Tag: Song Cycle

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Leaf Music and Mark Fewer Presents Alikeness

LM296 Alikeness Front Cover

Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music and Canadian violinist Mark Fewer announce the launch of Alikeness (LM296), available August 16 in digital and physical format. Alikeness features the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra Sinfonia together with percussionist. Aiyun Huang, soprano Deantha Edmunds, and violinist/conductor Mark Fewer in an all Canadian, all strings-based program.  

Fewer says the album is inspired by the human capacity to learn, adapt, and collaborate, and encourages listeners to find their own “alikenesses” within the music while fostering a deeper connection with one another: “Continually experiencing new things but using what is already inside of us, as a way to make our worlds larger, expanding ad infinitum… If we don’t immediately understand something, we use a memory to help us relate. Over the course of my own life as a musician, it has been those inquiring artists who relate to one another as open systems who have inspired me the most.” 

The NSO Sinfonia, based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, was founded by Peter Gardner and features core string players from the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra.  

Violinist and conductor Mark Fewer has been interpreting music in virtually every genre and setting for over three decades, premiering over 200 works, including more than 50 written for him. His unique discography features multiple JUNO and Grammy-winning recordings and an Opus Prize for a Serge Arcuri tribute. He has served as Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony, Artist-in-Residence at Stanford, William Dawson Scholar at McGill, and is currently Head of Strings at the University of Toronto. After 16 years as the founding artistic director of the SweetWater Music Festival, he is now in his sixth season and the Artistic Director of Stratford Summer Music.   

Deantha Edmunds, Canada’s first Inuk professional classical singer, was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in December 2023 for her work empowering Indigenous people and sharing their stories. Her performances, writing, and compositions have earned national and international acclaim.  

Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Aiyun Huang holds a DMA from UC San Diego and is the Head of Percussion at the University of Toronto, directing its Percussion Ensemble. She gained international recognition by winning First Prize and Audience Prize at the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition.  

The album opens with the world premiere of Deantha Edmunds’ Angmalukisaa (“round” in Inuktut), a personal composition about human connections; Edmunds’ four songs are arranged by Bill Brennan, Andrew Downing, Jeff Johnston, and Robert Carli. The next three works feature Fewer as violin soloist and conductor:  Épisodes by Serge Arcuri, (written for the Montreal Baroque Orchestra in 1998,) blends the baroque “concerto grosso” form with modern elements; Matt Brubeck’s The Simple Life, has been newly arranged by Andrew Downing for strings; and the third movement “C” from B-A-C-H by Robert Carli (after J.S. Bach’s surname), was composed in 2013 for the Sweetwater Music Festival. The album concludes with Alikeness, Yoshiaki Onishi’s arrangement of an eight-movement suite by Jaroslaw Kapuściński.  The suite was originally composed in 2015 for the St. Lawrence String Quartet and percussionist Aiyun Huang.  

Get your CD copy of Alikeness, or listen to it on your favourite streaming platform. Alikeness is available on all streaming platforms.     

Alikeness was recorded January 14-17, 2024, in St. John’s, and produced by Jeremy VanSlyke and Nathan Cann for Leaf Music 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).

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Leaf Music, Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, Margaret Atwood and the Hannaford Street Silver Band Present: Zombie Blizzard

“Combining the wit of Dorothy Parker with the wisdom of Emily Dickinson, Atwood adds a steely grace and richness all her own. If there is beauty in despair, one may find it here”. (Library Journal, 2020)

(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Leaf Music is excited to release Zombie Blizzard (LM277), an eclectic digital album of concert arias by internationally acclaimed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and composer Aaron Davis.

In Zombie Blizzard Davis has set to music seven poems from Atwood’s 2020 collection, Dearly. The poems- Zombie, Blizzard, Health Class, Princess Clothing, Shadow, Digging up the Scythians, and Dearly – address themes of love, loss, feminism and …. Zombies! Davis’s musical compositions are sung brilliantly by internationally acclaimed soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, withthe Hannaford Street Silver Band, Toronto’s premier brass ensemble, and Davison piano, George Koller on bass and Mark Mariash on drums. Zombie Blizzard also features recitations by Margaret Atwood of the seven poems.

The new recording gets its launch in Toronto at the Jane Mallett Theatre with all the performers on Sunday, March 3 at 3:00 p.m. with the New Classical FM as the official radio sponsor. For tickets and more information, head to https://tix.to/zombie.

Fredericton-born Measha Brueggergosman-Lee has created many crossover albums and toured extensively with award-winning pianist and composer Aaron Davis, and again blurs the lines between musical genres with Zombie Blizzard, composed for soprano, jazz trio and brass orchestra. The album gives expression to her long-term admiration for and friendship with Margaret Atwood. CBC Music included Zombie Blizzard in their listing of “Canadian albums we can’t wait to hear in 2024.” 

Measha Brueggergosman-Lee holds several honorary doctorates and ambassadorial titles with international charities and is permanent Artist-in-Residence with the Canadian opera company, Opera Atelier. The JUNO award winner has presented innovative programs at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Washington’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Madrid’s Teatro Real as well as at the Schwarzenberg, Edinburgh, Verbier and Bergen Festivals.  She is completing her second year of a master’s degree in theology and released her best-selling memoir Something is Always on Fire in 2018.

Other milestone recordings in 2023-24 include a song cycle by Robert Fleming for the Canadian Art Song Project, a remix album featuring multi-lingual, multi-national hip hop artists, a new work composed for her by Canadian-Dutch composer Jaap Nico Hamburger and MEASHA – Live at Westben. She also was the executive producer and director of Forgotten Coast, a 30-minute television episode broadcast on CBC Gem telling the story of her Black Loyalist heritage through the lens of hip-hop artist Jay Vernon, with orchestrations by Aaron Davis and Edwin Huizinga performed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Alexander Shelley.

Margaret Atwood, poet 

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays.  Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy.  Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed in 2022 with Burning Questions, a selection of essays from 2004 to 2021.  Her next collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood was published in March 2023.  Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.  In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature.  She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright, and puppeteer.  She lives in Toronto, Canada. 

Aaron Davis, composer  

Aaron Davis is an eclectic composer, arranger and pianist who has worked with many of Canada’s finest musical talents. He was a founder of the world-beat band Manteca, for whom he wrote and played keyboards for twelve years and is a founding member of the Holly Cole Trio with whom he’s been playing, recording, and touring the world since 1986.  

Aaron has co-produced four of Measha Brueggergosman-Lee’s CDs and directed the music of her film Songs of Freedom. He’s also composed film scores for over 120 movies and created orchestral and chamber arrangements for many artists, including the Art of Time Ensemble, Alison Krauss, Natalie MacMaster, The Hannaford Street Silver Band, Jah Mila, Leahy, the Canadian Brass, Kevin Breit, Kuné, Canada’s Global Orchestra, Quartetto Gelato, and the Iseler Singers. Aaron has released three CDs of his own compositions, and is the recipient of two Juno Awards, two Gemini Awards and numerous Genie and Gemini award nominations. 

The Hannaford Street Silver Band (www.hssb.ca)

Canada’s award-winning professional brass band was formed in 1983 by a group of professional musicians with a love of brass music and ensemble playing. Since then, Hannaford has been reinvigorating the brass band tradition, to critical and popular acclaim. Its mission is to honour the traditions of this art form while placing it in a contemporary context with a uniquely Canadian point of view. The HSSB has redefined the brass band genre by engaging in innovative creative projects, facilitating more than 40 commissions, and recording thirteen CDs, continually pushing boundaries, and exploring new paths. Since 2020, the band has released several classical music films, including Nine Daies Wonder by Bramwell Tovey with Mark Fewer, and Canadian Trilogy, 3 Films of Music by Canadian Composers that spotlight works commissioned from Kelly-Marie Murphy, Vivian Fung, and Barbara Assiginaak.  

David Pell, Artistic Director 

David Pell has served as Artistic Director of the Hannaford Street Silver Band since 2010 and is a faculty member of the University of Toronto, the Glenn Gould Professional School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He is Principal Trombonist of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra and has been a member of the Winnipeg Symphony, the Victoria Symphony, and Orchestra London Canada. He is a member of Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra and performs regularly with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company, as well as new music ensembles Continuum and New Music Concerts. He has also performed with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Symphony Nova Scotia, and with the Canadian Brass and Stockholm Chamber Brass. 

David earned a doctorate from the Music and Health Research Collaboratory at the University of Toronto and is an active member of two other treasures of Canadian brass music: the True North Brass Quintet and the Canadian National Brass Project. 

The support of the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and Nova Scotia Cultural Investment Fund in the creation and recording of these songs is gratefully acknowledged. Listen to Zombie Blizzard wherever you stream your music: https://leaf-music.lnk.to/lm277.  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).