Monday, 16 February 2009, 8:00 P.M.
Convocation Hall, University of Alberta
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door

Music by: Jacques Demierre, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Tom Johnson, Luis Jure, Jean-Daniel Lugrin, Laurent Mettraux, Benoit Moreau, Monte Keene Pishny-Floyd, Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratjke, Lois V. Vierk, Istvan Zelenka, Jos Zwaanenburg

Laurent Estoppey studied saxophone at the Conservatoire de Lausanne, where in 1994 he obtained a performance diploma. From that moment on, Laurent has devoted his attention to the music of our times. During all those years, Laurent has premièred over seventy works, ranging from the conventionally notated scores to improvised and intuitive music. Very active as a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in Argentina, Austria, Canada, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Sweden, and the US, not to mention countless appearances in his native Switzerland.

Laurent has performed on a regular basis with a number of orchestras, including the following: Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orchestre Symphonique de Bâle, UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, The Timisoara Symphony Orchestra (Romania), The Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta de Lausanne, NEC – Chaux-de-Fonds, and Contrechamps-Genève. Fond of collaborative efforts, Laurent has been involved in several such projects: Duo Dilemme (with the pianist Myriam Migani), Degré21 (with the guitarist Antonio Albanese), 1+1 (with the recorder player Anne Gillot), Compagnie CH.AU (a chamber ensemble of seven musicians), as well as the 4Tenors (with three other fellow tenor saxophone performers, Vincent Daoud, Rico Gubler and Lars Mlekusch).

Other collaborative ventures include the ARTE Saxophone Quartet and Ensemble baBel, the latter founded by Olivier Cuendet. Laurent Estoppey, the improviser, works with several collectives such as HipNoiz51, Betty’s Quartet, Yet Trio, Heimatlos, and 1+1+Stephan Perrinjaquet. Laurent is also a member of the Russian theatre company, Akhe, in whose acclaimed production, Wet Wedding, he appeared in Geneva, Nice, London, Stockholm, and Mexico. Laurent’s interest in interdisciplinary æsthetics has resulted in collaborations with Georges Haldas (poetry), Olivier Saudan (painting and video), Francis Baudevin, Stephan Perrinjaquet (visual arts), Heidi Bunting, Christine Cruchon (dance), Gil Pidoux (literature and theatre).

At the present moment, Laurent’s discography comprises a dozen titles, the most recent project–still in the works–being a full-length CD of music by Piotr Grella-Możejko.

www.musicians.ch/laurentestoppey/

Tickets for this international music event are general admission and are available at the door for $20 general and $15 student or senior.

For information contact the conference organisers: Dr. Charles Stolte, William H. Street, Allison Balcetis
 

Sunday, 15 February 2009, 8:00 P.M.
Convocation Hall, University of Alberta
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door

Music by: George Andrix, Alex Eddington, Thom Golub, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Jacobus Kloppers, Jacek Sobieraj, Charles Stolte

Soloists: Allison Balcetis, Julia Nolan, Jeremy Brown, Glen Gillis, Allen Harrington, Po-Yuan Ku, Charles Stolte

The University of Alberta, The King’s University College and Edmonton Composers Concert Society are pleased to present the Region 9 Conference of the North American Saxophone Alliance. For its penultimate concert in the New Music Alberta Concert Series for the current season, the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society will be presenting a rare treat for local concert audiences — seven Canadian concerti for saxophone solo and full chamber orchestra. The concert will be presented as part of the NASA Region 9 Conference on Sunday, February 15 at 8:00 P.M. at Convocation Hall in the Old Arts Building on the University of Alberta campus.

The composers of the works chose the soloists through a Western Canada-wide competition. These artists will be accompanied by the Edmonton Chamber Orchestra under the direction of the outstanding Polish conductor and composer Maestro Jacek Rogala.

The saxophone is so closely associated with jazz music that it is the only instrument on the cover of the Oxford Dictionary of Jazz Music. And yet, it was created as an instrument for classical music and is rarely heard in its original capacity today. However, from Sunday to Tuesday, 15-17 February, 2009, the classical saxophone will be front-and-centre in Edmonton as over one-hundred classical saxophonists from across Western Canada, from Vancouver to Winnipeg, (and one from Switzerland) converge on the University of Alberta’s Fine Arts Building and Convocation Hall to celebrate their marvellous instrument in a full slate of performances, lessons, lectures and concerts by professionals and students alike.

A full evening of new saxophone concerti for saxophone and orchestra by Edmonton and Albertan composers is an exciting and unique event in Edmonton’s cultural life. The musical style of the new works ranges from jazz to world music to Romantic to richly atonal and is a trip through the ears and minds of seven remarkable local composers.

Maestro Jacek Rogala (born in 1966 in Brzeg, Poland) is an award winning composer and conductor, having had performances of his works across Europe and North America. He is also a very highly respected educator (specialising in music for children) and a writer, having in 2000 published in English the internationally acclaimed Polish Music in the 20th Century (Cracow: PWM-Polish Music Edition).

As a conductor, he has directed orchestras in Poland and abroad (Austria, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) in the premières of many works by Polish and foreign composers, often given during important festival events such as Warsaw Autumn, Silesian Days of Contemporary Music, The Grażyna Bacewicz Festival and many others. As well, he has made numerous recordings of music by the (predominantly) Polish Romantic and modern composers, Grażyna Bacewicz, Mieczyslaw Karłowicz, Józef Koffler, Paweł Mykietyn and Tadeusz Wielecki, to name only a few.

Jacek Rogala holds M.Mus. degrees in Composition (1990, under Prof. Grażyna Pstrokonska-Nawratil) and Conducting (1992, under Maestro Marek Pijarowski) from the Wrocław Academy of Music. Between 1991 and 1992 he was the Assistant Principal Conductor of the Wrocław Opera, and during the 1993/1994 season the Distinguished Visiting Conductor with the famous Capella Bydgostiensis. In 1996, on an Artur Rodziński Scholarship, he furthered his education at the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in the US. In 1997 Maestro Rogala was a laureate of the International Conductors’ Competition “Pedro da Costa de Freitas Branco” in Lisbon. As of the 2001/2002 season, Maestro Jacek Rogala has become the Artistic Director of the Oskar Kolberg Philharmonic Orchestra in Kielce, Poland. Virtually unanimous opinion agrees he has transformed the orchestra into one of the country’s leading symphony ensembles, praised for its visionary programming.

Tickets for this unique and exciting event are general admission and are available at the door for $20 general and $15 student or senior.

For information contact the conference organisers: Dr. Charles Stolte, William H. Street, Allison Balcetis

To view the full schedule of events visit www.nasaregion92009.ca
Explore the North American Saxophone Alliance at www.saxalliance.org
 

Saturday, 24 January 2009, 8:00 P.M.
Edmonton Public Library, Stan A Milner Theatre
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door

ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI
Gerry Morita, dance; Michelle Milenkovic, voice; Felix Plawski, visuals; Charles Stolte, alto saxophone; Jerry Ozipko, electric violin; Piotr Grella-Możejko, piano

Music by: Dan Albertson, Georges Aperghis, Earle Brown, Eugen Gomringer, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Udo Kasemets, Ferdinand Kriwet, Jerry Ozipko, Randy Raine-Reusch, Charles Stolte, Sydney Wallace Stegall.

Avant-garde multi-media performers ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI will be presenting their second concert on 24 January. The performance is a part of the nationwide celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Canadian Music Centre.

The group was first conceptualised this past spring but finally came together to rehearse and perform at the end of the summer. Their public performance debut during an Explorations Concert Series presentation at the Stanley Milner Library Theatre on September 5, received more than favourable reviews and comments from those in attendance. The ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary conceptual and graphic scores, which more often than not resemble abstract paintings. They have also successfully incorporated experimental poetry into their programmes. Because they were “nameless,” the group adopted the Japanese moniker Mujirushi (literally “no name”).

The six original members of the ensemble are all local musicians-performers. Composer and educator Piotr Grella-Możejko, who initially conceived of the group and became its wellspring, is pianist and keyboardist. The well-known performance artist Gerry Morita, the Artistic Director of the Mile Zero Dance Company, provides visual dance interpretations of the music. The brilliant mezzo-soprano and actress Michelle Milenkovic adds her interpretive skills to broaden the range of the group’s repertoire. The distinguished Canadian-Polish photographer and artist, Felix Plawski, offers visual complementation for the music. Musician, educator and writer Jerry Ozipko performs on acoustic and electric violins, while composer, performer and educator Charles Stolte rounds out the sextet on saxophones.

The programme will include works by Canadian composers Piotr Grella-Możejko, Udo Kasemets, Jerry Ozipko, Randy Raine-Reusch, Charles Stolte as well as the classics of the European and US Avant-garde.

Mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic is a dynamic performer. After a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Michelle went on to the Banff Centre for the Arts (as student, performer and teaching assistant) under the mentors: Director Keith Turnbull and Extended Vocal Technique specialist Richard Armstrong. Michelle is known as an integral stylist with a boundless palette. She has performed with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the NOWAge Orchestra and is the lead singer for Regina’s blues/rock band Frog’s Back. Select credits include Weill in Weimar (Edmonton Opera), UBU: the Opera (Banff Centre) and The Star Catalogues (Vancouver New Music); the plays Kafka’s Amerika and Silence (Northern Light Theatre), and the musical Spitfire Grill (Leave it to Jane Theatre Company).

Dancer Gerry Morita is interested in performance art, and how it values honesty towards the body and communication with the audience. She is constantly interested in blurring the boundaries between performance art and dance, since both fundamentally use the body as medium. Choreographically, Gerry has been highly influenced by contact improvisation, and Japanese contemporary dance forms (butoh and Noguchi taiso). Her technical training encompasses ballet, modern, pow wow, Highland, jazz and high jump. The vocabulary for each piece she creates is distinct to the artistic or intrinsic message of the work, and Morita is known for a wide-ranging style. Collaboration is key to her way of working. She flourishes in an environment in which she is able to communicate her artistic goals to others who are able to develop them in parallel artistic directions. Morita feels that this helps to create meaningful layers within the final work. Physically Morita incorporates Noguchi Taiso based movements into her works. This style, which she studied intensively in Japan with Mari Osanai and Hideo Arai, is used to move bodies in extreme ways, but in the most natural manner possible, using imagery from nature.

Described by the German press as demonstrating “uncompromising honesty” (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), praised for his unorthodox aesthetics (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung), and whose work is called “brawny, high-contrast… full of rich counterpoint and compelling textural changes” (The New York Times), “strikingly individual” (The Toronto Star), and “wonderful-sounding” (The Buffalo News), Piotr Grella-Możejko holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and an M.Mus. in Composition degrees from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. As a youngster, he took private composition courses in his native Poland with the late Prof. Edward Bogusławski and Prof. Bogusław Schaeffer. So far presented in twenty-two countries in centres such as Antwerp, Athens, Basel, Berlin, Bilbao, Dublin, Geneva, Kassel, Kaunas, Kraków, London, Los Angeles, Lausanne, Mexico City, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Prague, Princeton, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Toronto, Turin, Ulaanbaatar, Utrecht, Vancouver, Vienna, Warsaw and Zürich, in recent years Grella-Możejko’s music has been commissioned, played and recorded by symphony and chamber orchestras as well as numerous outstanding chamber groups and soloists. At present, the discography of his works includes twenty CD titles.

Music has always been the passion and life of Jerry Ozipko, a native Edmontonian, who began his musical career with violin lessons from the age of seven. A graduate of the University of Alberta (B.Mus. in Violin Performance, 1968) and Truman State University (M.A. in Education, 1970), he has been a supporter of contemporary music from his stu-dent days at the University of Alberta, where he was involved in performances of works by the likes of John Lewis, Vernon Murgatroyd, and other budding student composers. He studied com-position variously with Violet Archer (University of Alberta), Frederick Kirchberger (Truman State) and Joan Panetti (Yale). His first exposure to Avant-Garde Music came during his Graduate Studies in 1968 and 1969 – involving concerts by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The first was a performance by the seminal Moog synthesist, Walter Carlos (later: Wendy Carlos), which opened up new sound vistas to his still young musical ears. However, it was the second concert that was a sort of “musical epiphany” with respect to contemporary music. At that concert, the only one he has ever attended where the audience “booed,” featured two works in particular which had a deep impression on his musical mind: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki, Pithoprakta by Iannis Xenakis and Ionisation by Edgard Varèse. After that, he was “hooked.”

Felix Zbigniew Pławski was born in Olecko, Poland. He received his formal training from the Institute of Photography in Warsaw where he studied photography and filmmaking. After his brief carrier at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Felix emigrated to Germany where he was mainly focused on his personal projects. In 1989, Felix moved to Edmonton where he decided to settle. In 1996 Felix moved to New York City, USA, to work on his personal projects and to do commercial work in photography. From there he returned to Edmonton to join his family and opened a photographic studio in 2000. Beside photography, Felix Plawski has produced and directed a number of short films. First, in 1988 he produced and directed a short story based on writing by Julio Cortázar, Un tal Lucas. As well, Felix did many documentaries during his stay at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Poland. In Canada, he produced and directed a video project What is Art, 1997. Felix’s work has been present in private collections and has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, Poland, and the United States, to mention just a few.

Charles Stolte is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Saxophone at The King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta and Instructor of Saxophone at Alberta College Conservatory of Music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has broadcast his per-formances and compositions across Canada and his music for saxophone has been performed throughout North America and in Europe. He can be heard on recordings as soloist, as alto saxophonist with the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet and as tenor saxophonist with IMPULS Saxophone Quartet. He has enjoyed enthusiastic reviews in many prestigious publications, including the Chicago Tribune and Classical Music magazine, and has received grants from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. Dr. Stolte has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University, and University of Alberta. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University, and degrees from University of Alberta and The King’s University College. His teachers include Frederick Hemke, William Street, Malcolm Forsyth and M. William Karlins.
 

DUO CH&K
Marek Chołoniewski: audiovisual interactive instruments
Włodzimierz Kiniorski: saxophones, percussion

Music: Original Compositions by Marek Chołoniewski & Włodzimierz Kiniorski; audiovisual improvisations

This presentation is another concert in the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society’s New Music Alberta Series. Prepare to be immersed in a sonic environment that will mesmerize you and captivate your musical spirit!

Historically, Polish music has been on the cusp of creativity and the Avant-garde movement since early after World War II. Many exponents of the art of electro-acoustic composition and performance have emerged from schools developed within the first electronic music studios. The earliest pioneers of the art form include such luminaries as Andrzej Dobrowolski, Włodzimierz Kotoński and Zbigniew Wiszniewski. Two of the new generation of Polish electroacoustic composers and performers that have emerged in the current generation include Włodzimierz Kiniorski (b. 1952) and Marek Choloniewski (b. 1953) who comprise the visiting electro-acoustic and multi-media duo CH&K.

Born in Kraków, Marek Chołoniewski studied composition with Bogusław Schaeffer at the Krakow Academy of Music, where he has been Professor of Composition at the Electroacoustic Music Studio there since 1976. His work has made him world-renowned as a lecturer, composer, “live computer music” performer, and the author of audio-visual computer projects. As the artistic director of several prestigious festivals of New Music in his homeland, he has collaborated with composers and performers in his specialised musical genres from all over the globe.

Włodzimierz Kiniorski, from Zagnansk, near Kielce, earned renown as a jazz musician, specifically as a saxophone virtuoso. As a member of a variety of performing groups including the Polish reggae band Izrael, Kiniorski has also been involved in the domains of composition (primarily for films and theatre), as well as multi-media.
 

ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI
Gerry Morita, dance; Michelle Milenkovic, voice; Felix Pławski, visuals; Charles Stolte, alto saxophone; Jerry Ozipko, electric violin; Piotr Grella-Możejko, piano

GUEST ARTISTS/PERFORMERS (before intermission):
Gerald St. Maur, poetry; Reinhard von Berg, prepared piano; Melissa Thingelstad, actress; Garett Spelliscy, actor

Music by: Georges Aperghis, Earle Brown, Eugen Gomringer, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Udo Kasemets, Ferdinand Kriwet, Jerry Ozipko, Charles Stolte, Sydney Wallace Stegall.

Note: The concert will also feature Reinhard von Berg creating musical background for the poetry of Gerald St. Maur, to be presented live, utilising both conventional and extended techniques on the concert grand piano. Actors Melissa Thingelstad and Garrett Spelliscy will read the poetry. This set will open the concert.

ENSEMBLE MUJIRUSHI

Formed in 2008, the Edmonton avant-garde multi-media performers Ensemble Mujirushi was founded to present new graphic, visual, conceptual, verbal, and open scores by the European and North American experimental composers, as well as experimental poetry. The group, which began as a quintet, was first conceptualized in the spring of 2008 but finally came together to rehearse and perform at the end of the summer of the same year. Their public performance debut during an Explorations Concert Series presentation at the Stanley Milner Library Theatre on 5 September 2008 received a slew of enthusiastic reviews and comments from those in attendance. The ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary experimental scores and poetry, which more often than not resemble abstract paintings. Because they were “nameless,” the group adopted the Japanese moniker Mujirushi (literally “no name”).

The six original members of the ensemble are all local musicians-performers. Composer and educator Piotr Grella-Możejko, who initially conceived of the group and became its wellspring, is pianist and keyboardist. The well-known performance artist Gerry Morita, the Artistic Director of the Mile Zero Dance Company, provides visual dance interpretations of the music. The brilliant mezzo-soprano and actress Michelle Milenkovic adds her interpretive skills to broaden the range of the group’s repertoire. The distinguished Canadian-Polish photographer and artist, Felix Pławski, offers visual complementation for the music. Musician, educator and writer Jerry Ozipko performs on acoustic and electric violins, while composer, performer and educator Charles Stolte rounds out the sextet on saxophones.

Mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic is a dynamic performer. After a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Michelle went on to the Banff Centre for the Arts (as student, performer and teaching assistant) under the mentors: Director Keith Turnbull and Extended Vocal Technique specialist Richard Armstrong. Michelle is known as an integral stylist with a boundless palette. She has performed with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the NOWAge Orchestra and is the lead singer for Regina’s blues/rock band Frog’s Back. Select credits include Weill in Weimar (Edmonton Opera), UBU: the Opera (Banff Centre) and The Star Catalogues (Vancouver New Music); the plays Kafka’s Amerika and Silence (Northern Light Theatre), and the musical Spitfire Grill (Leave it to Jane Theatre Company).

Dancer Gerry Morita is interested in performance art, and how it values honesty towards the body and communication with the audience. She is constantly interested in blurring the boundaries between performance art and dance, since both fundamentally use the body as medium. Choreographically, Gerry has been highly influenced by contact improvisation, and Japanese contemporary dance forms (butoh and Noguchi taiso). Her technical training encompasses ballet, modern, pow wow, Highland, jazz and high jump. The vocabulary for each piece she creates is distinct to the artistic or intrinsic message of the work, and Morita is known for a wide-ranging style. Collaboration is key to her way of working. She flourishes in an environment in which she is able to communicate her artistic goals to others who are able to develop them in parallel artistic directions. Morita feels that this helps to create meaningful layers within the final work. Physically Morita incorporates Noguchi Taiso based movements into her works. This style, which she studied intensively in Japan with Mari Osanai and Hideo Arai, is used to move bodies in extreme ways, but in the most natural manner possible, using imagery from nature.

Described by the German press as demonstrating “uncompromising honesty” (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), praised for his unorthodox aesthetics (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung), and whose work is called “brawny, high-contrast… full of rich counterpoint and compelling textural changes” (The New York Times), “strikingly individual” (The Toronto Star), and “wonderful-sounding” (The Buffalo News), Piotr Grella-Możejko holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and an M.Mus. in Composition degrees from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. As a youngster, he took private composition courses in his native Poland with the late Prof. Edward Bogusławski and Prof. Bogusław Schaeffer. So far presented in twenty-two countries in centres such as Antwerp, Athens, Basel, Berlin, Bilbao, Dublin, Geneva, Kassel, Kaunas, Kraków, London, Los Angeles, Lausanne, Mexico City, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Paris, Prague, Princeton, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Toronto, Turin, Ulaanbaatar, Utrecht, Vancouver, Vienna, Warsaw and Zürich, in recent years Grella-Możejko’s music has been commissioned, played and recorded by symphony and chamber orchestras as well as numerous outstanding chamber groups and soloists. At present, the discography of his works includes twenty CD titles.

Music has always been the passion and life of Jerry Ozipko, a native Edmontonian, who began his musical career with violin lessons from the age of seven. A graduate of the University of Alberta (B.Mus. in Violin Performance, 1968) and Truman State University (M.A. in Education, 1970), he has been a supporter of contemporary music from his stu-dent days at the University of Alberta, where he was involved in performances of works by the likes of John Lewis, Vernon Murgatroyd, and other budding student composers. He studied com-position variously with Violet Archer (University of Alberta), Frederick Kirchberger (Truman State) and Joan Panetti (Yale). His first exposure to Avant-Garde Music came during his Graduate Studies in 1968 and 1969 – involving concerts by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The first was a performance by the seminal Moog synthesist, Walter Carlos (later: Wendy Carlos), which opened up new sound vistas to his still young musical ears. However, it was the second concert that was a sort of “musical epiphany” with respect to contemporary music. At that concert, the only one he has ever attended where the audience “booed,” featured two works in particular which had a deep impression on his musical mind: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki, Pithoprakta by Iannis Xenakis and Ionisation by Edgard Varèse. After that, he was “hooked.”

Felix Zbigniew Pławski was born in Olecko, Poland. He received his formal training from the Institute of Photography in Warsaw where he studied photography and filmmaking. After his brief carrier at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Felix emigrated to Germany where he was mainly focused on his personal projects. In 1989, Felix moved to Edmonton where he decided to settle. In 1996 Felix moved to New York City, USA, to work on his personal projects and to do commercial work in photography. From there he returned to Edmonton to join his family and opened a photographic studio in 2000. Beside photography, Felix Plawski has produced and directed a number of short films. First, in 1988 he produced and directed a short story based on writing by Julio Cortázar, Un tal Lucas. As well, Felix did many documentaries during his stay at the Regional Museum in Bialystok, Poland. In Canada, he produced and directed a video project What is Art, 1997. Felix’s work has been present in private collections and has been exhibited in Canada, Germany, Poland, and the United States, to mention just a few.

Charles Stolte is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Saxophone at The King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta and Instructor of Saxophone at Alberta College Conservatory of Music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has broadcast his per-formances and compositions across Canada and his music for saxophone has been performed throughout North America and in Europe. He can be heard on recordings as soloist, as alto saxophonist with the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet and as tenor saxophonist with IMPULS Saxophone Quartet. He has enjoyed enthusiastic reviews in many prestigious publications, including the Chicago Tribune and Classical Music magazine, and has received grants from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. Dr. Stolte has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University, and University of Alberta. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University, and degrees from University of Alberta and The King’s University College. His teachers include Frederick Hemke, William Street, Malcolm Forsyth and M. William Karlins.
 

ST. CRISPIN’S CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
Twilla MacLeod, soprano; Petar Dundjerski, flute; Jeff Campbell, clarinet; Don Ross, clarinet and conductor; Tom King, piano; Bob Fenske, percussion; Jim Cockell, violin; Amy McClary, cello

Music by: Don Ross, Sonya Guha-Thakurta, Hope Lee and Alfred Fisher, along with new commissions by Piotr Grella-Możejko and Toronto’s Linda Catlin Smith

Saint Crispin’s Chamber Ensemble will play six major new works written specially for them, including two world premieres, as part of the New Music Alberta concert series. The Ensemble, led by the critically acclaimed composer and clarinettist Don Ross, is one of Edmonton’s busiest and most innovative music groups. Since 1994 the group has appeared on numerous CDs, CBC broadcasts, in new music festivals and has played dozens of programs of traditional masterpieces and cutting edge new works. Don also appears regularly as a soloist and orchestra player, most recently with the Edmonton and Prince George Symphonies, the Citadel Theatre Orchestra, and the Brian Webb Dance Company. He often collaborates with the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society and the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society.
 

DAOUD/NOGUCHI DUO
Vincent Daoud: soprano, alto and tenor saxophones
Yuji Noguchi: Bb and A clarinets, bass clarinet

Music by: Georges Aperghis, Jean-François Charles, Vinko Globokar, Luis Naón, Piotr Grella-Mozejko.

One would be extremely hard-pressed to find a more ethnically diverse pair of instrumentalists than French saxophonist Vincent Daoud and Japanese clarinetist Yuji Noguchi. Their creative artistic partnership grew out of their involvement in the Ensemble Hic et Nunc.

The Daoud-Noguchi Duo brings their special mutual dedication and commitment to collaborating with contemporary composers to the Edmonton stage in the second concert of the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society’s 2008-2009 New Music Alberta Concerts Series.

Their very specialized programme of works for the combination of tenor saxophone and bass clarinet is only the briefest of musical “’snapshots” of works by leaders of the European Avant-garde. Featured will be a music theatre work by Greek composer Georges Aperghis (with whom both Daoud and Noguchi had studied), entitled Commentaires for tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. Argentina will be represented by Luis Naón’s Monstres et princesses, which will be given its Canadian Première at his concert so close to Hallowe’en. Naón now makes his home in France. Also included will be the absolutely fascinating Voix instrumentalisée by Vinko Globokar, a French-Slovenian composer and trombonist, and the unique, stunning Bagict by French composer and clarinetist Jean-François Charles.

This concert is not to be missed if you enjoy music that stretches the ear and the mind, notwithstanding listening to the unusual and rare combination of tenor saxophone and bass clarinet.

Vincent Daoud, born in Rennes, France, in 1978, began studying the saxophone at the age of eight, in Saint Brieuc with Emmanuel Hody. At the age of nineteen, he went to Paris to study with Jean-Michel Goury. There he developed an interest in improvisation, and played with Marcel Khalife in London, Steve Potts, Ramon Lopez in Paris, Paul Hanmer at the Cully Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Fabrice di Falco in Martinique, Christian Wolff in Montreuil, Yoko Miura in Tokyo, and others. Daoud received several prizes during those years in Paris, most notable amongst them were the first prize and special prize for contemporary piece at the International Competition for Young Soloists in Gap, second prize at the “Concours de Musique en Picardie”, and third prize at the Krzysztof Penderecki International Music Competition in Kraków, Poland.

In 2001, Vincent Daoud pursued his musical education with Pierre-Stephane Meugé at the Lausanne Conservatory, and graduated in harmony, history of music, analysis, and saxophone.

He worked with musicians such as Pierre Boulez, Georges Aperghis, Armin Jordan, Beat Furrer, Jean Deroyer, Steven Schick, Marino Formenti, collaborated with ensembles such as the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, ensemble Contrechamps and Centre International de Percussions in Geneva, 2e2m in Paris, ensemble Car de Thon in Geneva.

Collaboration with composers takes an important part in his musical activities. He worked with Claude Ballif, Betsy Jolas, Mathias Pintscher, premiered pieces of Luis Naon, Dieter Schnebel, Karlheinz Essl, Eric Gaudibert, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber, Elizabeth Adams, Ernest H. Papier, Hans-Yurg Meier, Miroslav Srnka, Beat Fhelman, Peter Streiff, Florian Folkmann, Valentin Marti, Andrea Molino, Aurelio Copes, Nicolas Tzortzis, Nehad El Sayed, Frédéric Perreten, and others.

He is a member of the ensemble Hic et Nunc, 4tenors Saxophone Quartet and Wiener Saxophone Quartet. Vincent Daoud is the 5th Prize-winner of the 2nd international Jean Marie Londeix competition that was held in Bangkok in January 2008. In 2008, he will be artist in residence in Biel in Switzerland, invited by the Office of Culture of the State of Bern.

Born in Kawasaki, Japan, Yuji Noguchi graduated with honours in 2000 from the Tokyo College of Music. After studying with Thomas Friedli in Geneva and receiving a soloist diploma under Frédéric Rapin in Lausanne in 2004, he entered the bass clarinet class of Ernesto Molinari at the Hochschule der Musik in Bern and received the Tschumi prize for the best soloist diploma of the year at his graduation in 2007.

Following his enthusiastic interest in contemporary music, including stage music and music theatre, Yuji studied at the Hochschule der Musik in Bern with the Franco-Greek composer Georges Aperghis and his assistant, percussionist Françoise Rivalland. Yuji is now Assistant to Aperghis and Rivalland in this specialisation.

Yuji also collaborated with young composers such as Raphaël Cendo, Miroslav Srnka, Alexander Sigman and Elizabeth Adams, among others.

He has taken master classes with Armand Angster and Alain Damiens at the Centre Acantes and has participated in festivals such as the Darmstadt Festival, Impuls in Graz, as well as the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez.

Yuji Noguchi is a member of the Ensemble Hic et Nunc and the Ensemble Namascae.
 

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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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