≈ 45 minutes · No intermission
Repertoire
In the Garden of Endless Sleep for oboe and piano
Inspired by a fictitious place in Gene Wolfe’s science fiction novel The Book of the New Sun, Kevin Lau (b. 1982) was sparked by an image of “a garden that moves through time, flickering between present, past, and future” to create In the Garden of Endless Sleep for oboe and piano (2020). He notes that the piece explores the “idea of viewing the garden—a cultivated slice of natural beauty—through various stages of growth and decay.” He was also interested in capturing the juxtaposition of “simplicity versus impermeability,” as influenced by Wolfe’s elusive prose. In Lau’s words:
I tried to capture this in part by evoking musical memories from older time periods in a somewhat hazy fashion, and in part through texture—in particular, the use of the piano’s sustained pedal to blur certain harmonies together. The structure of the piece is “fuzzy” as well, invoking not so much rondo form as its afterimage. Although there is an earthy, organic aspect to the piece—the melodious but often asymmetric oboe lines, for example, suggesting the contours of vines and roots and the sprawl of overgrown vegetation—the music is otherwise steeped in a dream-like and uneasy vagueness.
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Glacial Ablations
I. Crystalline Elements
II. Ice-Sizzle
III. Runoff
With music described as “breathtaking” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record), “imaginative and expressive” (The National Post), “a pulse-pounding barrage on the senses” (The Globe and Mail), and “Bartok on steroids” (Birmingham News), Kelly-Marie Murphy’s voice is well known on the Canadian music scene. She has created a number of memorable works for some of Canada’s leading performers and ensembles, including the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, The Gryphon Trio, James Campbell, Shauna Rolston, the Cecilia and Afiara String Quartets, and Judy Loman. Born in 1964 on a NATO base in Sardegna, Italy, Murphy studied composition at the University of Calgary and later received a PhD in composition at the University of Leeds in England. She is now based in Ottawa, from where she pursues a career as a freelance composer.
Murphy composed Glacial Ablations in 2022 for NACO Principal Oboe Charles “Chip” Hamann, who tonight, with pianist Frédéric Lacroix, performs the work’s world premiere. She describes the piece as follows:
Chip Hamann invited me to create a new piece for oboe and piano for a recital and recording project featuring a number of Canadian composers. The theme for the project was nature in Canada—things to do with our climate or landscapes. As my subject-matter, I chose glaciers, specifically, how we are losing our glacial ice and permafrost due to climate change.
For my piece, I chose three terms from the field of glaciology and tried to create music that responds to them. The title Glacial Ablations refers to the loss of ice and snow in a glacial system. The first movement, Crystalline Elements, is slow, and features not only delicate structures in the piano, but also space and drama, in which translucence and opaqueness mingle with the human response.
The second movement, Ice-Sizzle, is very fast, powerful, and urgent. The term refers to the sound glaciers can make, which is like carbonated water. The final movement, Runoff, has to do with evaporation and deterioration of the glacier. It begins with cadenza-like moments in the oboe and piano and features upward moving lines. The runoff intensifies as the forces of moving water grow in ferocity and urgency.
Sonata for Oboe and Piano, “The Haywain”
Ian Cusson’s Sonata for Piano and Oboe, “The Haywain” (2020), is the second of three works by the composer (b. 1981) based on images from the late-Medieval painter, Hieronymus Bosch. The sonata unfolds in three movements, titled Dignified, Simply, and Wild, respectively. These are, as Cusson explains, “in dialogue with Bosch’s The Haywain Triptych, painted in 1516, and follow the painting’s three panels as they progress from an Edenic state to Hell with all its absurdities. The image is dominated by a giant bale of hay at the work’s centre around which crowds of people cavort under the benevolent watching eyes in the clouds above them.”
Artists
Heralded for the “exquisite liquid quality” of his solo playing (Gramophone), Charles “Chip” Hamann was appointed to the principal oboe chair of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1993 at the age of 22. Mr. Hamann has also served as guest principal oboe with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Quebec’s Les Violons du Roy.
Mr. Hamann’s solo debut album, the double CD collection Canadian Works for Oboe and Piano with pianist Frédéric Lacroix, was released in 2017 on the Centrediscs label and his playing was lauded for “well-rounded tone, sensitive phrasing and…breathtaking sustained tones” (The Whole Note) and “exquisite musicianship.” (The Double Reed) With the NAC Wind Quintet, his performances of music for wind instruments by Camille Saint-Saëns with pianist Stéphane Lemelin for the Naxos label, including the op. 166 Oboe Sonata, won Gramophone Magazine’s Editor’s Choice award in 2011. Mr. Hamann was also featured in J.S. Bach’s Concerto for violin and oboe BWV 1060 with Pinchas Zukerman on NACO’s 2016 Baroque Treasury album for Analekta that earned him praise as a “superb colleague” (Gramophone) and for “a gorgeous, expressive sound.” (Ludwig van Toronto) Mr. Hamann has commissioned numerous solo works from leading Canadian composers and continues to champion new repertoire. He will record a CD of newly commissioned music for oboe solo and oboe with piano in 2021 with pianist Frédéric Lacroix.
Charles Hamann has appeared as concerto soloist with Les Violons du Roy, the Alberta Baroque Ensemble, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska, the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra, and Ottawa’s Thirteen Strings. He has appeared many times with NACO, both in Ottawa and on tour, in major concertos including Mozart, Strauss, and Vaughan-Williams. He has been a featured recitalist at the International Double Reed Society conferences and has presented solo recitals across Canada and the US.
Mr. Hamann is Adjunct Professor of oboe at the University of Ottawa School of Music and was on the faculty of the NAC Summer Music Institute for twenty years. He is a frequent faculty member at the Canada’s National Academy Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and the Orchestre de la francophonie. Mr. Hamann has been a guest clinician throughout Canada and at leading conservatories in the US. Internationally, he has given clinics in Mexico, China and Japan, where he is a frequent guest artist at the Affinis Music Festival and has been a guest faculty member of the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre Orchestra, a prominent orchestral training institution.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, Mr. Hamann pursued early study with Brian Ventura and William McMullen and later at the Interlochen Arts Camp and Interlochen Arts Academy with Daniel Stolper. He earned a Bachelor of Music and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music in 1993, where he was a student of Richard Killmer.
Frédéric Lacroix has performed in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborative pianist. He is a frequent collaborator with members of the NAC Orchestra both in chamber music and recitals, having first performed in the Music for a Sunday Afternoon concert series in 2015. This past September, he curated, as fortepianist (and composer), the late-night concerts of the NAC Orchestra’s Beethoven Festival.
Following the University of Ottawa’s purchase of a fortepiano, he has devoted part of his time to the study and performance of music on period keyboard instruments, for which he was recognized as the Westfield Center Performing Scholar for 2008–2009. He has presented numerous concerts in Canada and the United States as harpsichordist and fortepianist.
Intrigued by the seemingly infinite diversity of new music, Lacroix has enjoyed collaborating with composers and performers in the premiere of a number of Canadian and American works. Also active as a composer, his song cycle, Nova Scotia Tartan (2004), is featured on Hail, a disc dedicated to Canadian Art Song.
Frédéric Lacroix teaches piano and composition at the University of Ottawa. He recently completed his doctorate degree in keyboard performance practice with Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University.
One of Canada’s most versatile and sought-after young composers, Kevin Lau (b. 1982) has been commissioned by some of Canada’s most prominent artists and ensembles, and his work has been performed internationally in the USA, France, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. A prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, ballet, opera, and film music, he served as Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 2012 to 2015; to date, he has produced seven works for the TSO. Shortly after, he was commissioned to write two ballets with choreographer Guillaume Côté: a full-length ballet (Le Petit Prince) for the National Ballet of Canada and a half-hour ballet (Dark Angels) for the National Arts Centre Orchestra. He served as composer in residence for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra from 2021 to 2023.
With music described as “breathtaking” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record), “imaginative and expressive” (The National Post), “a pulse-pounding barrage on the senses” (The Globe and Mail), and “Bartok on steroids” (Birmingham News), Kelly-Marie Murphy’s voice is well known on the Canadian music scene. She has created a number of memorable works for some of Canada’s leading performers and ensembles, including the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, The Gryphon Trio, James Campbell, Shauna Rolston, the Cecilia and Afiara String Quartets, and Judy Loman.
Kelly-Marie Murphy was born on a NATO base in Sardegna, Italy, and grew up on Canadian Armed Forces bases all across Canada. She began her studies in composition at the University of Calgary with William Jordan and Allan Bell, and later received a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Leeds, England, where she studied with Philip Wilby. After living and working for many years in the Washington D.C. area where she was designated "an alien of extraordinary ability" by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, she is now based in Ottawa, quietly pursuing a career as a freelance composer.
Ian Cusson (b. 1981) is a Canadian composer of art song, opera, and orchestral work. Of Métis (Georgian Bay Métis Community) and French Canadian descent, his work explores the Canadian Indigenous experience, including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures.
He studied composition with Jake Heggie and Samuel Dolin and piano with James Anagnoson at the Glenn Gould School. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the Chalmers Professional Development Grant, the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation Award, and several grants through the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Ian was an inaugural Carrefour Composer in Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 2017 to 2019. He is currently the Composer-in-Residence for the Canadian Opera Company for 2019 to 2021. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers.
He lives in Toronto with his wife and four children.