Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Karl Stobbe, Concertmaster
Westminster United Church
5 March 2008

Dame Evelyn Glennie, percussion

 

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Toccata and fugue — arr. Evelyn Glennie

Askell Masson (b. 1953)
Prim, for snare drum solo

Intermission
Refreshments are available upstairs in the concert hall.

Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic (b. 1962)
Fluctus, for low F marimba

Stephen Michael Reich (b. 1936)
Clapping Music

Leigh Howard Stevens (b. 1954)
Rhythmic Caprice

Evelyn Glennie’s recordings are available
on these labels: Atlantic / Teldec, BIS, Black
Box Classics, BMG / RCA Victor, Chandos,
Klavier, Naxos, Normal / Indigo,
Ondine & Sony Classics.

Evelyn Glennie appears by arrangement
with Seldy Cramer Artists.

Web site: evelyn.co.uk

Evelyn Glennie endorses the products
of the Evans D’Addario company, Sabian
Cymbals, Black Swamp Percussion,
Mymi Drums and Malletech
Keyboard Instruments.

Concert sponsor / Encore Musical Instruments
Season sponsor / The Great-West Life Assurance Company
Print media sponsor / Winnipeg Free Press
Radio media sponsors / CBC Radio Two 98.3,
CBC Radio One 990 and Golden West Radio
Chamber Chatter sponsor / PricewaterhouseCoopers
Electronic media sponsor / Shaw Cable

 

Evelyn Glennie

Evelyn is the first person in musical history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist. As one of the most eclectic and innovative musicians on the scene today she is constantly redefining the goals and expectations of percussion. By combining superb technique, a profound appreciation of the visual and her astonishing musicality, Evelyn creates performances of such vitality that they almost constitute a new type of performance.

Evelyn gives more than 100 performances a year worldwide, performing with the greatest conductors, orchestras and artists. For the first ten years of her career virtually every performance she gave was in some way a first — the first time an orchestra had performed with a percussion soloist, the first solo percussion performance at a venue or festival or the world premiere of a new piece. She has collaborated with artists such as Nana Vasoncelos, Kodo, Béla Fleck, Björk, Bobby McFerrin, Emmanuel Ax, Sting, Kings Singers, Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Fred Frith.

Evelyn has commissioned one hundred and forty-three new works for solo percussion from many of the world’s most eminent composers and she also composes and records music for film and television (EG Composer). Her first high-quality drama produced a score so original she was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards (BAFTAs), the UK equivalent of the Oscars.

Evelyn’s recording career has been as illustrious as her performing and composing career. Her first CD, a recording of Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion, won her a Grammy in 1988. A further two Grammy nominations followed, one of which she won in 2002 for a collaboration with Béla Fleck for Sony Classical. Evelyn’s twelfth solo CD, Shadow Behind the Iron Sun (BMG Records) was based on a radical concept and has once again questioned people’s expectations. Despite working a relentless schedule Evelyn is in constant demand to release new recordings, twenty-two so far.

Evelyn Glennie is constantly exploring other areas of creativity — from writing a best-selling autobiography, Good Vibrations, to collaborating with the renowned film director Thomas Riedelsheimer on a film called Touch the Sound, to presenting two series of her own television programmes for the BBC.
Evelyn’s activities also include lobbying the Government on political issues as diverse as music education and parking rights for motorbikes (she is a keen biker). Other aspects include EG Images which supplies photographs from a vast image library of Evelyn, EG Jewellery which is a range of jewellery designed and made by EG based on her influences as a solo percussionist, EG Merchandise, and EG 21st Guidance which displays Evelyn as an international motivational speaker to many diverse corporate companies and events. Evelyn also performs with orchestras on the Great Highland Bagpipes.

After 20 years in the music business she has begun teaching privately, which allows her to explore the art of teaching and to explore the world of sound therapy as a means of communication.

In 1993 Evelyn was awarded the OBE (Officer of the British Empire). This was extended this year to ‘Dame Commander’ for her services to music, and to date she has received approximately 80 international awards. She is brimming with ideas to improve the experience for the audience and continues to redefine the very format of live performance itself.

Toccata & Fugue
JS Bach (arr. Evelyn Glennie)

The following notes were provided by Seldy Cramer Artists on behalf of Evelyn Glennie:

Bach was a prolific arranger, both of his own and other people’s music. Some of his transcriptions and arrangements were undertaken for practical reasons: rescoring music for whatever performers were available, or recasting it for different social occasions and functions. When he was young, he copied and arranged other composers’ music in order to learn from it. Later in life he revised much of his earlier music, so in a sense he never finished composing a piece: he just left it to us in its latest state. There is no limit to what instrumental or vocal combinations may prove suitable to Bach’s music. The only requirement is that any arrangement should respect the phrasing of the melodic lines and preserve the miraculously rich harmony embodied in Bach’s counterpoint.

Prim, for snare drum solo
Askell Masson

Prim, for solo snare drum, takes its name from the idea upon which it is based; the first 16 prime numbers. The entire piece is based on the rhythmic pattern that these numbers give when demisemiquavers are as the unit of pulse.

Prim is in the nature of a further exploration of the possibilities of the snare drum as a solo instrument after the composer’s earlier Concerto for Snare Drum and Orchestra.

Fluctus (1988), for low F marimba
Nebojsa Zivkovic

This piece, based on a 27-tone progression, begins fortissimo e furioso — the fluctuating progression appears in different variations, although the actual ‘progression’ of notes remains unchanged. Much of the piece is composed in a flowing, cadenza-like, un-metered fashion, however, there is a passage in which a firm but unperceived beat underlies a series of ever-changing polyrhythms.

Clapping Music
Stephen Michael Reich

Starting in 1971 my ensemble began touring Europe. We would carry 2000 pounds of loudspeakers, amplifiers, drums, marimbas, glockenspiels, electric organs, microphones, and so on. In 1972 I composed Clapping Music to create a piece of music that would need no instruments beyond the human body. At first I thought it would be a phase piece, but this proved inappropriate since it introduced a difficulty, (phrasing) that seemed inconsistent with such a simple way of producing sound. The solution was to have one part remain fixed, repeating the pattern throughout, while the second moves abruptly, after a number of repeats, from unison to one beat ahead, and so on, until it is back in unison with the first. It can thus be difficult to hear that the second performer is in fact always playing the same pattern as the first, though in a different place.

Rhythmic Caprice
Leigh Howard Stevens

This piece is my first attempt at composition for the marimba. Three new col legno (with wood) effects are used in the work :

1. the birch handle is used on the edge of the bar instead of the mallet head;
2. the mallet head and the handle are used simultaneously (dubbed both ‘marimshot’ and ‘Stevens pizzicato’ by my students); and,
3. the whole length of both handles are used to produce what I am tentatively calling ‘splash/cluster.’

The first section of the piece is derived from a simple descending modal figure first heard in the right hand after the short introduction. In the middle section the new melodic interest is in the performer’s left hand, while the right hand accompanies with progressively more complicated tics and splashes. The last section is based on a 3-note fragment from the first section. The very limited melodic and harmonic materials of the piece all evolve rhythmically from simple to complex, to polyrhythmic, to driving, to spasmodic, ultimately returning to simple rhythm in the 6-measure codetta.

 

 

Anne Manson / Music Director and Conductor

MCO's 2010/11 season is sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company.
Support has been received from Media sponsors The Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Radio One 990,
CBC Radio 2 98.3, Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio. Heartstrings gala sponsor:
Mann Financial Assurance Limited. Sponsor of open dress rehearsals: Canadian Bridge Federation.
Arts Accessibility Program: Sun Life Financial.

© 2010 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra