Sunday, 19 October 2008, 8:00 P.M.
Convocation Hall, University of Alberta
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door
 
 

MOTION ENSEMBLE
Helen Pridmore, soprano; Karin Aurell, flute; Nadia Francavilla, violin; Richard Hornsby, clarinet; D’Arcy Philip Gray, percussion and electronics; Andrew R. Miller, contrabass

Music by: Michael Oesterle, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Ian Crutchley, Moiya Callahan, Gerald Barry, W. L. Altman

The New Brunswick-based Motion Ensemble will be inaugurating the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society’s new 2008-2009 season of New Music Alberta Concert Series performances with a presentation of works by seven of the world’s vanguard of composers of music on the leading edge (three of them being native-born Canadians and three others now residing here).

A leading national fixture of new music both in live concerts and recordings as well as in music education, the ten-year-old Motion Ensemble strives to “spread the word,” so to speak, of the accessibility of new music to an ever increasing audience of followers inaugurated into the genre by their various projects. Their Edmonton concert, entitled “…of loves and deaths…” will be incorporating multi-media in conjunction with a variety of voice and instruments including soprano Helen Pridmore, flautist Karin Aurell, clarinettist Richard Hornsby, violinist Nadia Francavilla, contrabassist Andrew R. Miller, percussionist/electronics technician D’Arcy Philip Gray and video artist Tara Wells.

The programme will include works by W. L. Altman (I Love), Gerald Barry (The Pond), Moiya Callahan (to any one), Ian Crutchley (The Death and Lives of Pinocchio), Piotr Grella-Możejko (o’dY) and Michael Oesterle (Secular Rotations). The scope of these works span a period of 24 years from 1984 to the present. The Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society, now celebrating its 23rd year as an Alberta-based non-profit cultural organization with contacts all over the world, invites aficionados and initiates of new music to this opening concert of our new 2008-2009 season.

Motion Ensemble is a professional chamber music group based in New Brunswick, Canada. Their repertoire is a rich mix of post-classical and experimental music. Motion’s music often utilizes electronics or visual media. The group has been presenting its own concerts since 1998, now with series in Fredericton, Sackville and Saint John; they also have reached thousands of school children through their educational projects.

For its tenth anniversary season, Motion Ensemble presented a ten-hour installation of Aus den Sieben Tagen by Karlheinz Stockhausen and were presented by Western Front (Vancouver), E.C.C.S (Edmonton), The Music Gallery (Toronto) and La Chappelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur (Montréal).The group made its USA debut in New York at Tonic in 2003 and has appeared at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, Scotia Festival of Music, Montreal’s Jusqu’aux Oreilles, Sound Symposium in Newfoundland, NUMUS (Kitchener), Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, New Works Calgary, New Music North (Thunder Bay), Five Penny New Music Festival (Sudbury) and many others in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario. They have been heard on CBC Radio and TV and have recorded CDs of Veronika Krausas (self produced) and John Cage (on New York label Mode Records).

Over 60 works have been premiered by Motion Ensemble written by Canadians: Martin Arnold, Allison Cameron, Ian Crutchley, Sergio Barroso, Emily Doolittle, Moiya Callahan, alcides lanza, Jim O’Leary, Michael Oesterle, Anthony Genge, W. L. Altman, Tim Brady, Richard Gibson, Bruce Mather, Alice Ho, Michael R. Miller, Tim Bowlby, Andrew R. Miller, Richard Kidd, D’Arcy P. Gray, Joel Miller, Laura Hoffman, Veronika Krausas, Robert Bauer and James Code. In addition to Canadian work, Motion has performed the Canadian premieres of works by Europeans such as György Kurtág, Kunsu Shim, Kaija Saariaho, Peter Maxwell Davies and Donnecha Dennehy; and Americans Elliott Sharp, Larry Nelson, Peter Blauvelt and Beth Wiemann.

The group has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, The NB Arts Board, the Province of NB, the SOCAN Foundation and the City of Fredericton.
 

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