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.
Category: Concert
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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!
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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, 2020Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2024
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ex harmonia World Premiere
On April 20 and 22, 2023 as part of Four New Works, the Array Ensemble premieres ex harmonia, in memoriam to my former teacher, the late James Tenney. There have been a few big firsts for me as a re-emerged composer in the past three years, and this is perhaps the one closest to my heart.
35 years ago, I sat in Jim Tenney’s composition class for the first time and dreamt of composing music for a contemporary classical ensemble – the Linda Catlin Smith-era Arraymusic in particular. Despite that fortunate and promising beginning, I ended up focusing on self-performed, non-notated music outside of the concert scene in my early years and eventually put my arts career on hiatus. Three decades would go by before I had the first concert of my music (by Array) and my first commission (Gryphon Trio). Life has taken me the long way round, and I’m so overwhelmed with joy as this great circle closes.
Still being a bit new to this kind of collaboration with other musicians, this was the hardest piece I’ve had to write so far. I sincerely hope it doesn’t sound that way, though! I had both the memory of Jim and my 20-year-old self quietly with me at times, and what felt like eons of struggle and loss emerging as grief in the process. I went through many revisions as the pandemic wore on and the premiere was delayed.
Old binary conflicts sowed some tension once more: am I an experimental or sentimental composer? Forward looking or traditional? In my skin as a Black creator, or not? I thought of Jim seeking to overcome dichotomy in his compositional explorations, and that one was of several ways he was an inspiration. Those familiar with his work may also hear echoes of it in ex harmonia. Hence the title: “out of harmony,” a tribute to his Harmonia pieces among others. It’s a strange composition for me in some ways, but I’m most eager to share it as part of integrating my experience of personal change, growth, and movement.
I also wrote my first grant application in decades and am grateful to Toronto Arts Council for coming through. On top of that, I feel the support of my family and extended community this week. Not least, my good friend and editor Ash Mistry, the magic man, was of critical help with his always excellent work.
As I’ve been getting to know the community of classical musicians working in Toronto and North America more broadly, some of whom I knew before as a fan, I’m so floored to have players of such high calibre offering their time and incredible talent to realize my work. It’s really cool and also humbling.
I’m honoured also by the composer company on the program: Seung-Won Oh, Rose Bolton and Cheldon Paterson (aka SlowPitchSound). And my thanks continue to go out to David Schotzko, Sandra Bell, Mark Wilson and the rest of the Array team and Board of Directors for making me feel so welcome as the inaugural Composer in Residence.
Both live audience and livestream pay-what-you-want tickets are available, depending on the night.
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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.
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2012+10 Fourths + Fifths
“Fourths + Fifths” is the first of three movements from Kenza (2012), and the fourth movement in the cycle of nine in Children’s Suite (2007-2014). It was composed the year my second child Kenza was born. Like all the other movements in the suite, it’s written entirely on the white keys of the piano, in pandiatonic C major. My intention was to create music that was both childlike and abstract.
The movement is structured around a sequence of six diatonic modes, each associated with a melodic pattern. Each pattern is built up from a single, seven-note arpeggio into a homophonic canon by layering the pattern against copies of itself with different starting points. The intervals of the fourth and fifth predominate throughout.
Performed by Stephen Clarke, piano, as part of a composer portrait concert by Arraymusic, November 2020
Audio and image from video by Daniel Tapper
Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022
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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).
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World Premiere: dream of a blue elf
On Saturday, February 19, 2022, pianist Stephen Clarke of the Array Ensemble will present the world premiere of my solo piano work “dream of a blue elf” (2007, from perhaps bells do not play tunes), as part of the prerecorded and livestreamed program “Premieres.” Event details and a link to purchase a ticket (CAD$25 or pay what you want) can be found here.
I also had a “Living Room Talk” with Arraymusic artistic director David Schotzko, to give a brief introduction to the piece. That can be found here.
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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.
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, 2020Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022
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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.
EL MAHBOOB 