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Continuum Contemporary Music
Presents
ORGANized
Mechanical organs and other musical contraptions
Sunday, February 12, 2012, 8pm at The Music Gallery
For Immediate Release – Toronto, January 11, 2012: Continuum Contemporary Music
returns to the Music Gallery on Sunday, February 12, to present ORGANized.
Mechanical/human, past/present – this is a concert that breaches boundaries. Works by Petar
Klanac, Michael Oesterle and Richard Marsella pit Continuum’s ensemble against mechanical
devices ranging from musical contraption through simple crank organ to decorated cabinet organ.
Other works include a commission from Brian Current, and Ligeti’s Continuum arranged for two
marimbas. Also part of the event is a talk by Henk de Graauw, a Dutch-Canadian inventor and
whisperer of street organs.
The mechanical organ used in the concert (an indoor organ as opposed to the brash instrument
used on the streets) was engineered and built by Henk de Graauw. As part of the event, Henk
will present a talk on mechanical organs at 4pm, prior to the concert.
Petar Klanac’s work Les petites créatures (The little beings), is imbued with the idea of the
power or grandeur of smallness. Klanac was inspired by Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux's writings:
«They say that all souls are tempted by the devil at the hour of death, so I will have to go through
that. Yet no, I'm too small. With the very small, he can't ». “I was astonished by how clearly
Sainte Thérèse expresses the invincible character of smallness. Smallness is incorruptible, not as
an attribute but within its own nature”, writes Klanac. Now based in France, Petar Klanac
studied with Gilles Tremblay in Montreal and Gérard Grisey in Paris. Influenced by Medieval
processes and often inspired by religious themes (as a boy he sang in the Saint Joseph’s Oratory
choir in Montreal), Klanac’s music has won acclaim in Canada and in Europe.
By contrast, the work of Richard Marsella, aka Friendly Rich, tends towards the exuberant. For
the last decade he has been tinkering with street organs, barrel organs and other mechanical and
midi-driven devices with his friend Henk de Graauw in a tool shed in Bramalea, Ontario. In this
piece, Friendly Rich disintegrates the beer barrel polka, using Henk's mechanical organ, a barrel
organ, other mechanical devices and Continuum’s ensemble. Richard Marsella has composed
background music for The Tom Green Show, run his own eclectic record label, The Pumpkin Pie
Corporation, was programmer for the Ottawa Winter Festival and is currently director of the
Brampton Indie Arts Festival and the Regent Park School of Music. He completed a Masters
degree in music at the University of Toronto, concentrating on musical instrument construction
and parade pedagogy.
Look on glass, for ensemble, by Michael Oesterle, is a new version of a work written Japanese
koto and marimba. Although the koto is omitted here, shifting focus to the marimba, its presence
is felt in the sparse plucky textures of the piccolo, violin, cello and mechanical device. Oesterle
writes that each the four movements of the piece, “act as a miniature, or what I like to think of as
a musical haiku. These haiku are dedicated to the annual promise of emergence from beneath
continuum
300 bloor street west, toronto, on m5s 1w3 CANADA
t: 416.924.4945 www.continuummusic.org
charitable no. 118875228 RR0001
what seems an impenetrable and unforgiving surface of hardened earth and ice.” Montreal
composer Michael Oesterle is one of Canada’s most accomplished and busiest composers.
Strata by Brian Current was commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
and Continuum in 2010 with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. The title refers to the
layering of musical material found throughout the work. Layers or patterns overlap with
themselves; musical shapes are created by widening glissando lines. Brian Current, a leading
composer of his generation, has been commissioned and performed by ensembles large and small,
from the St. Lawrence String Quartet to the Warsaw National Philharmonic. He is music director
and conductor of the Royal Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble.
Continuum for harpsichord (1968), by György Ligeti, and performed in this concert on two
marimbas, is to be performed so fast that the notes merge into a continuum. Rhythmic variation
is created though the introduction into the sound stream of new pitches – in this way expressing
qualities of chaos theory, ideas he was introduced to long after writing the work. Hungarian
composer György Ligeti (1923 - 2006) made a substantial impact on international contemporary
music both as a university professor and as a leading composer of his generation.
Continuum’s ensemble is: Anne Thompson (flute), Max Christie (clarinet), Carol Fujino
(violin), Paul Widner (cello), Laurent Philippe (piano) and Ryan Scott (percussion); guest
artists for this concert are Haruka Fujii (percussion) and Brian Current (conductor).
Led by artistic directors Jennifer Waring and Ryan Scott, Continuum presents concerts featuring
the core ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, as well as unusual
instrumental combinations. The organization has commissioned and premiered approximately
150 new works from emerging Canadian and international composers, and also established
composers charting new territory. Increasingly the group engages in collaboration and
interdisciplinary work. Continuum is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts,
the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, the SOCAN
Foundation, the Julie Jiggs Foundation, Roger D. Moore, and many private donors.
ORGANized
Sunday, February 12, 2012, 8 pm
The Music Gallery: 197 John Street
Tickets ($25 adults / $15 students, seniors, arts workers & Music Gallery members)
available at the door on the night of the concert
For more information please visit www.continuummusic.org, email [email protected] or
call (416) 924-4945
Media Contact:
Francine Labelle/flINK
416 654-4406
[email protected]
continuum
300 bloor street west, toronto, on m5s 1w3 CANADA
t: 416.924.4945 www.continuummusic.org
charitable no. 118875228 RR0001