Northland
Northland is an ongoing project portraying in music the varied landscapes of the composer's adopted country, Canada. So far, four pieces have been completed: |
I: inspired by Canada's abundant forests.
II: celebrates the denizens of the very warm and very humid weather that pervades much of Canada during summer - small flying critters who bite!
III: inspired by Canada's high arctic. Vast stretches of ice and ocean. A stunning landscape full of exotic wildlife. Daunting, forbidding, and magnificent.
IV: a recollection of the sheer grandeur of Canada's mountainous regions, including the spectacular peaks of the Rockies and the picture-postcard beauty of the Laurentians.
V: a distincly nautical flavour pervades this portrait of the awe-inspiring oceans and maritime regions. |
Ouverture Bourlesque
A whimsical, sometimes tongue-in-cheek piece intended as a concert curtain raiser and inspired by earlier masters of the genre such as Georg Philipp Telemann and Leopold Mozart.
While there is no explicit "programme" for the music, lively entertainments such as the circus came to mind during the writing. |
Twelve
A theme and 12 variations, each of which uses the 12 tones of the chromatic scale. The variations were developed using techniques such as retrograde and inversion. Essentially this is experimentation with serial techniques of composition to produce a work that sounds like it is based on more traditional approaches. |
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Orchestral music ....
Sonata for Orchestra
An eclectic combination of classical sonata form, full orchestra and themes in the style of American folk tunes. The first movement harkens after the Hoedown, methinks; the second a warm, sleepy summer afternoon in the country, perhaps; while the third wraps up the action in high-energy mode! |
Variations for String Orchestra
This opening phrase, a 3-note motif played in the Violas, is the basis for all the music that follows. The piece is in four sections played without a break:
- Introduction , Theme and Variations I (Largo-Adagio)
- Variations II, based on the theme inversion (Adagio)
- Variations III, based on the theme retrograde (Andante)
- Coda (Allegro) |
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