scope of the artistic community in which it was created. 

 

About Laudate Singers
Laudate means praise, and for Laudate Singers, every concert is a joyful celebration. Founded in 1995 by current artistic director Lars Kaario, this professional chamber choir skillfully and passionately presents repertoire that spans centuries, cultures and genres. Whether it’s medieval, Baroque, Renaissance, classical, Romantic or contemporary…great choral works of the Western canon or music from the Celtic, South African, Latin American, Chinese, Finnish, Quebecois, or Coast Salish traditions (to name only a few)… Laudate Singers combine technical artistry with the ability to make all kinds of choral music accessible, and the final result is always luminous and transcendent. www.laudatesingers.com  

 

About the Featured Composers:

Joël Bons is an internationally-recognized, award-winning intercultural composer and artistic director, embodying high European musical standards and a forward-thinking aesthetic out on the cutting edge of contemporary classical music. Based in Amsterdam, he is the founding Artistic Director of the internationally-acclaimed Nieuw Ensemble and the Atlas Ensemble, which describes itself (very similarly to the VICO) as “a unique chamber orchestra uniting brilliant musicians from China, Central Asia, the Near East and Europe, presenting a previously unheard soundworld of western and non-western instruments.”
 

Mr. Bons' residency with the VICO is supported by the Performing Arts Fund NL.

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Chatman is Professor and Head of Composition at the UBC School of Music, and one of Canada’s most prominent composers.  He has received many commissions and composition awards, including 2005, 2006 and 2010 Western Canadian Music Awards “Classical Composition of the Year”, three BMI Awards (New York), multiple Juno nominations, including 2010, the 2010 SOCAN Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award, Dorothy Somerset Award, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2001 BBC Masterprize short-list.  More than 100 of his works, published by E.C. Schirmer, Oxford University Press, Boosey & Hawkes, earthsongs, Frederick Harris, Dorn, Berandol, and T. Presser, have sold 400,000 printed copies.  His pieces have been recorded by the Vancouver Chamber Choir, UBC Singers and others on a variety of labels including Centrediscs, ATMA, Naxos, Crystal, Skylark and CRI. His orchestral music has been commissioned by the CBC Radio Orchestra, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Madison, and Windsor symphonies and performed by the BBC Symphony, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Montreal, Sydney, Seoul, San Francisco, Winnipeg, Quebec, St. Louis, Calgary, Detroit, Dallas, and New World symphonies. www.drstephenchatman.com

 

Coat Cooke is a saxophonist, improvisor, composer and bandleader who has toured Canada, the USA, Mexico and Europe to great acclaim, whether playing in the acoustic Coat Cooke Trio or one of his electric bands, leading the legendary NOW Orchestra, or collaborating in one of many memorable projects with spoken word, dance and mixed media artists. He has performed with many of the world’s great improvisors, including: George Lewis, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy, Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers. Many of Coat’s compositions have been recorded; his work also appears on CDs by his bands Lunar Adventures and the NOW Orchestra, as well as the live recording of an all-improvised program on the Coat Cooke Trio’s critically acclaimed disc Up Down Down Up. Coat’s highly personal musical language comes from a hunger to find and express innovative sounds and ideas in new contexts of word, movement, electronics and cultural perspectives from around the world. These explorations play out both in his compositions and the many improvising situations into which he puts himself. As a soloist, Coat has emerged as one of Canada’s most lyrical and inventive saxophonists. As a bandleader, Coat’s uncanny ability to discover and collaborate with strong, exceptional players allows each musician to speak their unique musical story, supported by Coat’s intuitive ability to support and respond to any direction or idea emerging. His ensembles coalesce in a wickedly stronger brew than the sum of their parts. www.coatcooke.com

 

Moshe Denburg (b. 1949) grew up in Montreal, Canada, in a religious Jewish family. His musical career has spanned 4 decades and his accomplishments encompass a wide range of musical activities, including Composition, Performance, Jewish Music Education, and Piano Tuning.  He has travelled worldwide, living and studying music in Canada, the USA, Israel, India, and Japan.  From 1986-90 he studied composition with John Celona at the University of Victoria, Canada. Since 1987 his compositions have reflected an ongoing commitment to the principle of intercultural music making - works that bring together the instruments and ideas of many cultures. To this end, in 2001 Mr. Denburg established the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), a vehicle for the realization of his, and other Canadian composers' intercultural work.  He is also an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

 

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