(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Two years into Covid-19, New Brunswick’s Tutta Musica Orchestra celebrated everyday heroes of the pandemic, presenting six concerts in various New Brunswick communities. Each concert included a newly commissioned musical piece by Vancouver composer Jaelem Bhate, using themes of courage, resilience, and community. Now the orchestra brings these works to a wider audience through their soon-to-be-released recording, Ovation, on the Leaf Music label.
Tutta Musica consists of sixty musicians who are the Teaching Artists of Sistema New Brunswick, a highly successful program of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra. The musicians are graduates of some of the finest university and conservatory music programs in North and South America. They strive to make live music more accessible, more engaging, and more relevant to more people throughout the region. Working in many genres from rock and roll to Acadian music to opera, Tutta Musica collaborates with artist in creative writing, comedy, theatre, and dance, creating original content which features New Brunswick themes, culture, and people. The ensemble is conducted by Maestro Antonio Delgado, who is also Musical Director of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra and of Sistema NB.
The two major works on this recording are Manuel de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat, Suite No. 2 and Jaelem Bhate’s contemporary work, Ovation. This new piece was composed in just seven weeks, consisting of three aptly named movements: i. Courage, ii. Resilience and iii. Community. The melodies and harmonies of these movements are generated by the same chord construction (a C minor 11 tetrachord) in which the intervals between notes are those of fourths). The effect is strongly allusive to the subject of Covid. To quote the composer: “It was difficult to find a balance between triumph and sorry…I wanted to write something that we could all relate to, despite the sometimes-intense feeling surrounding how Covid was handled by different entities. All three movement speak to some of the base human emotions I think we all felt through the past two and a half years, no matter our politics or beliefs.”
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
(Halifax/Kipuktuk, NS) The St. John-Mercer-Park Trio is proud to present Kevin Lau: Under A Veil of Stars, an album that seeks to be both intimate and cosmic, to find the universal in the particular, and to celebrate the sacred energy music alone has the power to transmit. Kevin Lau: Under A Veil of Stars sees three outstanding musicians actualizing the themes of escapism, surreality, and temporality. Over nine tracks, Under A Veil of Stars careens through several moods and themes, each offering the listener a chance to interpret the meaning through their unique lens, before culminating in the album’s centerpiece: the three-movement Under a Veil of Stars. This piece chronicles the themes and motifs of life’s overarching three stages – childhood, adulthood, and old age.
Kevin Lau: Under A Veil of Stars is at once intimate and grandiose. Lau writes: “Intimate. Cosmic. Two words that describe not only my ideal musical vision—music that invites us into an experience with the warm, welcoming touch of the familiar, only to then show us the universe—but also the piano trio ensemble itself, which is somehow both very small (three musicians!) and very grand, symphonic even. I am thrilled to have my four piano trios represented on this album, along with a handful of piano trio subsets that I felt complemented these works.”
One of Canada’s most versatile and sought-after composers, Kevin Lau has been commissioned by some of Canada’s most prominent artists and ensembles, and his work has been performed internationally in the USA, France, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. A prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, ballet, opera, and film music, he was appointed Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2012; to date, he has produced seven works for the TSO. Shortly after, he was commissioned to write two ballets with choreographer Guillaume Côté: a full-length ballet (Le Petit Prince) for the National Ballet of Canada and a half-hour ballet (Dark Angels) for the National Arts Centre Orchestra. His music is represented on many commercial recordings, including two JUNO Award–winning albums (Mosaïque, Ensemble Made in Canada; Detached, harpist Angela Schwarzkopf). He is currently composer-in-residence of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra; his most recent work, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano Lizzy Hoyt, marks his fourth commission with the MCO. Kevin’s creative output, often inspired by the fantastical and the surreal, is unified by the search for deep connections amidst surface diversity—connections that serve as a metaphor for the reconciliation of seemingly fundamental differences.
Described as a “pure chamber musician” (Globe and Mail) creating “moments of pure magic” (Toronto Star), Canadian cellist Rachel Mercer has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across five continents. Grand prize winner of the 2001 Vriendenkrans Competition in Amsterdam, Rachel is Principal Cello of the NAC Orchestra in Ottawa and Co-Artistic Director of the “5 at the First” Chamber Music Series in Hamilton. She collaborates regularly with her long-time duo partner, pianist Angela Park, and was cellist of the JUNO Award–winning piano quartet Ensemble Made in Canada (2008–2020), the AYR Trio (2010–2020), and the Aviv Quartet (2002–2010). An advocate for new Canadian music, Rachel has commissioned and premiered over thirty works, including solo and chamber work, and cello concerti by Stewart Goodyear and Kevin Lau. Rachel can be heard on the Naxos, Naxos Canadian Classics, Centrediscs, Analekta, ATMA, Dalia Classics, and EnT-T record labels and released a critically acclaimed album of the Bach Suites on Pipistrelle in March 2014, recorded on the 1696 Bonjour Stradivarius Cello from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank. Rachel plays a seventeenth-century cello from Northern Italy.
Violinist Scott St. John, from London, Ontario, is Concertmaster and Artistic Partner of the innovative ROCO Chamber Orchestra in Houston, Texas, and teaches chamber music at the University of Toronto. He performs frequently with the St. John-Mercer-Park Piano Trio and returns often to the summertime Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Early violin success with teacher Richard Lawrence in London, Ontario, gave Scott a path to further studies with David Cerone, Arnold Steinhardt, and Felix Galimir. After playing a Carnegie Hall debut, he lived in NYC and worked for Young Concert Artists. Scott has held the position of Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and from 2018 to 2021 he was Director of Chamber Music at The Colburn School in Los Angeles. As a member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, he was Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University. Scott won a JUNO Award for recording Mozart with his sister Lara St. John and founded the Felix Galimir Award for chamber music students at University of Toronto. Scott loves chamber music, Dvorak, new music, music by less-known composers, and a great espresso.
Angela Park has established herself as one of Canada’s most sought-after pianists. Praised for her “stunningly beautiful pianism” (Grace Welsh Prize, Chicago), “beautiful tone and sensitivity” (American Record Guide), and for performing “with such brilliant clarity it took your breath away” (Chapala, Mexico), Angela’s versatility as both soloist and chamber musician has led to performances across Canada, as well as in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Mexico. Angela was a founding member of the JUNO Award–winning Ensemble Made in Canada, a group she performed with from 2006 to 2022. She has a long-standing duo partnership with cellist Rachel Mercer, performing extensively as the Mercer-Park Duo, the St. John-Mercer-Park Trio with violinist Scott St. John, and with Mayumi Seiler (Seiler Trio). They performed with violinist Yehonatan Berick as the AYR Trio from 2010 to 2020. Other important collaborations include duos with violist Sharon Wei, piano duo concerts with Stéphan Sylvestre, collaborations with violist Rivka Golani and flutist Susan Hoeppner, and trio concerts with clarinetist James Campbell and soprano Leslie Fagan. From 2011 to 2014, Angela was Visiting Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano–Woodwinds at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Angela has been Assistant Professor of Piano and Collaborative Piano at Western University since 2019.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
(KJIPUKTUK) Alice Ping Yee Ho, City Opera Vancouver, and Leaf Music are proud to present Chinatown, a sweeping opera that tells the collective story of thousands of Chinese immigrants who left their homeland between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries in search of a better life for them and their families. The first opera in Hoisanese and English and the first to fuse authentic Chinese folk dialects and cultures into the world of English opera, Ho’s Chinatown is a tribute to the legacy of the people who toiled under the promise of prosperity, and instead received abuse and hardship.
Chinatown revolves around the intertwining lives of Saihin and Xon Pon, two young men from Hoisan county in South China who have come to Canada in search of prosperity. We follow their story as they meet, work together, endure hardships and have families of their own. A collaboration between composer Alice Ping Yee Ho, librettist Madeleine Thien, and Hoisanese translator Paul Yee, Chinatown brings together decades of lived experience from thousands of Chinese immigrants in an intimate and emotionally arresting musical and dramatic soundscape.
Ho says the opera is intended to be an artistic depiction of the realities facing early 20th century Chinese newcomers. “This album represents an important work that tells the stories and experiences of early Chinese immigrants. It’s clear by the standing ovations and positive reviews that the opera Chinatown is a beautiful and moving story of racism, resilience, and family. I hope this album will inspire the audience the same way as it was imagined in the theatre – the experience of an epic journey of music and drama, both heart-wrenching and heart-warming.”
Founding artistic director, Dr. Charles Barber says, “We conceived the idea for CHINATOWN in mid-2017. It was approved and budgeted by the Board, and so began its development. We spent a year searching for the storyteller. Having chosen Madeleine Thien, we commissioned a scenario and thereafter a draft libretto. The Vancouver Foundation made a stupendous lead grant in support of this project, and this process. One year later, we began taking Maddie’s draft to multiple private and public workshops, with professional actors road-testing its language and structures. Translator Paul Yee joined to lead us in the incorporation of Hoisanese in the opera.”
“Alice Ping Yee Ho was commissioned in 2020, and thereafter we held public music workshops — again in Chinatown venues, and with professional singers. Delayed by COVID, from concept to curtain took five years. CHINATOWN exists because of the inspired collaboration of Alice, Maddie, and Paul, and the many friends and artists who joined in generous support. We thank them all.”
“For five nights in September 2022, at the Vancouver Playhouse, our audiences heard the results: a story of strength and resilience in the face of great adversity and loss. We believe this piece is a fitting tribute to those who lived and worked in Chinatown, for which they left everything. In this recording, we hope you will be as moved as were they—and we thank you for listening.”
It is a timely, significant and often beautiful work that proves well worth the wait. The overwhelming strengths of the show are the singers, the orchestral ensemble, and Alice Ping Yee Ho’s enchanting score –The Vancouver Sun
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Alice Ping Yee Ho is an award-winning Hong Kong–born Canadian composer known
for her “distinctly individual” style and “organic flow of imagination.” A two-time Juno Award nominee and a recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore Award, Symphony Nova Scotia’s Maria Anna Mozart Award, Barlow Endowment Commissioning Prize, and Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize, her works have been performed by ensembles across the globe, including the Toronto Symphony, Finnish Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Polish Radio Choir, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, and Luxembourg Sinfonietta.
One of Canada’s most acclaimed writers, Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver. She is the author of four books of fiction, most recently Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which received the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her essays and stories can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, Brick, Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Paul Yee grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1960s. He did volunteer projects there in the 1980s and worked as an archivist while doing an MA in Canadian history. He is a published author of over twenty works. His non-fiction includes Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver; his fiction includes children’s books and stories for adults, including A Superior Man, published in 2015. Chinatown is his first opera.
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
About Canada Council for the Arts
The Canada Council for the Arts contributes to the vibrancy of a creative and diverse arts and literary scene and supports its presence across Canada and around the world. The Council is Canada’s public arts funder, with a mandate to “foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.” The Council’s grants, services, initiatives, prizes, and payments support Canadian artists, authors, and arts groups and organizations. This support allows them to pursue artistic expression, create works of art, and promote and disseminate the arts and literature. Through its arts funding, communications, research, and promotion activities, the Council fosters ever-growing engagement of Canadians and international audiences in the arts. The Council’s Public Lending Right (PLR) program makes annual payments to creators whose works are held in Canadian public libraries. The Council’s Art Bank operates art rental programs and helps further public engagement with contemporary arts through exhibition and outreach activities. The Council is responsible for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, which promotes the values and programs of UNESCO to contribute to a future of peace, reconciliation, equity, and sustainable development.
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MEDIA CONTACT: For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt at peggy@leaf-music.ca
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Pianist Christine Vanderkooy presents a new album, Schubert: Late Piano Works, distributed by Leaf Music Distribution. Recorded at the Glenn Gould Studio during Toronto’s lockdown in December of 2020 on “Bertha” the nine-foot New York Steinway, the recording comprises two works composed by Schubert in the twilight of his life: Sonata in C-minor, D. 958 – the first from his late sonata trilogy – and Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946. While these works were long passed over following their creation in 1828, these deeply human compositions have been establishing their place as inimitable masterworks amongst pianists and audiences alike.
Written just a year following the death of his admired Beethoven, Schubert completed “some of his most sophisticated, poetic, and deeply felt works for the piano…permeating the deepest layers of the soul…moving us, sometimes with the masterful shift of just one note or rest, from the desolate to the sublime,” Christine writes in the liner notes.
Praised for her “sensitive and passionate artistic interpretation,” Christine Vanderkooy has performed as a soloist across Canada, the US and Europe. Her previous recording, Schubert and Schumann, enjoyed critical acclaim including a cover story for Tempo magazine. As well as radio play on CBC Radio and stations across the continent. Christine has been frequently invited to adjudicate festivals and competitions and has twice been invited to judge the Canadian JUNO Awards. Her national reputation as a piano pedagogue has led to workshops and masterclasses across the country.
Christine studied and taught at McGill University where she earned a Doctor of Music in Piano Performance. Her major teachers included David McIntyre, Boyd McDonald, Tom Plaunt, Sara Laimon and Marc Durand. She joined the University of Windsor in 2017 as Associate Professor of Music and Education.
The recording was made possible by funding from the University of Windsor, including a research start-up grant and the Research Stimulus Fund Grant from the Faculty of Education, as well as an SSHRC Exchange Grant.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music, flutist Lara Deutsch, and guitarist Adam Cicchillitti are excited to release their new album, Wanderlust. Wanderlust is a collection of folk-inspired pieces that trace their heritage back through a variety of global folk music traditions. Conceived in the heart of the pandemic, flutist Lara Deutsch and classical guitarist Adam Cicchillitti have curated seven luscious pieces, each exploring classical music spanning the coasts of Japan to Newfoundland’s Celtic roots. The album will be released on August 25.
Flutist Lara Deutsch commented that “this album is reflective of the pandemic’s silver lining: being grounded inspired us to take listeners on a musical “world tour” when they couldn’t otherwise travel. It’s the first of many albums for our duo, as we’re committed to sharing lesser known (but amazing!) repertoire for flute and guitar with audiences everywhere.” Wanderlust stokes the fires of far-flung adventures residing in all of us.
The duo will be celebrating the launch with live evening performances in Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax in September: Friday, September 8 at Salle Joseph-Rouleau (Jeunesses Musicales du Canada in Montreal), Tuesday, September 12 (allsaints event space, Ottawa), and Wednesday, September 27 (in partnership with Scotia Festival of Music, The Music Room, Halifax). Tickets for the Halifax performance go on sale on September 5 (https://www.scotiafestival.com).
Named one of 2020’s “Rising Stars” by BBC Music Magazine, flutist Lara Deutsch is a versatile soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player known for her engaging warmth and ability to connect with audiences. Recipient of the $125,000 Prix Goyer for 2019-2020, Lara is an avid chamber musician: recent performance highlights include recitals for the National Arts Centre (NAC) and Facebook’s #CanadaPerforms initiative, Newport Classical (Rhode Island, USA), the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s Virée Classique, and Ottawa’s Music & Beyond Festival. Among her favourite collaborators are pianists Philip Chiu and Frédéric Lacroix, guitarist Adam Cicchillitti, and harpist Emily Belvedere, with whom she founded Duo Kalysta. She has recorded two chamber music albums on the Leaf Music Label: Origins (2019, Duo Kalysta) and Night Light (2022, with Philip Chiu), both of which were named to Top 20 lists for their respective years by CBC Music. Lara performs on a 14k gold Haynes flute, generously loaned by Canimex Inc. of Drummondville, Québec. She is represented by Latitude 45 Arts.
The renowned American magazine Classical Guitar called Montreal-born guitarist Adam Cicchillitti “a virtuoso at the top of his game” and CBC Music described him as an “ardent ambassador for classical guitar.” Adam has commissioned over two dozen new works since 2019 and recorded three albums with the Analekta record label. His album Focus, dedicated to new Canadian music for two guitars, was awarded “Classical Recording of the Year” at the East Coast Music Awards in 2021, and Intimate Impressions was nominated in the same category in 2022.
Adam’s set a benchmark in classical guitar with his award-winning recordings, competition performances, arrangements, and teaching. He regularly collaborates with many of Canada’s most esteemed soloists and orchestras, including flutist Lara Deutsch, baritone Philippe Sly, bandoneonist Denis Plante, the Orchestre classique de Montréal and Forestare. He’s toured Canada several times with Prairie Debut, Debut Atlantic and Jeunesses Musicales. In 2022, his duo with guitarist Steve Cowan commissioned and premiered six new concertos for two guitars and the chamber orchestra, Thirteen Strings. They were awarded third prize in the Guitar Foundation of America’s most prestigious international guitar ensemble competition in 2021 and second place in the finals in New York this summer. Adam is only the second guitarist to win the grand prize of the Canimex concerto competition in Sherbrooke, Québec, and has been a finalist and multiple-prize winner in over a dozen national and international competitions. He is a specialist in child pedagogy, is the founder of the guitar school at Ottawa Suzuki Strings and holds a doctorate in music interpretation from McGill University. Adam is sponsored by Augustine Strings and plays a guitar by Sergei de Jonge.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Dorian Komanoff Bandy is thrilled to present Lovers and mourners: Variations and Sonatas from Seventeenth-Century Germany,his first record on Leaf Music,set to be released on August 18, 2023. Recorded at Église St-Augustin in Quebec, the album is an exploration of one of the most fertile periods for the development of violin writing and performing. Bandy draws on some of the periods’ most sombre, meditative works to deliver an album of refined elegance and measured delivery, featuring himself (baroque violin), Hank Knox (harpsichord) and Elinor Frey (viola da gamba).
Lovers and Mournersfocuses on three seventeenth century composer-performers: Johann Jakob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Georg Pisendel. Bandy guides the listener through a series of variation sets and themes, simultaneously offering faithful interpretations of the music while injecting his own unique touch. Speaking about the creation of the album, Bandy says, “These composers created a body of work that is by turns quirky, beguiling, heartfelt, and brazenly virtuosic. It deserves far wider appreciation than it has so far received.”
Dorian Bandy is a musicologist and performer specializing in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. He is the author of Mozart the Performer, as well as numerous academic articles. He leads a vibrant career as a conductor, baroque violinist, and historical keyboardist, with a repertoire spanning four centuries and performances – acclaimed for their vitality, drama, and warmth — that have taken him to venues across Europe and North America, including London’s Wigmore and Cadogan Halls, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and New York’s Symphony Space. This recording was made possible thanks to an SSHRC Development Grant.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. Leaf is also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
For more information/photos or to arrange interviews, please contact Peggy Walt, peggy@leaf-music.ca (902) 422-5403 (office) or (902) 476-1096 (cell).
