≈ 2h · With intermission
Repertoire
Songs for Murdered Sisters
I. Empty Chair
II. Enchantment
III. Anger
IV. Dream
V. Bird Soul
VI. Lost
VII. Rage
VIII. Coda: Song
On September 22, 2015, three women in Renfrew County, Ontario, were murdered in their respective homes by a man with whom each had had a relationship. One of the victims of this shocking crime spree, now recognized as one of the worst cases of domestic violence in Canadian history, was Nathalie Warmerdam, beloved sister of baritone Joshua Hopkins.
In grappling with his grief, guilt, and anger, and wanting to also draw attention to the global epidemic of gender-based violence, Hopkins conceived of a song cycle that became Songs for Murdered Sisters. This shatteringly powerful new work by notable opera and art song composer Jake Heggie sets new texts by acclaimed author Margaret Atwood. A co-commission by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Houston Grand Opera for Hopkins, Songs for Murdered Sisters is dedicated to the memory of Nathalie Warmerdam, Carol Culleton, and Anastasia Kuzyk, as well as Pat Lowther and Debbie Rottman. It was released in February 2021 as a film, directed by James Niebuhr, with Houston Grand Opera, and then in March as an album on the Pentatone label, with the composer at the piano. Tonight’s performance with the NAC Orchestra is the cycle’s orchestral world premiere.
The song cycle charts a man’s emotional and spiritual journey as he wrestles with the devastating aftermath of his sister’s murder. Here, composer Jake Heggie describes each song:
1. Empty Chair
Fragile harmonies bring to mind a music box now silenced—a warmth and presence now flown—as the singer contemplates a chair where his sister used to sit. Nothing is left now, just emptiness and air.
2. Enchantment
Trying to make sense of his sister’s murder, the singer imagines fairy tales and fables that could explain her absence: something magical and mysterious. The music swirls and sparkles with imagination and wit but is ultimately haunted and pulled back to reality.
3. Anger
Stark, timeless, dark chords grow louder as the singer imagines the angry man who murdered his sister—the man she had tried to love. He pictures how innocently she would have opened the door, only to be met with a terrifying, red anger.
4. Dream
A melancholy, distant tune is suspended in a cloud of delicate harmonies as the singer dreams about his sister. They are young, with no inkling of what the future will bring. But then she tells him she has to go, and truth once again comes crashing in on him.
5. Bird Soul
Wondering where his beloved sister’s soul could be, the singer looks to birds in the sky in search of answers. Which bird would she be? The music evokes bird song as it sparkles, dips, and soars, echoing the long emotional quest.
6. Lost
The singer contemplates the countless women murdered by angry, jealous, fearful men over thousands of years. Countless lives…countless tears. The chords echo this timeless repetition and the sorrow that surrounds it.
7. Rage
A haunted wind seems to sigh through the brass, percussion, and the lowest strings of the harp as the singer’s anger, frustration, and outrage grows. Why couldn’t he have saved his sister? Should he avenge her by killing the man who killed her? The music nearly boils over until he wonders if the ghost of his sister might ask something different of him: “Would you instead forgive?” The music suddenly blossoms and flows with new warmth and beauty at the possibility of redemption.
8. Coda: Song
A simple tune brings comfort as the singer realizes that when he breathes and sings, his sister is with him. He hums. The air vibrates. The eternal ohm.
Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD
SONGS FOR MURDERED SISTERS
by Margaret Atwood
1. Empty Chair
Who was my sister
Is now an empty chair
Is no longer,
Is no longer there
She is now emptiness
She is now air
2. Enchantment
If this were a story
I was telling my sister
A troll from the mountain
Would have stolen her
Or else a twisted magician
Turned her to stone
Or locked her in a tower
Or hidden her deep inside a golden flower
I would have to travel
West of the moon, east of the sun
To find the answer;
I’d speak the charm
And she’d be standing there
Alive and happy, come to no harm
But this is not a story.
Not that kind of story….
3. Anger
Anger is red
The colour of spilled blood
He was all anger,
The man you tried to love
You opened the door
And death was standing there
Red death, red anger
Anger at you
For being so alive
And not destroyed by fear
What do you want? you said.
Red was the answer.
4. Dream
When I sleep you appear
I am a child then
And you are young and still my sister
And it is summer;
I don’t know the future,
Not in my dream
I’m going away, you tell me
On a long journey.
I have to go away.
No, stay, I call to you
As you grow smaller:
Stay here with me and play!
But suddenly I’m older
And it’s cold and moonless
And it is winter…
5. Bird Soul
If birds are human souls
What bird are you?
A spring bird with a joyful song?
A high flyer?
Are you an evening bird
Watching the moon
Singing Alone, Alone,
Singing Dead Too Soon?
Are you an owl,
Soft-feathered predator?
Are you hunting, restlessly hunting
The soul of your murderer?
I know you are not a bird,
Though I know you’ve flown
So far, so far away..
I need you to be somewhere…
6. Lost
So many sisters lost
So many lost sisters
Over the years, thousands of years
So many sent away
Too soon into the night
By men who thought they had the right
Rage and hatred
Jealousy and fear
So many sisters killed
Over the years, thousands of years
Killed by fearful men
Who wanted to be taller
Over the years, thousands of years
So many sisters lost
So many tears
7. Rage
I was too late,
Too late to save you.
I feel the rage and pain
In my own fingers,
In my own hands
I feel the red command
To kill the man who killed you:
That would be only fair:
Him stopped, him nevermore,
In fragments on the floor,
Him shattered.
Why should he still be here
And not you?
Is that what you wish me to do,
Ghost of my sister?
Or would you let him live?
Would you instead forgive?
8. Coda: Song
If you were a song
What song would you be?
Would you be the voice that sings,
Would you be the music?
When I am singing this song for you
You are not empty air
You are here,
One breath and then another:
You are here with me…
Artists
Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the Orchestra performs a full series of subscription concerts at the National Arts Centre each season, featuring world-class artists such as James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds.
Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009 - 2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.
National and international tours have been a hallmark of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from the very beginning. The Orchestra has toured 95 times since its inauguration in 1969, visiting 120 cities in Canada, as well as 20 countries and 138 cities internationally. In recent years, the orchestra has undertaken performance and education tours across Canada, as well as the U.K. and China. In 2019, the Orchestra marked its 50th anniversary with a seven-city European tour that included performances and education events in England, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and that showcased the work of six Canadian composers.
The NAC Orchestra has recorded many of the more than 80 new works commissioned since its inception, for radio and on over 40 commercial recordings. These include Angela Hewitt’s 2015 JUNO Award-winning album of Mozart Piano Concertos; the groundbreaking Life Reflected, which includes My Name is Amanda Todd by Jocelyn Morlock, winner of the 2018 JUNO for Classical Composition of the Year; and from the 2019 JUNO nominated New Worlds, Ana Sokolović’s Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes, 2019 JUNO Winner for Classical Composition of the Year.
The NAC Orchestra reaches a national and international audience through touring, recordings, and extensive educational outreach. The Orchestra performed on Parliament Hill for the 2019 Canada Day noon concert in a live broadcast for CBC Television.
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Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).
Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia projects Life Reflected and UNDISRUPTED, and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musicians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.
Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, starting with the 2024–2025 season, Artistic and Music Director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida, USA. In the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, and in 2017, he led the Orchestra in a tour across Canada, celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary. Most recently, he led the Orchestra in its first performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 30 years.
He has made seven recordings with the NAC Orchestra, including the JUNO-nominated New Worlds, Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, The Bounds of Our Dreams, Darlings of the Muses, Lyrical Echoes, and Atmosphere and Mastery, all with Montreal label Analekta.
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
Known as one of the finest singer-actors of his generation, JUNO Award–winning and GRAMMY-nominated Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins has been hailed by Opera Today as having “a glistening, malleable baritone of exceptional beauty, and the technique to exploit its full range of expressive possibilities from comic bluster to melting beauty.” Having established himself as a prominent leading artist throughout the United States and Canada, Joshua appears regularly at The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, The Santa Fe Opera, and Washington National Opera, amongst many others. On the concert platform, he has appeared with many orchestras in North America, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony.
Profoundly committed to the art of song, Joshua’s first recital disc, Let Beauty Awake, features songs of Barber, Bowles, Glick, and Vaughan Williams on the ATMA Classique label. He has won numerous awards and distinctions, most recently, a JUNO Award for his portrayal of Athanaël in the Chandos recording of Massenet’s Thaïs in concert with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.
Joshua’s most personal work, Songs for Murdered Sisters, is a song cycle by composer Jake Heggie and author Margaret Atwood, conceived by Hopkins in remembrance of his sister, Nathalie Warmerdam.
Composer Jake Heggie is “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer” (The Wall Street Journal). He is best known for the operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, It’s A Wonderful Life, Three Decembers, Two Remain, and If I Were You. He is currently at work on his 10th full-length opera, Intelligence, with Jawole Zollar and Gene Scheer, as well as new works for violinist Joshua Bell, New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Miró Quartet, and Music of Remembrance. The operas and his nearly 300 art songs have been performed extensively on five continents, championed by some of the world’s most beloved artists.
With a libretto by the late Terrence McNally, Dead Man Walking has become “the most celebrated American opera of the 21st century” (Chicago Tribune). It has received nearly 80 international productions since its San Francisco Opera premiere in 2000. Recent premieres have included Lake Tahoe: Symphonic Reflections and Fantasy Suite 1803. In 2020, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and violinist Daniel Hope gave the premiere of Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope to texts by Gene Scheer (Pentatone Records), and in 2021, baritone Joshua Hopkins gave the (online) premiere of Songs for Murdered Sisters, to new poems by Margaret Atwood (Pentatone). Also in 2021, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and Heggie gave the premiere of What I Miss the Most…, a song cycle to new texts by Joyce DiDonato, Patti LuPone, Sister Helen Prejean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Kathleen Kelly. Barton is also featured on Unexpected Shadows, a recording of Heggie’s songs released by Pentatone (2022 GRAMMY nominee).
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Official Car of the NAC Orchestra
