Canadian Scenes

Canadian Scenes: New Works for Oboe and Piano is an album 13 years in the making. Comprising five works commissioned between 2009 and 2022, it is a wide-ranging collection of Canadian vignettes expressed through music. One of Oboist Chip Hamann’s goals with this project was to capture a broad array of artistic statements from composers of sometimes vastly different backgrounds, all couched under the umbrella of the Canadian milieu.

The composers were prompted with two starting points for their compositions. The first prompt, nature, was intended to serve as a call for the composers to meditate on the role nature plays in their life. The second turned out to be the pandemic, which casts the compositions into a different light. Each composer’s individual experience with both nature and the pandemic is stamped on their respective compositions, resulting in a multi-faceted album featuring a plethora of sound and perspective.