(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) PEI’s professional choral ensemble, Luminos Ensemble has released its latest recording, In the Crystalline Vault of Heaven. The 16-member group, under the artistic direction of Dr. Margot Rejskind recorded the album of music by Atlantic Canadian composers at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church, Sturgeon, PEI, in May of 2022. It will be released in physical and digital versions on October 27 on the Leaf Music label.
The album features a stellar lineup of all-Atlantic Canadian composers: Atlantic String Machine’s Adam Hill, EKR (Evan) Hammell, Emily Doolittle, Terry Pratt, Derek Charke, Peter Togni, Kathleen Allan and David Buley.
The evocative title track,In the Crystalline Vault of Heaven, was composed by Nova Scotian Derek Charke. “We wanted an album that reflected the diversity and breadth of choral music being written on the east coast,” said director Margot Rejskind. “We’re showcasing composers like Adam, Emily and Evan, who all wrote these new works for us.”
Luminos Ensemble is a Charlottetown-based professional choir of trained vocal soloists that formed in 2017. The group received a nomination from the East Coast Music Awards in the inaugural Best Choral Recording of the Year category in 2023 for their single, I am an Island That Dreams by David Buley. They thank the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of this project. To learn more, please visit LuminosEnsemble.com.
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. We are 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).
SHHH!!… a powerful utterance designed to draw attention forward… creating space and awareness… opening ears to something important.
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene presents a radical catalogue of our created world’s sounds as a continuous multimovement work for piano, percussion, and fixed electronics. Composed by Frank Horvat for Ottawa’s innovative SHHH!! Ensemble, this work illustrates the current state of pollution and destruction by employing over 150 different audio samples indicative of the climate crisis. The musical score augments and interacts with this soundscape, using a broad range of percussion instruments and piano. The “Holocene” is the current geological epoch, which began approximately 9,700 years before the Common Era (BCE), following the Last Glacial Period.
An Auditory Survey was conceptualized during two week-long creative retreats at Port William Sound in Mountain Grove, Ontario. Nestled in an unassuming cabin and adjacent studio, the musicians worked with composer Frank Horvat, each track the result of extensive experimentation and an uncompromising search to create something compelling and real: “As nature lovers and artists we are conscious of humanity’s impact on the environment, and until this project we had been searching for a way to effect meaningful reflection on this issue that we care so deeply about. Collaborating with Frank and working on An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene has been a powerful way for us to consider our shared responsibilities and explore our place on Earth,” the Ensemble said.
Percussionist Zac Pulak and pianist Edana Higham comprise the SHHH!! Ensemble, a duo carving a space for themselves as electrifying performers of new music. With a keen ear for experimentation and exploration, SHHH!! has been deemed “truly virtuosic and intense” by Toronto’s Confluence Concerts and “a beautiful discovery” following their debut with the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. Formed in 2017, SHHH!! Ensemble began developing their signature “avant-accessible” style through residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Canadian Music Centre. Since then, SHHH!! has continued to develop innovative repertoire for their ensemble commissioning and premiering new works by Kelly-Marie Murphy, John Beckwith, Jocelyn Morlock, Monica Pearce, Harry Stafylakis, and Noora Nakhaei, among others. They are also artistic director of the Ottawa New Music Creators.
SHHH!! Ensemble’s creativity and vitality were especially notable through the pandemic, with one critic commenting, “This virtuoso duo are so agile and inventive… I doubt anything short of a geological cataclysm will shut them down” (The WholeNote). Major highlights in 2020–2022 include the duo’s acceptance into the prestigious Evolution: Classical career development residency at the Banff Centre, a National Arts Centre #CanadaPerforms concert, the world premiere of JUNO-winning composer Jocelyn Morlock’s Spirit Gradient with the Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival in Newfoundland, and a nationally broadcast recital on the CBC Music program In Concert.
SHHH!! Ensemble’s debut album Meanwhile (Analekta) was released to critical acclaim, reaching top positions on Apple Music and Spotify playlists, and nominated for 2023 Classical Recording of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards. The title track Meanwhile, by composer John Beckwith,was the first piece written for SHHH!!.
Frank Horvat is “one of the most inventive songwriters to come out of the contemporary scene in Canada” (The WholeNote). As a pianist and multigenre composer “he has made the tricky musical leap that allows him to pursue a niche of his own” (Edmonton Journal). Frank explores a wide array of themes in his music, from love to the environment, mental health, and social justice issues. His works have been featured on over twenty albums on ATMA Classique, Really Records, and Centrediscs. With composition premieres on four continents, his music has been showcased internationally in theatre, feature films, and on radio/TV networks, including BBC Radio 3, Bravo, CBC, CBS, Discovery, HBO, and Vice, and featured in publications such Gramophone, The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, Toronto Star, and Vancouver Sun. Frank’s 2021 album Music for Self-Isolation was listed in the “Top 5 Classical Albums of the Year” by CBC Classical, and his other 2021 album, Project Dovetail, was included in CBC Music’s “Must-Hear Fall Albums.” Frank has been a panelist at the Classical:NEXT conference speaking on the topic of “artivism” and was featured in Chris Gunness’s UK Classical Magazine podcast.
Born in Ottawa, and a University of Toronto graduate under Christos Hatzis, Frank lives and composes by the lake in Toronto with his wife, who is also his manager. Frank is a Canadian Music Centre Associate Composer and the inaugural recipient of the Kathleen McMorrow Music Award for contemporary composition.
Recorded at Domaine Forget de Charlevoix, An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene will be released on October 20, 2023, on all platforms. SHHH!! Ensemble thanks the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of this project.
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. We are 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 and ICOT (formerly known as The Iranian Canadian Composers of Toronto) are delighted to announce their forthcoming album Recurrence, recorded in May at Humbercrest United Church in Toronto.
Recurrencehad its genesis at the beginning of the pandemic, when the notion of repetition assumed a novel and unsettling meaning for many people. The album explores the idea of repetition through different iterations in the natural and artificial worlds. In five new, far-reaching compositions, the concept of repetition and its consequences are teased apart in myriad ways through the unique lens of each composer; some took to ecology, some to politics, and one was inspired by the late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen. The result is five exceptional artistic works, each unique in its aesthetic and sonic exploration into the vortex of repetition. Shahi’s Eroded imagines musically the cycle of coastal erosion, while Kayan Emami has created a musical reflection of a young Iranian boy and his boat in Kian in Rainbows, (also paying homage to recently deceased composer, Jocelyn Morlock). Maziar Heidari’s piece, Arrays, alludes to the beauty and potential in mathematics and music of recurrence.
Speaking about the album, ICOT executive director and composer Saman Shahi says, “Recurrence is one of ICOT’s most ambitious projects in scale and concept. Some of Canada’s best and brightest composers and performers are paired with a powerful core concept: how much of our human experience is shaped by patterns, cycles, and routines. Humans find meaning, comfort, dread, fear, and expression in repetition be it in our memories, our daily lives, the politics we witness, the traumas we face, or the nature we behold; this is what this album is trying to investigate and probe.”
Recurrence features the compositions of renowned composers Maziar Heidari (also a conductor), Saman Shahi (also a pianist), Keyan Emami, Jordan Nobles, and Nicole Lizée and will be available everywhere on October 13. The project was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and FACTOR.
The recording features a stellar group of Canada’s finest musicians, including the New Orford String Quartet (Jonathan Crow (violin), Andrew Wan (violin), Sharon Wei (viola) and Brian Charles Manker (cello); Scott Peterson (double/electric bass); Leslie Allt (flute); Peter Stoll (clarinet); Beverly Johnson and Ryan Scott (percussion).
ICOT (icot.ca) is a non-profit arts organization founded in 2011 by five Toronto-based composers and musicians with the mission of creating new works that bridge Canadian and Iranian culture through music and art. ICOT’s current members are Saman Shahi (executive director), Keyan Emami (artistic director), and Maziar Heidari (music director). ICOT has produced two operas, two ballets, twelve orchestral works, dozens of chambers and vocal works, and three calls for scores that allowed ICOT to collaborate with over twenty composers from eight different countries. ICOT’s music has been performed by Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, Symphony on the Bay, Soundstreams, and Ton Beau String Quartet and they’ve taken part in Toronto Symphony’s 2022 Open House, Tirgan Festival, 2017 Ottawa Chamberfest, and Hamilton Philharmonic’s 2014 “What Next” Festival. ICOT’s first commercial recording, Persian Piano Night, was released in 2018 by Pardis Records.
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. We are also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
(Halifax/K’jipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music and Luminous Voices are releasing a new album, Ispiciwin (“journey” in Cree), a collection of pieces by mostly Canadian composers from Turtle Island. The fifth album from the esteemed ensemble and their third on Leaf Music combines choral music sung in Cree and represents a promising stepping stone on the path to reconciliation. Ispiciwin represents personal and collective reflection by the composers, singers, instrumentalists and directors, culminating in an album that represents many unique compositional voices and styles.
Luminous Voices commissioned and premiered the works by Arthur Bachmann, Carmen Braden, and Zachary Wadsworth. Edmonton composer Stuart Beatch’sGirl Hours found its way onto this recording through conversations and serendipity with the choir’s director, Timothy Shantz. Sherryl Sewepagaham’sOkâwîmâw askiy was premiered by Luminous Voices as part of Samantha Whelan’sWandering with Wonder performance project in September 2021 and became a soundtrack to Luminous Voices’ 2021–22 season. I am the Rose of Sharon by Swiss/Italian composer Ivo Antognini, with text taken from the Song of Solomon, rounds out the repertoire and Edmonton composer Laura Hawley’s moving setting of Rise Up, My Love.
Ispiciwin is a unique project that brings together many strands of Indigenous and non-Indigenous identity, a sentiment that attracted Winnipeg and Cree composer Andrew Balfour, who said, “Working with Luminous Voices and Timothy Shantz, along with artists Jessica McMann and Walter MacDonald White Bear, is a dream collaboration that results in a closer understanding of truth-telling and storytelling from an Indigenous perspective.”
Ispiciwin deals with themes surrounding truth, storytelling, and the difficult path toward reconciling the past. Luminous Voices Artistic Director Timothy Shantz says, “We’re all very proud to share the music on this album and hope that all the composers’ unique voices are heard through our performances. More than anything, we want these incredible artists to be heard throughout the world.”
Luminous Voices continues to thrill audiences in Calgary and beyond through performances, recordings, and workshops. The choir illuminates choral music of the past and present and supports contemporary composers by regularly commissioning new works. Founded in 2012, Luminous Voices unites local, national, and international artists and organizations through exceptional sonic experiences encompassing live and virtual performances, recordings, workshops, and community educational activities. Otherreleases through Leaf Music are Artem Vedel: Twelve Sacred Choral Concerti & Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (2021) and their 2020 release, Sea Dreams by Peter-Anthony Togni, which was nominated for a 2021 JUNO Award.
The choir also released The Far West on Bridge Records in 2016, which Joshua Kosman of the San FranciscoChronicle described as “beautifully sung, as everything here is, by the aptly named Luminous Voices under Timothy Shantz.” The Far West was awarded the 2018 National Choral Award for Outstanding Choral Recording and the 2016 National Choral Award for Outstanding Choral Composition from Choral Canada. Luminous Voices’ first release in 2015, Mendelssohn’s Te Deum, was the 2016 winner of Outstanding Choral Recording from Choral Canada.
Ispiciwin will be available on all major platforms October 6.
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. Naxos of America distributes our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. We are also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Composer Monica Pearce’s one-act opera Etiquette is being released by Leaf Music and Essential Opera. The twenty-one minute work features three influential 1920s women: author, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker (known for her wit and wisecracks), author and socialite Emily Post, and American-born British politician Nancy Astor. Etiquettein Society, in Business, in politics, and At Home (the book by Emily Post) was published in 1922, noting the importance of etiquette in all aspects of life: “Consideration for the rights and feelings of others is not merely a rule for behavior in public but the very foundation upon which social life is built.” When reviewing the work, however, Parker observed that, “Those who have mastered etiquette seem to arrive at exquisite dullness.”
Commissioned by Essential Opera, this world-premiere recording was made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia. The album was recorded at St. Andrew’s United Church in Halifax. A stylish short film is also being released in the coming months.
Monica Pearce composed the music, and the librettist is John Terauds. The recording features sopranos Maureen Batt and Erin Bardua, Mezzo-soprano Lucy Hayes Davis, pianist Tara Scott, and clarinetist Brad Reid.
Essential Opera’s recent productions include short opera films by Canadian women composers. Founded in 2010 in Toronto by Erin Bardua and Maureen Batt, the company has commissioned many new works, receiving support from SOCAN, Ontario Arts Council, Arts Nova Scotia, and The Canada Council for the Arts. Their mission is to give audiences opportunities to experience opera at its most essential, with a dynamic and evolving definition of what is essential.
Monica Pearce is a Canadian composer specializing in opera, chamber music and everything toy-piano-related. After completing her Bachelor of Music at Mount Allison University with a focus on piano and composition, Monica has a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Toronto and co-founded emerging composer collective, the Toy Piano Composers, with Chris Thornborrow. Her compositions have been performed and commissioned by many leading ensembles. She won the Harry Freedman Award for her harpsichord work toile de jouy and was nominated for Classical Composer of the Year by the 2022 East Coast Music Awards for Maureen Batt’s recording of Aunt Helen. In 2022 she released her debut album Textile Fantasies, a multi-work piece including eight works inspired by textiles and patterns. Called “vivid,” “pleasantly intricate,” “imaginative and meaningful,” by reviewers, this recording features performances by keyboardists Cheryl Duvall, Wesley Chen, Barbara Pritchard, and Joseph Ferretti, tabla player Shawn Mativetsky, and renowned ensembles TorQ Percussion and SHHH!! Ensemble. Monica is active as a librettist and worked with composer Cecilia Livingston on the Dora-nominated opera on the life of Anne Frank entitled Singing Only Softly.
(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).
