EL MAHBOOB

Category: Chamber

  • ex tempore (live)

    ex tempore, for small ensemble (2024) 9′
    Commissioned by Arraymusic with support from SOCAN

    Premiered February 1, 2024 at the Array Space, Toronto
    This is an excerpt from the concert recording made by
    Matt Legge, House & Production Manager

    The Array Ensemble:
    Stephen Tam, flute
    Colleen Cook, clarinet
    Aiyun Huang, marimba & vibraphone
    Sheila Jaffé, violin
    Lydia Munchinsky, cello
    David Schotzko, conductor

    With just over two weeks to go before the world premiere of my newest work blood of infinity at Arraymusic’s upcoming New Encounters concert, I present an excerpt from an earlier commission by the Array Ensemble.

    ex tempore premiered in the first of three New Encounters concerts that I curated, alongside works by Hanna Benn, Anthony R. Green, and Kathryn Patricia Cobbler. The work is dedicated in memory of Ann Southam, a pioneer in Canadian composition and for women in this field. During a radio interview in 1999, I asked her if she had advice for young composers to which she responded, “Don’t get pushed around by influences, just listen to your own voice as much as you can.”

    I intend neither to be pushed around by influences and expectations of so-called new music, nor to avoid influences altogether but rather incorporate them in a way that represents me. Much of Canadian composition occupies a rigorous, expansive and rarefied sonic space, often in a singular and compelling way. I feel contemporary concert music can also be diasporic, folksy, terse like pop, and still sometimes exploratory.

    The title is meant to suggest several possible meanings, including something improvised, a snap judgement, and the temporal expansion characteristic of Southam’s minimalist works.

    Image: Array Ensemble, screenshot from video by Matt Legge

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2026

  • blood of infinity – World Premieres at New Encounters

    “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” — Assata Shakur, 1987, 139. While sketching ideas for what would be my only composition of 2025, Shakur passed away in Havana. Her words became instruction, a history to reflect upon while seeking an intention. On January 31, 2026, David Schotzko of the Array Ensemble will give the premiere of blood of infinity, a mallet percussion solo in memoriam to this iconic freedom fighter, who died in exile without justice. This concert, New Encounters III, will be the final program I’ve created for my composer-curator residency with Array.

    The concert will include the world premiere of Palestinian Canadian composer, pianist, visual artist John Kameel Farah‘s By the Side of the Road, a special Arraymusic commission and performance collaboration. It will also mark the first concert to feature incoming co-composers in residence Bekah Simms and Monica Pearce, programming their exploratory works alongside Louisiana native Courtney Bryan‘s powerful Elegy, a response to Abel Meeropol’s composition “Strange Fruit.” Tickets for in-person or livestream are available here.

    Black Lives Matter. End Empire. Free Congo. Free Palestine. Free Sudan.

  • Perhaps Bells: New Piano Music by Bruce A. Russell

    Perhaps Bells: New Piano Music by Bruce A. Russell

    On November 16th, 2024, my second portrait concert “Perhaps Bells” will take place at Arraymusic, with much anticipated performances by the adventurous and multi-talented junctQín keyboard collective. This is a special program I’ve been hoping to hear since the start of my Array residency. It’s all piano solos and duos, all world premieres of work composed in the 90s and 00s when there were few audiences or concerts if any, and includes a new arrangement of Madra (originally for variable instrumentation). These pieces relate directly to my recent ones written for Array and other ensembles. They were created under the influence of American and Canadian minimalists, popular music in general, and a more expansive list that includes Wally Badarou, Harold Budd, John Cage, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Henryk Górecki, Kraftwerk, Arvo Pärt, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Erik Satie, Ann Southam, Linda Catlin Smith, and James Tenney.

    On the same weekend, Freesound will present their season opening program in the Array Space (“Music for Piano Quartet II,” November 15th and 17th), making for an exciting mini-fest of contemporary concert music.

    Stay tuned for another piano announcement (November is my piano month) and more.

  • ex tempore CBC In Concert Broadcast

    On Sunday, June 23, 2024, a concert performance of my latest composition ex tempore (ik’stempəri) will be broadcast across Canada on CBC Radio’s “In Concert with Paolo Pietropaolo,” along with two other recorded performances from Arraymusic’s “New Encounters” concert on February 1st. Hanna Benn‘s Introitus and Kathryn Patricia Cobbler‘s Echoes will also be included in the broadcast. This will be a first for me both as a composer and curator. “In Concert” runs from 11:05am-3:00pm in five of Canada’s time zones (11:35am-3:30pm NT) and can be heard on terrestrial radio (94.1 FM in Toronto), streaming live at cbc.ca/listen or on the CBC Listen app. Select a city in the desired time zone on the app or website. The best time to tune in prior to the Arraymusic portion is 2:15pm.

  • World Premiere: Sequences

    My composition Sequences (2000) will receive its belated world premiere this Saturday, April 20th, 2024 in a concert that runs from 3-4 pm EST. It will be livestreamed for free.

    I’ve been waiting 24 years to hear this piece live! It’s for two marimbas and a light drum beat doubled with a synth bassline. It was revised this year for the University of Delaware Percussion Ensemble led by Dr. Gene Koshinski.

    The music is from my Madra period, and is similarly small-scale minimalism, with all of its melodic and rhythmic patterns derived from the West African standard bell pattern and the harmony straight out of four-chord pop. It’s highly structured and finely detailed, and can be enjoyed simply with the body: groove music. It’s where I was stylistically just before I decided to put my aspirations as a working musician on pause (for twenty years…)

    I don’t know the running order, so if you have an hour in your Saturday and would like to dedicate it to livestreamed percussion pieces… this is for you!

  • 2004+20 aix

    aix (“waters”), for two pianos, is a short study in rising and falling patterns, with alternating chordal and canonic textures. It’s a slightly unsettled lullaby, composed on “04 04 04” (April 4, 2004, the 36th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.).

    The primary melodic shape, an ascending seventh followed by a descending second, is heard in several of my piano pieces of the period. The piece is written in diatonic A-flat major, with a harmonic progression on the scale degrees 4-3-2-1-5-6.

    Stephen Clarke, Wesley Shen, pianos
    Recorded live at The Array Space, Toronto by Daniel Tapper, November 21, 2020

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2024

  • Madra in Kingston

    On February 28, 2023, I’ll be at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen’s University to introduce a performance of my first string quartet Madra (1999) by The Isabel Quartet. The concert is at 7:30 pm Eastern. This will be the premiere of the newest revision of the score, which postdates the Madawaska Quartet’s recording. I’ve been working with the Isabel on the piece and am excited to hear where it lands. In-person and livestream tickets are available here.

  • World Premiere: in the sea of being

    On Thursday, June 23, Thin Edge New Music Collective will give the world premiere of my sextet in the sea of being as part of the inaugural edition of Reverb, at 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education, in Toronto. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to work with TENMC, whom I’ve long admired for their adventurous and broadly inclusive approach. After thirty-odd years of composing, this marks only my second commission, but it was well worth the wait. The title is taken from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven (1971).

  • Companion

    Companion (2019) was composed through late 2018 and early 2019, while the first pencil sketches date to 2011. It is dedicated to my two youngest children. All of the material derives from seven-note rows: orderings of the pitches of the diatonic scale. The harmony resembles traditional tonality heard through a pandiatonic filter. There are four sections, divided by key signature: F major, A-flat major, B major and D major.

    https://soundcloud.com/brussell/companion-1?si=a791927ab54a4ebc8de5ad61286cd9e1&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

    Each section is constructed from one or two unique, quasi-symmetrical rows that proceed most often by the interval of a fourth or fifth. Each row is layered against itself in a homorhythmic canon of up to six voices, often accompanied by high and low pedals tones that present an additional canon in augmentation. Almost every chord in Companion is the result of a basic serial process, one exception being the transition between the third and fourth sections, which features chords built from nested fifths. Ultimately, such chords result from the canons as well.

    The final chord is arrived at through symmetrical voice leading from the penultimate chord and is also the initial row spelled vertically from bottom to top. Form at the local and vertical levels is highly rationalized, while global and horizontal form—rhythmic structure and phrasing—is loosely associative.

    Stephen Clarke, Wesley Shen, pianos
    Recorded live at The Array Space, Toronto by Daniel Tapper, November 21, 2020

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022

  • we have lived before at Ottawa Chamberfest

    Fresh from giving the world premiere of we have lived before at Toronto Summer Music, Gryphon Trio performs my new work twice at Ottawa Chamberfest, on Wednesday, July 28 (7 pm, virtual only, in-person sold out) and Thursday July 29 (2 pm, limited in-person still available). I’ll be there to introduce the piece and tell the stories behind it. I’m excited to travel—on a train no less—and say a rare hello to the capital city.