“Captivating…breathtaking tour de force… The Venuti String Quartet plays with joie de vivre!” – The Whole Note
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music and the Venuti String Quartet announce the distribution of their new recording Drew Jurecka & Maurice Ravel: String Quartets (VSQ202401).
Drew Jurecka & Maurice Ravel: String Quartets celebrates Ravel’s 150th birthday but begins with member and co-founder Drew Jurecka’s string quartet, a composition that explores and blends classical and jazz influences. This is followed by Ravel’s only string quartet in F Major, composed during this student years at the Paris Conservatory. The album concludes with The Spider, a collaborative piece at breakneck speed by Jurecka and Jay Danley, paying tribute to Carl Stalling, who wrote music for Looney Toons and Merry Melodies cartoons.
The Venuti String Quartet brings together four of the most in-demand musicians in Toronto’s vibrant music scene (Rebekah Wolkstein and Drew Jurecka, violins; Shannon Knights, viola and Amahl Arulanandam, cello), hailing from esteemed Toronto ensembles including the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, Payadora Ensemble, Schmaltz & Pepper and VC2. Founded with genre-flexibility in mind, the group is equally at home in recording studios or onstage playing alongside a range of artists in almost any genre (e.g. Alessia Cara, Laila Biali, Jill Barber and her recent release, Encore, Donovan Woods) as they are performing the great classics and original compositions and arrangements. In concert, the Quartet enjoys pairing nonclassical music with works of the great composers, as they have done with their debut album, combining the original composition of Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and composer Drew Jurecka with one of his great inspirations, the beautiful and dynamic Quartet by Maurice Ravel.
Drew Jurecka’s string quartet was completed over a ten-year period from 2010-2020. An accomplished jazz and classical violinist, Jurecka’s composition explores his diverse musical experiences through the rich vocabulary of the string quartet. Each movement takes its inspiration from a different style of music, seen through the lens of classic string quartet form and composition, including impressionism, jazz improvision and tango techniques. In 1903, Maurice Ravel composed his only string quartet at the age of 28; the work is considered one of the greatest masterworks of the string quartet repertoire.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Nashville, Tennessee, 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
“Music should show how fragile our civilization is with all its power.” – Valentin Silvestrov, composer.
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music and Ukrainian Canadian violinist Viktoria Grynenko announce the February 28 distribution of the new recording Unbroken: Music from Ukraine (VG2025).
Unbroken: Music from Ukraine features works for violin by contemporary Ukrainian composers, including Zoltan Almashi, Boris Loginov, Valentin Silvestrov and Oleg Bezborodko, with a piece by Ukrainian Canadian Anna Pidgorna rounding out the new album. Other musicians on the recording are Roger Admiral (piano), Fabiola Amorim (viola), Amy Nicholson (cello), Vladimir Rufino (violin) and Guillaume Tardif (violin).
Viktoria Grynenko describes the recording (which she produced) as her “reaction to the full-scale war in Ukraine,” and a way to “amplify Ukrainian voices for audiences around the world.” The works are about resilience and the generosity of the Ukrainian spirit. Pidgorna’s score is presented visually inscribed on an antique door with a jagged hole created by a hatchet, in turn inspiring the dramatic conception of the piece and some of the musical gestures. Almashi’s Duo for Two Violins, No.1 is melodious and expressive, a sincere and passionate plea for the end of the war, while Loginov’s sleep during insomnia depicts the shock of February 2022. Silvestrov’s Melodies of the Moments, Cycle I quietly echoes memories of formerly peaceful lives and finally, Bezborodko’s victorious Concert Fantasy on Cossack Beyond the Danube recalls the perseverance of the Ukrainian people.
Viktoria Grynenko is a Ukrainian-born, multifaceted artist based in Edmonton. In addition to violin performance, she focuses on research and educational projects involving rarely performed works for violin. Giving back to her community, she has taught with El Sistema programs across Canada for over a decade. She is currently co-chair for Arts Habitat Edmonton and was a founder of Job Hub Ukraine, a platform assisting Ukrainian refugees with their job searches in Canada. She obtained a D. Mus. from the University of Alberta, exploring relationships between violin and dance performance in her thesis. She previously obtained a Master of Music degree from the University of Ottawa, where her studies were funded by the prestigious KUN scholarship. Her debut album Violin in Movement showcased works related to ballet and dance. She studied with Liudmyla Skorokhod and Leonid Shukhman in Ukraine, and with Oleg Pokhanovski, Yehonatan Berick and Guillaume Tardif in Canada. In this recording, Viktoria performs on a Hermann Janzen violin with a bow by Herbert Wanka.
Unbroken: Music from Ukraine was recorded in April and May of 2024 at the Edmonton Alberta Convocation Hall, University of Alberta, and was produced with assistance from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Listen to Unbroken on your favourite streaming platform. For more information, please visit: https://viktoriagrynenko.com.
Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Nashville, Tennessee, 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
(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS)Leaf Music announces the distribution of new digital release in late September, John Robertson – Music for Strings…And Winds
John Robertson (johnrobertsoncomposer.com) is a New Zealand born Canadian composer of concert music and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, whose works have been heard in Canada, the US, Mexico, the UK, and many countries in continental Europe. Also of note, the Sofia Philharmonic performed one of his pieces on their twelve-city tour of China.
His new album (available in digital version only) presents an intriguing blend of his early and mature compositional voice. Music for Strings…and Winds features three distinctive pieces: one for string orchestra, string quartet and harp, another for string sextet and one for six winds and string bass. The music is performed by members of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Armoré. With a style rooted in extended diatonicism and enriched by memorable melodies, this album offers a fresh and engaging listening experience for both connoisseurs and new listeners.
Listen to Music for Strings…And Winds on your favourite streaming platforms now! leaf-music.lnk.to/jr2024
About Leaf Music: 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.
We acknowledge that Leaf Music’s work spans many Territories and Treaty areas, and that our home is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
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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 announces the distribution of a new digital recording, Light & Dark (CG2024) with cellist Catherine Little and pianist Greg Myra.
Light & Dark is an impassioned and energetic interpretation of historic music for modern listeners. Cellist Catherine Little and pianist Gregory Myra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s joyful D major and Shostakovich’s angsty D minor cello sonatas is a storytelling of the wonder and adversities of life. The album is a follow-up to the duo’s 2021 release, Taking Five, which won the 2022 Nova Scotia Music Award for Classical Album of the Year, and was praised by La Scena magazine for “…eloquently balancing graceful repetition and magical moments.” Visit catherlinelittle.com to learn more.
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 and trans-Atlantic chamber folk ensemble Skye Consort& Emma Björling announce the launch ofOde & Ballade (LM287), available May 17 in both digital and physical versions. Ode & Ballade by Skye Consort & Emma Björling presents stories of medieval saints and sacred wells, fair maidens outsmarting presumptuous knights, beautiful or boisterous drinking songs, thieves meeting their fate, heartbreaking love songs, groovy dance tunes, and celebrations of the return of Spring. The album combines elements from world music and classical traditions to narrate poems, tales, legends, and sonnets from Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, France and more.
Skye Consort & Emma Björling (skyeconsort.org) was formed in 1999 to bring an art-music aesthetic to the folk music of different world traditions. The ensemble performs music from Scandinavia, Ireland and the British Isles, French Canada, and tunes of their own devising. They find enchanting stories and melodies, bringing them into the 21st century with worldly chamber-folk settings. The band has performed and toured extensively with various collaborators and released seven full-length albums. In November and December of 2018, in collaboration with Emma Björling, Skye Consort created a new repertoire sourced from Scandinavian, Québecois, and Celtic roots. Skye Consort & Emma Björling won the OPUS award for Best World Music Album 2019.
Ode & Ballade features Emma Björling (lead voice, percussion), Seán Dagher (lead voice, Irish bouzouki, banjo), Amanda Keesmaat (cello, voice), Alex Kehler (nyckelharpa, violin, voice) and Simon Alexandre (nyckelharpa, violin, voice). The musicians sing in three languages (Swedish, French, English), and the words “ode” and “ballade” resonate with meaning in all three: poem, song, tale, sonnet, folly, chant, and dance. The music of this album combines elements from world music and classical traditions to offer audiences thoughtful arrangements and creative compositions: a Swedish Polska accompanied by Québec foot percussion and 18th-century Scottish-style chords, a French song with Norwegian-sounding interludes between the verses, a Purcell/Playford-style dance tune with Swedish texts and accompanied on the banjo.
The album was recorded in July and August of 2023 at Alchemist Studio in Montreal, with recording, editing, and mixing by Stratsimir Dimitrov and Jeremy VanSlyke as Executive Producer. The recording was produced with assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts.
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 announces the distribution of a new digital recording: Six Degrees: Music for Violin and Strings (MS001) by acclaimed Canadian violinist Mayumi Seiler, being released on March 29. Drawing on inspiration from life’s connections and relationships, the violinist is joined by colleagues from her illustrious career’s past and present to produce five works written for violin and strings. Top Canadian string players along with formerly mentored students form the ensemble, while the repertoire is composed by longtime collaborators and composers who inspired them. Six Degrees is a celebration of the relationships that keep us interconnected.
Joining Mayumi Seiler on this recording are cellist Rachel Mercer, bassist Joe Phillips, violist Ryan Davis, violinists Hee-Soo Yoon and Isabel Lago, as well as harpist Ben Albertson. The recording was produced by Denise Ball with Pouya Hamidi as recording engineer.
Featured composers include Franz Schubert, Montreal-based composer Michael Oesterle, Massenet (Meditation, transcribed for violin, strings and harp), and Métis composer Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk, whose A Search for Resonance beautifully melds with the virtuosic elegance of classical elements. Saskatchewan composer Ryan Davis created a duet for violin and viola for the album, Lavender Jump, inspired by the fields of purple flowers in his native province.
Mayumi Seiler (mayumi-seiler.com) is renowned for her exciting performances of concerto, recital, and collaborative works both live and on disc. She has appeared as soloist with major symphonies in international venues such as Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw, Musikverein, Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, and collaborated with such noted conductors as Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Sandor Vegh, Maxim Vengerov, Christopher Hogwood, Hugh Wolff, Peter Oundjian, and Richard Hickox. Among her extensive list of recordings are the Beethoven and Mendelssohn Concertos, the three Haydn Concertos with the City of London Sinfonia and Richard Hickox conducting on the Virgin Classics label, and Stravinsky’s Le Baiser de la Fée with the Hong Kong Philharmonic under David Atherton (Virgin Classics). Her many recordings of chamber music, include works of Schumann, Dohnanyi, Boccherini and Mozart (Hyperion and Capriccio labels.)
While nurturing a busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, Japan and the Americas, Ms. Seiler founded Toronto’s Via Salzburg – acclaimed as “One of the best roads to our musical hearts” (Toronto Star). In Via Salzburg she led a string orchestra in regular performances at the Glenn Gould Studio for sold out audiences. Through fourteen seasons she curated programs with internationally renowned artists, combining varied art forms such as dance, pantomime, and painting with music.
An active and passionate teacher, Mayumi Seiler serves on the faculty at The Glenn Gould School in Toronto. She’s held a professorship at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg, given masterclasses worldwide and adjudicated at numerous international violin competitions.
She began her musical upbringing in Osaka, Japan, where she was born of Japanese/German parentage. Wedded to the violin from the age of three, Mayumi received her musical education at the renowned Mozarteum during her formative years in Salzburg. She performs on a JB Guadagnini of 1740.
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 announces the distribution of a new digital recording Portraits from the Emily Carr String Quartet. This new recording is being released on January 26.
Portraits (CD02), by the Emily Carr String Quartet (ECSQ), features works by Tobin Stokes, Jocelyn Morlock, Jared Miller, and Iman Habibi. The album was produced by Karen Wilson and co-produced and engineered by Paul Luchkow. The compositions are inspired by the writing and paintings of Emily Carr, who was herself inspired by the landscape and Indigenous people of the West Coast of Canada. Marion Newman, mezzo-soprano of Kwagiulth and Stó:lō First Nations, joins the Quartet in singing Canoe from Stokes’ Stories from Klee Wyck. Another movement of this work, Friends, references a version of the 1951 publication of Klee Wyck in which sections of the original story (where Carr described a Parson’s attempt to persuade her to help remove children from their home and send them to residential school) were edited out.
Formed in 2006 by members of the Victoria Symphony, the Emily Carr String Quartet (emilycarrstringquartet.com) has established itself as one of British Columbia’s finest chamber music ensembles, renowned for its passionate and inspiring performances. They’ve participated in residencies at Stanford University and the Banff Centre and collaborated and recorded with artists such as the Lafayette String Quartet, Lorraine Min, Marion Newman, Jamie Parker, and Arthur Rowe. The quartet has been presented by concert events such as the International Society for Contemporary Music’s 2017 World Music Days, Music in the Morning and Music on Main concert series in Vancouver, the Ankara Music Festival in Turkey, Hornby Festival, and the Victoria Summer Music Festival. The ECSQ was featured on CBC radio’s “North by Northwest” and their debut CD Hidden Treasure was nominated for the 2012 Classical Recording of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards. Quartet members are Müge Büyükçelen (Violin 1), Cory Balzer (Violin 2), Mieka Michaux (Viola) and Alasdair Money (Cello).
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 and composer Jaap Nico Hamburger are releasing Tzimtzum on November 17, 2023. The new recording presents eight of Hamburger’s pieces, recorded in Montreal and Wolfville, NS between 2021 and 2023.
Jaap Nico Hamburger (jaaphamburger.com) is a Canadian Music Centre Associate Composer and Composer in Residence at Montreal’s Mécénat Musica. His compositions include commissions from orchestras and chamber ensembles, and his works have been performed and recorded in Canada, The Netherlands and Israel. He was commissioned by the United Nations and the Government of the Netherlands to compose a new concerto for harp and orchestra that was premiered for the 75th anniversary of the International Court of Justice. His second chamber symphony, Children’s War Diaries, was nominated for the Dutch National Composer’s Award and the 2022 JUNO award for Best Classical Composition. In addition, he contributed work to the 2023 JUNO-nominated Best Classical Album. Hamburger’s first opera, Ariella, was recently premiered during a three-city tour in Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City.
The eight tracks feature a stellar group of musicians, including Ensemble ArtChoral (under the direction of Matthias Maute who also conducts Orchestre Classique de Montreal and Ensemble Caprice); Alex Strauss, violin; Victor Fournell-Blain, viola; cellists Yegor Dyachkov and Juan Sebastian Delgado; pianists Ilya Poletaev, Janelle Fung, Michael McMahon, and Philip Chiu, Lara Deutsch, flute; and soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee.
The album is being released three weeks ahead of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. The title track, Tzimtzum, (or “contraction”), refers to a term used in Kabbalah to explain 17th century mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria’s doctrine that God began the process of creation by contracting his Ohr Ein Sof (infinite light) so that new creative light could beam. This echoes the theories of Sir Roger Penrose, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics, who claims the universe goes through cycles of death and rebirth and has experienced multiple Big Bangs.
Hamburger, initially trained as a concert pianist, worked in many countries as a cardiologist before moving to Montreal and turning his full attention to composition. “After all my travels around the world, I wanted to express in my music the universality of people, not just that we are all similar, but that we are actually all one, made from the same energy,” he said. Tzimtzum was premiered at Montreal’s Festival Classica’s Lux Aeterna concert in the spring of 2023, and is scored for bells, vocal ensemble/soloists, harp, and cello.
The other intimate smaller form works on the album are guided by moments from the composer’s life: a blue dress in a painting; a piece for two pianos recalling a rhythm and blues band from his youth; poems by a German-Jewish expressionist woman writer who fled the Nazis; and the largest scale work, Concerto Antico, a “reawakening of 18th-century dance returned to life in the 21st,” according to Dr. Charles Barber’s liner notes. Concerto Antico was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and is dedicated to the memory of Maestro Boris Brott (1944-2022); Souvenirs Fugaces for solo piano was also supported by the Canada Council.
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 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/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).
