Last updated: June 16, 2022
Program
ANNA THORVALDSDÓTTIR Aeriality
NICOLE LIZÉE Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring
Repertoire
Aeriality
Aeriality is Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s second work for large orchestra. Commissioned by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, it was composed between 2010 and 2011, with the world premiere given by the ensemble conducted by Ilan Volkov in November 2011, at Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík. The piece has since been performed internationally and has established Thorvaldsdóttir as a striking and distinctive voice in contemporary music.
On the work’s subject and title, Thorvaldsdóttir notes:
Aeriality refers to the state of gliding through the air with nothing or little to hold on to—as if flying—and the music both portrays the feeling of absolute freedom gained from the lack of attachment and the feeling of unease generated by the same circumstances. The title draws its essence from various aspects of the meaning of the word ‘aerial’ and refers to the visual inspiration that such a view provides. ‘Aeriality’ is also a play on words, combining the words ‘aerial’ and ‘reality’, so as to suggest two different worlds; ‘reality’, the ground, and ‘aerial’, the sky or the untouchable.
Musically, she describes Aeriality as being “on the border of symphonic music and sound art,” with “sound-textures combined—and contrasted with—various forms of lyrical material.” As she further elaborates:
Parts of the work consist of thick clusters of sounds that form a unity as the instruments of the orchestra stream together to form a single force—a sound-mass. The sense of individual instruments is somewhat blurred, and the orchestra becomes a single moving body, albeit at times forming layers of streaming materials that flow between different instrumental groups. These chromatic layers of materials are extended by the use of quartertones to generate vast sonic textures. At what can perhaps be said to be the climax in the music, a massive, sustained ocean of quartertones slowly accumulates and is then released into a brief lyrical field that almost immediately fades out at the peak of its own urgency, only to remain a shadow.
In line with her commentary, the piece traces a long arc from “reality” to “aerial”—as composer-musician Anne Lanzilotti has aptly described—through a slow-moving progression from one tone (F-sharp) to another (C) and finally to air sound. Enroute to the climax, the orchestra’s players contribute individually to the overall soundscape, with each holding a sustained pitch that Thorvaldsdóttir instructs in the score to be thought of “as a fragile flower that you have to carry in your hands and walk the distance on a thin rope without dropping it or falling.” After accumulating on 46 distinct pitches, the chord discharges into the “lyrical field”, a moment of passionate release that the composer likens “to clouds clearing up the sky, revealing the beauty that lies behind the mass.” Gradually, the orchestra shifts towards a drone pitch of C, ultimately dissipating into air at the work’s close.
Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes
As her current biography notes, Canadian composer Nicole Lizée explores in her works such themes as “malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.” She’s particularly fascinated by “the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them, and integrates them into live performance.” These topics of interest are taken up again in her latest piece for solo percussion and orchestra, a NACO and BBC co-commission for Colin Currie entitled Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes,
Tonight’s performance is the work’s world premiere; it will have its European premiere this summer at the BBC Proms, by Currie and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra led by Alpesh Chauhan.
Lizée shares the following description of her piece:
Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes is inspired by certain techniques found in stop motion, film, and photography—particularly those that have potential for corruption and error, i.e., freezing, extreme and misuse of zoom and blur, dropped frames, image burn-in/ghost images, light leaks, and multiple exposures. This concerto uses percussion and orchestra to sonically represent and embrace these erroneous ‘events’.
Stop motion is an animation technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between photographed frames to create the illusion of independent motion. While the art form has become slick through the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), it is the earliest forms of stop motion that I find the most fascinating. Central to creating stop motion is the black frame where the ‘trickery’ is carried out, unseen. Motion or animation is made possible by interruptions in the chain of images. During this interruption the animator modifies the objects off camera in tiny increments, which the audience does not see. The darkness is necessary to create the illusion of continuity. But the goings-on during those unseen moments, which can extend for an indefinite amount of time, can be the most interesting. This work celebrates that darkness or black frame.
The Rite of Spring
In his 1936 autobiography, Igor Stravinsky recalled having a “fleeting vision” in 1910 as he was completing his ballet score The Firebird for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes: “I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.” He proposed it to Diaghilev as the subject for another ballet, then turned to Russian painter Nikolai Roerich to help him flesh it out. Also an archaeologist with a deep fascination for early Slavic history and ancient religion, Roerich was instrumental in the shaping and creation of the ballet’s narrative, and designed the sets and costumes for the original production.
On May 29, 1913, The Rite of Spring premiered at Paris’s Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. It provoked strong reactions from the audience, though, as music scholars have proved, not to the extent of a violent riot—a much-exaggerated claim by critics and concert promoters that has been perpetuated as a myth, even to this day. While accounts conflict on various details, what’s clear is that much of the performance was obscured by the audience’s noisy protestations—laughter, yelling, whistling, booing, and the like—to Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography. Featuring jerky gestures, stamping, and bizarrely complex group movements, it went against the aesthetics of traditional ballet. Stravinsky’s score was deemed brutal and incomprehensible, even though his command of the orchestra and his gifts for rhythm and melody were undeniable. More troubling and problematic was the racist commentary the dancing and the music elicited, with connections drawn to “primitive” and “savage” non-European cultures.
Since its premiere, The Rite of Spring has been performed primarily in the concert hall and is regarded as an icon of 20th century musical modernism. It bears noting what aspects make it a landmark work for its time. For one, it uses an expanded orchestral palette, with autonomous instrumental groups—including an enlarged woodwind section—juxtaposed and layered to create a vast variety of textures and sonorities. Players are also sometimes required to play at the limits of their instruments—for example, the opening melody is set in the bassoon’s high register, giving it an unusually strained timbre. The insistent repetition and development of melodic cells (fragments of Slavic folk song or approximations of it) alongside constantly driving rhythms, often with irregularly placed accents cutting across regular beat patterns, create a hypnotic atmosphere. Chords are combined and recombined to form complex, jarring dissonances that are applied with memorable effect—listen for the “stomping chord”, repeated no less than 32 times in succession, in “The Augurs of Spring”. In sum, the orchestra isn’t merely a backdrop for the ritualistic events occurring on stage, but an active participant.
Tonight, you’ll experience The Rite of Spring afresh in the Canadian premiere of a new critical edition of the score, completed in 2021 by Clinton F. Nieweg and James Chang. To help guide your listening and stimulate imagination, an outline of the ballet’s episodes is provided below, with Stravinsky’s descriptions taken from his notes to conductor Serge Koussevitsky for the 1914 Russian premiere of the work as a concert piece.
First Part: Adoration of the Earth
Introduction
Quoted in an interview published the day after the premiere, Stravinsky described the Introduction as “the fear of nature before the arising of beauty, a sacred terror at the midday sun, a sort of pagan cry…And the whole orchestra, all this massing of instruments, should have the significance of The Birth of Spring.”
The Augurs of Spring: Dances of the Young Girls
“Some adolescent boys appear with a very old woman, whose age and even whose century is unknown, who knows the secret of nature, and who teachers her sons Prediction. She runs, bent over the earth, half-woman, half-beast. The adolescents at her side are Augurs of Spring, who mark in their steps the rhythm of spring, the pulse beat of spring.”
Ritual of Abduction
“Young girls arrive from the river in single file. They begin the Dance of the Abduction.”
Spring Rounds
Groups of young men and women confront each other, with the girls “forming a circle which mingles with the boys’ circle.”
Ritual of the Rival Tribes
“The groups separate and compete; messengers come from one to the other and they quarrel. It is the defining of forces through struggle, that is, through games.”
Procession of the Sage
“A holy procession leads to the entry of the wise elders, headed by the Sage, who brings the games to a pause and blesses the earth”
The Sage
“The games stop and the people wait, trembling, for the blessing of the earth. The Sage makes a sign to kiss the earth.”
Dance of the Earth
“The people break into a passionate dance, sanctifying and becoming one with the earth.”
Second Part: The Sacrifice
Introduction
Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
“Night. The young girls engage in mysterious games, walking in circles. One of the maidens is chose for the Sacrifice. Fate points to her twice: twice she is caught in one of the circles without an exit.”
Glorification of the Chosen One
“The girls dance a martial dance honouring the Chosen One.”
Evocation of the Ancestors
“In a brief dance, the young girls evoke the ancestors.”
Ritual Action of the Ancestors
“The Chosen One is entrusted to the care of the wise old men.”
Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One)
“The Chosen One dances to death in the presence of the Ancestors. When she is on the point of falling exhausted, the Ancestors recognize it, and glide towards her like ravenous monsters, so that she may not touch the ground in falling; they raise her and hold her towards the sky.”
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Artists
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Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation”, Montreal based composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, 1960s psychedelia and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance.
Nicole’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.
In 2001 Nicole received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 40 works is varied and distinguished (the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, CBC, Radio-Canada, the San Francisco Symphony, NYC’s Kaufman Center, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, So Percussion, Eve Egoyan, Gryphon Trio, MATA Festival, TorQ Percussion, Fondation Arte Musica/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, ECM+, Continuum, Soundstreams, SMCQ, Arraymusic, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony). Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall (NYC), Royal Albert Hall (London), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam) and Cité de la Musique (Paris) – and in festivals including the BBC Proms (UK), Huddersfield (UK), Bang On a Can (USA), All Tomorrow’s Parties (UK), X Avant (Canada), Luminato (Canada), C3 (Berlin), Ecstatic (NYC), Switchboard (San Francisco), Casalmaggiore (Italy), and Dark Music Days (Iceland).
Nicole was awarded the prestigious 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy). In 2015 she was selected by acclaimed composer and conductor Howard Shore to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Mentorship Program.
This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, placed in the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Her work for piano and notated glitch, Hitchcock Études, was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music and featured at the 2014 World Music Days in Wroclaw, Poland. Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus (2013), two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine, (2012, 2013) and the 2002 Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition.
Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (b. 1977) is an Icelandic composer whose “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (The New York Times) and “striking” (The Guardian) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). Her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material and tends to evoke “a sense of place and personality” (The New York Times) through a distinctive “combination of power and intimacy” (Gramophone). “Never less than fascinating,” according to Gramophone Magazine, it is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow.
Anna's music is widely performed internationally and has been commissioned by many of the world's leading orchestras, ensembles, and arts organizations. Portrait concerts with her music have been featured at several major venues and music festivals. Her works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions—most notably, her “confident and distinctive handling of the orchestra” (Gramophone) has garnered her the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, the New York Philharmonic's Kravis Emerging Composer Award, and Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award and Martin E. Segal Award.
Anna is currently based in the London area. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. She is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Anna holds a Ph.D. from the University of California in San Diego.
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Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).
Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia projects Life Reflected and UNDISRUPTED,and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musicians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.
Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, starting with the 2024–2025 season, Artistic and Music Director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida, USA. In the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, and in 2017, he led the Orchestra in a tour across Canada, celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary. Most recently, he led the Orchestra in its first performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 30 years.
He has made eight recordings with the NAC Orchestra, including the JUNO-nominated New Worlds, Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, The Bounds of Our Dreams, and the acclaimed Clara, Robert, Johannes four-album series, all with Canadian label Analekta.
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the Orchestra performs a full series of subscription concerts at the National Arts Centre each season, featuring world-class artists such as James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds.
Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009 - 2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.
National and international tours have been a hallmark of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from the very beginning. The Orchestra has toured 95 times since its inauguration in 1969, visiting 120 cities in Canada, as well as 20 countries and 138 cities internationally. In recent years, the orchestra has undertaken performance and education tours across Canada, as well as the U.K. and China. In 2019, the Orchestra marked its 50th anniversary with a seven-city European tour that included performances and education events in England, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and that showcased the work of six Canadian composers.
The NAC Orchestra has recorded many of the more than 80 new works commissioned since its inception, for radio and on over 40 commercial recordings. These include Angela Hewitt’s 2015 JUNO Award-winning album of Mozart Piano Concertos; the groundbreaking Life Reflected, which includes My Name is Amanda Todd by Jocelyn Morlock, winner of the 2018 JUNO for Classical Composition of the Year; and from the 2019 JUNO nominated New Worlds, Ana Sokolović’s Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes, 2019 JUNO Winner for Classical Composition of the Year.
The NAC Orchestra reaches a national and international audience through touring, recordings, and extensive educational outreach. The Orchestra performed on Parliament Hill for the 2019 Canada Day noon concert in a live broadcast for CBC Television.
NAC Orchestra
FIRST VIOLINS
Yosuke Kawasaki (concertmaster)
Jessica Linnebach (associate concertmaster)
Noémi Racine Gaudreault (assistant concertmaster)
**Elaine Klimasko
Marjolaine Lambert
Jeremy Mastrangelo
Manuela Milani
Frédéric Moisan
*Oleg Chelpanov
*Martine Dubé
*Erica Miller
◊Katelyn Emery
◊Marianne Di Tomaso
◊Danielle Greene
◊Zhengdong Liang
◊Maria-Sophia Pera
◊Yu Kai Sun
SECOND VIOLINS
Mintje van Lier (principal)
Winston Webber (assistant solo)
Mark Friedman
Carissa Klopoushak
**Edvard Skerjanc
Karoly Sziladi
Leah Roseman
Emily Westell
*Andéa Armijo Fortin
*Renée London
*Heather Schnarr
◊Jeanne-Sophie Baron
◊Kimberly Durflinger
◊Lindsey Herle
◊Austin Wu
◊Jingpu Xi
◊Xueao Yang
VIOLAS
Jethro Marks (principal / solo)
David Marks (associate principal / solo associé)
David Goldblatt (assistant principal / assistant solo)
Paul Casey
**Ren Martin-Doike
David Thies-Thompson
◊Tovin Allers
◊Daniel McCarthy
◊Alexander Moroz
◊Emily Rekrut Pressey
CELLOS
Rachel Mercer (principal)
Julia MacLaine (assistant principal)
Timothy McCoy
Marc-André Riberdy
Leah Wyber
*Karen Kang
◊Peter Ryan
◊Tsung Yu Tsai
DOUBLE BASSES
*Joel Quarrington (guest principal)
Hilda Cowie (acting assistant principal)
Vincent Gendron
Marjolaine Fournier
*David Fay
*Paul Mach
◊Philippe Chaput
◊Logan Nelson
◊Hector Ponce
FLUTES
Joanna G'froerer (principal / solo)
Stephanie Morin
◊Christian Paquette
◊Arin Sarkissian
OBOES
Charles Hamann (principal)
Anna Petersen
◊Myriam Navarri
◊Kira Shiner
CLARINETS
Kimball Sykes (principal)
Sean Rice
◊Juan Olivares
◊Timothy Yung
BASSOONS
Christopher Millard (principal)
Vincent Parizeau
*Joelle Amar
◊Chia Yu Hsu
◊Thalia Navas
HORNS
Lawrence Vine (principal)
Julie Fauteux (associate principal)
Lauren Anker
Elizabeth Simpson
Louis-Pierre Bergeron
◊Connor Landers
◊Corine Chartré Lefebvre
◊Roberto Rivera
◊Shin Yu Wang
TRUMPETS
Karen Donnelly (principal)
Steven van Gulik
◊Jose Juan Hernandez Torres
◊Daniel Lehmann
TROMBONES
Donald Renshaw (principal)
Douglas Burden
Colin Traquair
*Steve Dyer
◊Micah Kroeker
◊Wing Kwong Tang
◊Collins Sanders
TUBA
Chris Lee (principal)
◊Alec Rich
TIMPANI
Feza Zweifel (principal)
*Alexander Cohen
PERCUSSION
**Jonathan Wade
*Andrew Johnson
◊Michael Carp
◊Jacob Kryger
HARP
Angela Schwarzkopf*
PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN
Nancy Elbeck
ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN
Corey Rempel
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Meiko Lydall
*Additional musicians
**On leave
Non-titled members of the Orchestra are listed alphabetically
◊ Mentorship Program Participants
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Official Car of the NAC Orchestra
