SONIC BOOM 2009

A Festival of New Music by BC Composers, Presented by Vancouver Pro Musica
March 19 - 22, 2009 at 7:30 pm
The Western Front (303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC)

Sonic Boom is an annual festival of new music by BC composers. This festival is widely regarded as one of Canada's most important showcases for new work, including pieces by both mature and emerging composers, all performed by top-quality ensembles and soloists. Sonic Boom 2009 will feature the talents of 12-member vocal ensemble musica intima as Ensemble in Residence, and Stephen Chatman as Composer in Residence. Nu:BC is the featured ensemble for our first evening.

Concerts take place over four evenings. This year’s highlights include the world premiere of “Varley Suite” for solo viola by Stephen Chatman, performed by David Harding on Thursday, March 19. Also on that program, Beth Orson performs on oboe for Farshid Samandari's "the mirage bona fide", and Jordan Nobles's "Undercurrents" - an open-score piece with "a single fluid melodic line performed by a soloist while accompanied by reflections and eddies from the remaining ensemble members." Nu:BC is the featured ensemble for Thursday.

Asian flavours accent Friday’s program with Mark Armanini's "Night Wind" for solo erhu featuring Song Yun, one of China's very best performers, as well as Jin Zhang's "Singing in Mid-Autumn" for erhu and harp. David Litke's "Conduits" for clarinet (François Houle) and computer, centres around the concept of transmission - that of the clarinet, and the computer as it expands and responds to acoustic sound. Over the course of the piece, a larger-scale transmission is effected as the harmonic structures gradually shift according to processes based upon an evolutionary metaphor. "Waver / 160 Years of Pressure" is a video by Krista Dragomer, who is currently pursuing a graduate degree in art history, visual art, and theory, focusing on sound art, at UBC. Paul Plimley (piano) and Victoria Gibson (computer) are both featured composers / improvisers in “The Sapphire Choir”.

Come Saturday evening to hear musica intima perform twelve works a capella, including André Cormier's "En monochrome", performed on a single pitch in unison, but with each performer interpreting this note by varying only one of the parameters such as dynamics, timbre, micro-pitch, and duration according to Cormier's semi-graphic score. The vocal ensemble will also perform Iman Habibi's powerful setting of Hart Crane's "Black Riders", Colin MacDonald's "At Sea" (poetry by twentieth-century writer and occultist Aleister Crowley) and Rita Ueda's setting of Harumi Makino's highly onomatopoeic "Tokei no Oto Nimo", which celebrates the sounds of Sapporo.

Yota Kobayashi's "Tensho", which last year was awarded first prize at Musica Nova, the international competition for electroacoustic music organized by the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the Czech Republic, will be featured on Sunday evening. David Mesiha's "Imaginary Friends", dedicated to Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, explores a deep schizophrenia between beautiful tonal melodies and dreamy atonal sequences and colours. Perhaps this is similar to the contradictory and paradoxical nature of the DTES, where humanity and inhumanity seem equally real and where beauty and foe can be found in the same place — where schizophrenia is not only an individual disease and struggle, but also a social and cultural phenomenon to which many can turn a blind eye. Ernst Schneider, who lives in Penticton, is a celebrated German-Canadian composer who has done a great deal to promote Canadian music through many lectures, workshops, and a weekly two-hour radio program, and presents his composition "This Place" with Rebecca Whitling on violin and the Infinitus String Quartet.

Sunday morning’s student composers' master class is free, and will be conducted by Steve Chatman with Tiresias (Mark McGregor, flute and Rachel Iwaasa, piano) as the reading ensemble.

Tickets are $20 General / $15 Students, Seniors, Artists / $35 Festival Pass for all four concerts. Available cash only at the door.

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