11 Reasons I’m Still The Composer In Residence With The Laudate Singers (Number 7 Will BLOW YOUR MIND!)

Like some kind of shambling monolith in a hockey helmet with fewer teeth than a peach, I approach the fall with excitement and just as much media-savy (Though I’m learning! Look at me blog!). Excited, because I will be staying onboard with the Laudate Singers as their composer in residence for a second year. That’s right –  if you thought that all the sage advice in the world couldn’t dissuade their board of directors from packing me into a crate and dropping me into English Bay (Air holes please) you would be dead wrong. The first year produced some fantastic music that I’m immensely proud of but the second will see me pushing the ensemble a bit to see what kind of mayhem we can create. Diabolical plans are detailed below.

In September, the Laudate Singers present my setting of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star at the Gordon Smith Gallery in North Vancouver. Those of you in the know might have been at last year’s premiere and acknowledged the gleeful smile on my face as a pretty good indication of a success. Myself, and my colleagues Kristopher Fulton and Bruce Sled whom have both written extensively for Laudate, will be giving short talks on our music and our creative process. Disappointingly, I have been assured that none of the composers will be shot out of a cannon.

Breaking way in March is a setting of the MacKay poem, “A Childish Fear” that – in the musical setting – we’re calling, “Where The Moon Goes”. It will be performed by the generous pairing of choir and the duo, Couloir; Ariel Barnes, cello and Heidi Kreutzen, harp.

Also commissioned by the Laudate Singers is a setting of the Yeats poem, The Everlasting Voices which is slated to be performed in May in a setting for triple choir a cappella: twenty-is-it-only-four voices singing in three octets of crunching supersonics. I can’t wait!

Hope to see you there somewhere!