August 21 2023…Written from Grande Prairie, Alberta, after evacuating from Yellowknife due to the wildfires…
Something positive and almost-normal to share!!! A premiere of a new composition - and this one was special even BEFORE the chaos of the last week. With Wesley Hardisty Wesley Archie Peter Hardisty and Ensemble Made In Canada, at Big Lake Festival BigLake Arts in Wellington Ontario. Read on for some very cool north-south collaborations, classical-fiddle collisions, and Indigenous/Non-Indigenous creation journey details. And also something almost-not-fire related!!!! (the video is a rehearsal - START TAPPING YOUR FOOT!!!)
It’s an arrangement of new piece of music by Wesley Hardisty, called "The Crossover and the Exodus Set (Jig+Ree) commissioned just for this project, and arranged by myself+Wesley.
Here's the journey of this piece all the way to what's happening tonight... Wesley composed the music almost a year ago, when he was home in Fort Simpson NWT. I transcribed it (which means wrote down from listening / watching his playing of it) - a humbling challenge even after slowing it down! Wesley also did a great help by playing guitar along with the recording of HIMSELF so I could know his harmonic progression.
Then Wesley and I met up in Yellowknife in the winter for a few hours as he was passing through the city, and we brainstormed ideas of how the classically-oriented Ensemble Made In Canada piano quartet (EMIC Quartet) could play along with Wesley to bring this new music to life. We settled on a form that felt good to how Wesley was hearing the piece move through time and texture (which guided my arrangement of giving melodies, harmonies, baselines, chords, and combinations of the violin, viola, cello, and piano of EMIC throughout the whole piece).
In the deep mid-winter I finished a draft score of the arrangement, made rough parts (which means giving each player music that’s just for each of them), and sent it off, knowing it would need to change, but it was a start.
In February we all FINALLY met in-person in Vancouver of all places, for 4-day intensive residency (thanks UBC School of Music and Chan Centre for the Performing Arts for hosting, and Jesse Zubot and @IanCusson for your guidance!). I was honoured to watch Wesley play his music with strength and joy, and excitement for this new sound to support his music. I was floored watching the EMIC Quartet become absolutely committed and engaged in the collaborative process - with nerves and hesitation at the start to a non-stop fireworks display of compositional ideas by the end.
(Ask most classically-trained musicians to improvise or jam or comp results in a beautiful spectrum of reactions that is one of my favourite places to transverse).
After the residency, I put everyone’s ideas into the piece. More back-and-forth online happened about the edits as we got closer and closer to the summer.
And now, Welsey has been in Wellington for a few days rehearsing with the EMIC Quartet. And tonight (Aug 21 2023) is the WORLD PREMIERE!!! I won’t be there, I hadn’t planned to be there originally - family commitments weren’t ideal - and now I’m in Grand Prairie with my family having evacuated from Yellowknife.
They asked me to write a few words to share with the audience - here is a short part that feels like a good way to end this sharing for now:
To the Big Lake audience….“It gives me a weird sense of joy to know you’re going to hear Wesley play with the Ensemble, to play music we worked on together. Months ago, and so far away. Weird because I’ve never felt this KIND of joy for a premiere. This piece means something different to me - it did even before I evacuated with 60 percent of the whole NWT population. Something about the specialness of Welsey, his music and his journey and his own search for joy, and the Ensemble’s bravery, contribution, belief and transformation. And now it’s something more- even though I’m not there, it’s something more I am part of, that’s rising us all up with it.”