This past summer, Kūsou premiered at the Anvil Theatre in New Westminster, BC as part of the 2022 Powell Street Festival. This was a massive multimedia work created by composer and sound designer Yota Kobayashi, who worked with Japanese calligrapher Aiko Hatanaka, visual programmer Ryo Kanda, and yours truly providing all the sounds that you hear. I’ve recorded multitrack before but this was without question one of the most challenging sessions I had ever done — Yota knew exactly what he wanted and I daresay the final result is staggering. This four-minute highlight video gives you just a glimpse into the rich and beautiful world of Kūsou — a Japanese word meaning “the state of emptiness” (which, Yota pointed out to me, is different than “nothingness”.)
Here’s hoping Kūsou gets many, many more re-mountings in the future. Until then, enjoy this sumptuous teaser.
Last week I returned to the Adaskin Salon at the Canadian Music Centre BC Region to record the antepenultimate installation the Redshift/CMC video series, Unaccompanied — fifty videos that explore the solo work of Canadian composers and music makers. Over the last two years the Unaccompanied series has helped keep many musicians financially afloat and creatively engaged, while providing a valuable online resource of Canadian music and sound art.
Wandering Somewhere for solo bass flute was composed by Maria Eduarda Mendes Martins for a concert presented by Open Space in Victoria BC in 2015. This is a piece that explores some of the softest, most delicate effects on the bass flute; over the course of eight minutes it slowly reveals a nuanced landscape comprised of whistle tones, airy noise, and the gentlest of key taps — which presents challenges when you’re recording in a studio on Davie Street in downtown Vancouver! Maria was the 2021 composer recipient of the Friends of Canadian Music Award, so it was extra special to be able to revisit this piece and record it for the Unaccompanied series. Thanks to Jordan Nobles, who masterfully handled all the video and audio; it was amazing to see how his set-up has evolved since we first recorded Jennifer Butler’s Four Directions nearly two years ago!
Woo-hoo! I’m finally friends with Canadian music! Well, it’s more like friends-with-benefits at this point. This past week I had the great honour of receiving the 2021 Friends of Canadian Music Award, an award jointly-administered and presented by the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre. Now in its 27th year, this award is presented to an individual or organization that shows “exceptional commitment, on a national scale, to Canadian composers and their music.” It’s very humbling to be the recipient of an award that has been presented to some of my favourite Canadian musicians, like Véronique Lacroix and Thin Edge New Music Collective. What’s more, the award is shared with an emerging Canadian composer — so it was really exciting to select Maria Eduarda Mendes Martins as this year’s composer co-recipient! (Check out her gorgeous piece for Allegra Chamber Orchestra, Reflections on Ave Generosa.) I’m deeply grateful to my friend, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, for nominating me — it’s a wonderful way to end a unique year, especially as we appear to be on the precipice of yet another series of restrictions. Happy (and safe) Holidays to all, and here’s to a New Year full of promise and potential.
On November 3, after what seemed like forever, Scratches of the Wind received its digital release! This album was always intended as a sequel to Lutalica, my 2019 album which looked at contemporary solo flute music from a Pacific Rim perspective. Scratches of the Wind continues its exploration of composers who live in (or hail from) Pacific Rim countries — but through the additional lens of the 2020/21 global pandemic. Back in March 2020, when music and recording venues were shut and this album was less than half complete, I converted my bedroom into a recording studio and recorded the remaining tracks. I won’t reveal which pieces were recorded in the recital hall and which were recorded next to piles of unsorted laundry (and, thanks to some exceptional mastering, you’ll likely not notice the difference). Suffice to say, this album has extra meaning for me: it isn’t just the conclusion of a years-long exploration of identity and hybridity in music, but also the thing that kept me focussed, excited, and balanced at a time when arts events had completely ground to a halt and morale in the community was arguably at an all-time low.
Last year, when things were looking particularly bleak, composer Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi and I started talking about a new piece that would stretch the composer-performer dynamic in new and fun ways. The result is present Brimming Air: a zany, kaleidoscopic romp that really explores this idea of “play”, whether it’s playing an instrument, playing with toys… or playing an instrument WITH toys. But it’s not all just fun and games. Brimming Air is absolutely a piece of its time: exploding aerosols, a nonsensical (yet weirdly relatable) narrative… all brilliantly composed, recorded, filmed, and edited by Koochakzadeh-Yazdi. Both Kimia and I are grateful for support received from the BC Arts Council, who have been instrumental keeping artists active and creative this past year.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries there have been extraordinarily prolific pairings of flutists and composers that have created a wealth of music for the instrument: Karlheinz Stockhausen and Kathinka Pasveer; Salvatore Sciarrino and Roberto Fabbriciani; Kaija Saariaho and Camilla Hoitenga, to name but three. Over the last fifteen years I’ve enjoyed a similar relationship with the Iranian-Canadian composer Farshid Samandari. To date, I’ve commissioned and premiered six works by Samandari: two solo pieces; a flute and percussion duo; a trio for flute, cello, and percussion; a quartet for flute, viola, harp, and percussion (all of which were recorded for his debut album, Apogee); and a concerto, Phoenix Rising, for flute and traditional Chinese orchestra, which we’ll record with the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra in Taiwan, as soon as we can safely travel again. Most recently, we recorded his work for flute and electronics, If this is a man, with a wonderfully psychedelic video by Vancouver filmmaker Dejan Radovanovic. To be clear, If this is a man was not commissioned by me: it was commissioned and premiered by the flutist Suzanne Snizek, but I’m appreciative for the opportunity to create my own interpretation of this incredible piece. The work is inspired by the words of Primo Levi, specifically an invocation that prefaced Levi’s memoirs as an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor. Samandari frames the author’s words in three musical movements: first, Levi invokes his safe and well-fed audience (I. You who live safe). Then he recounts forms of degradation and abuse visited upon humanity throughout history (II. Consider if…). Finally, he stresses the importance of remembering these atrocities so they do not occur again (III. Meditate that…). I want to express my gratitude to Giovanni Aniello for coaching me on the Italian text and to Walter Quan and the BC Arts Council for supporting this project.
And now for something completely different: back in September my guitarist Adrian Verdejo and I filmed a couple videos of choros by the Brazilian-Canadian composer and guitarist Celso Machado. Our original venue for filming fell through (because Covid), so at the last minute local pianist Rachel Kiyo lwaasa was kind enough to offer her backyard as the backdrop for these two beautiful videos, shot by Jordan Nobles: Paçoca (named after a popular Brazilian peanut candy) and Quebra Queixo (another Brazilian candy, specifically a jawbreaker). Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative BC, and the BC Arts Council for supporting these projects!
This week we said farewell to one of the weirdest summers ever. Here on the West Coast of Canada, the last few weeks in particular felt like they were taken from the pages of the Old Testament: forest fire smoke that blocked out the sun, a looper moth infestation, and a pandemic that doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Something else we’ve seen, arguably less biblical, is an explosion of online activity as artists turn to the internet to share their creative work during a worldwide lockdown. I confess that as far as this last item goes, I’m a guilty contributor (sorry/not sorry!). I’m extremely grateful for support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Creative BC, and the BC Arts Council, which has enabled me to create a series of videos that attempt to capture some of the performances I would have given this past summer, in Vancouver, Saskatchewan, and Mexico. The first of these was a video I made with guitarist Adrian Verdejo of Jocelyn Morlock’s Verdigris (which you can see HERE). My second video was just recently released, filmed by Dejan Radovanovic, and it features a solo flute piece called O-Hisa, by Vancouver composer Ramsey Sadaka:
Sadaka composed O-Hisa as a musical portrait of the eponymous character from Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s novel entitled Some Prefer Nettles. While Sadaka certainly conveys the flow of O-Hisa’s psychological states (real and imagined) throughout the novel, the following phrase, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker, provided the main inspiration for this piece:
“O-Hisa was a shade left behind from another age.”
This piece was commissioned by the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery to commemorate the launch of Esther Shalev-Gerz’s outdoor art work, The Shadow. To this end, I think Dejan did a great job of playing with light and darkness, as well as commenting on O-Hisa’s dualities by creating (often distorted) reflections.
This past month I also had the opportunity to work with Music on Main to create a new video for the Festivals for Compassion, a Dutch online initiative that has been uniting music festivals and concert presenters around the world, inviting them to share their interpretations of a specially commissioned work by the Dutch/Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki. Her piece, entitled Thin Air, was composed for any instrument, so the Festivals For Compassion timeline is replete with a diversity of interpretations: guitar, trombone, cello, bassoon, bass recorder, even theremin! It was a great pleasure to record the premiere of the flute version of Thin Air with MoM’s Joanna Dundas (director) and Mike Southworth (filmmaker).
I’ve had this piece going through my head for weeks now — it feels nice to be able to share it. The composer Jocelyn Morlock is someone whose music I’m constantly returning to. The beauty, melancholy, and consoling nature of this piece in particular — Verdigris, for alto flute and guitar — are things I’m particularly wanting these days. I’m truly thankful for my duo partner, Adrian Verdejo, for recording the piece with me; Jordan Nobles, for shooting the video so beautifully for us; and Piotr Wieczorek for his audio wizardry.
This video was made possible thanks to support from Creative BC and the Province of British Columbia. I’m also very thankful for a microgrant provided by the BC Arts Council, which will allow Adrian and I to create more videos throughout the summer.
Times are strange right now, so one needs to create reasons to celebrate where one can. And for me, the above video is absolutely a cause for celebration, because it represents the end of a major multi-year project for me: to create three music videos of solo flute music by Canadian composers with strong connections to Pacific Rim culture and/or heritage. Nova Pon‘s piece Wrenegade is a virtuosic showpiece inspired by the call of the Pacific Wren — but more than that, it’s a response to my lifelong fear of birds (and also my fascination with that fear). By presenting the wren’s song at various speeds (including “as fast as humanly possible”), Pon gives us a glimpse into the sound world with which birds communicate, all the while lightheartedly playing with the old trope of the flutist as the extrovert, flamboyant exponent of birdlike virtuosity. The video was filmed by Mark Mushet in Musqueam territory (aka Pacific Spirit Park on UBC campus) with the playful, oh-so-kawaii animations of Cindy Mochizuki.
This next video is very much a response to current events. As the coronavirus began shutting down public gatherings across Canada, the Canadian Music Centre BC Region quickly realized that local musicians would be deeply affected. Their response is Unaccompanied, an online concert series that showcases Vancouver musicians performing solo works by Canadian composers. I’m feeling very honoured to be the first of this series, performing the beautiful work Four Directions by Vancouver composer (and dear friend) Jennifer Butler. Four Directions was originally composed as a piece to announce the day at R. Murray Schafer’s Wolf Project — but here, with the chiaroscuro camera work of Jordan Nobles, the work takes on a more sombre, pessimistic tone.
This week saw the release of the second of three music videos I’ve been working on for Lutalica, my ongoing performance and recording project that focuses on the flute music of Pacific Rim composers. I’m so excited to present Notgnirrac: a video by Bernardo González Burgos and Kiné Producciones, featuring the music of the Canadian-Mexican composer Alfredo Santa Ana.
Notgnirrac takes its name and inspiration from the British-Mexican surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington (spell Carrington backwards and you’ll get Santa Ana’s piece title). After the devastating end to her relationship with the surrealist painter Max Ernst, Carrington moved to Mexico City, where she established herself as one of the country’s leading artists, a primary figure in the international surrealist movement, and a founding member of the Mexican Women’s Liberation Movement.
For this piece Santa Ana was specifically inspired by Carrington’s visual and literary artwork. “I consider her artistry to be a path of self-discovery and a blend of psychological and physical geographies… Carrington displays a self-reflecting attitude inwards, to one’s own identity, culture, and work. This, I believe, is an awareness that is also at the core of McGregor’s examination of Pacific Rim music through the lens of identity. His use of ‘lutalica’ invokes the notion of never really being captured within the narrow categories that we use to describe ourselves.”
It’s almost too perfect that this video was, in fact, filmed on location at the Museo Leonora Carrington in San Luis Potosí, Mexico; throughout this video you’ll see a number of Carrington’s sculptures haunting the various courtyards and galleries of the museum, bringing an eerie surrealist energy to Santa Ana’s rhapsodic and virtuosic music. I’m deeply indebted to Museo Leonora Carrington for providing us the unique opportunity to film there, and to the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.
mark takeshi mcgregor 