Ten years ago Rachel Iwaasa and I got a call from New Works Calgary to fill in for a last-minute cancellation. It was a huge deal for us; as Tiresias Duo, it was our first out-of-town invitation to perform and I remember how chuffed/nervous we both were to have an opportunity like that. Since then, I’ve been lucky to visit Calgary a number of times through various tours with the Aventa Ensemble — and on March 18th, I’ll be returning, this time with composer/technology guru Gregory Lee Newsome, to present (the somewhat naughtily-entitled) FLUTES GALORE as part of New Works Calgary’s 2017/18 season.

Flutes Galore features an all-Canadian programme, including Yota Kobayashi‘s Tensho for flute and electronics; Hope Lee‘s solo flute work forever after; Nicole Lizée‘s Tarantino Études for bass flute and audio/video glitch; Gregory Lee Newsome‘s Ambitus for alto flute and Max/MSP; and Michael Oesterle‘s Delilah for solo flute. The day before I’ll also be giving a flute masterclass at the University of Calgary (9:30am at the Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall, Rosza Centre).

For the uninitiated, a little sample of Lizée’s Tarantino Études (though be forewarned: in the spirit of the filmmaker who inspired it, Tarantino Études contains strong language. And gore. And swinging bass flute.):

New Works Calgary presents FLUTES GALORE

Mark Takeshi McGregor flute :: Gregory Lee Newsome, technology

March 18 2017, 7:30pm

Leacock Theatre, Mount Royal University, 4825 Mount Royal Gate SW

Calgary, Alberta

Natural history museums have to be some of the most wonderfully macabre places on earth. But Vancouver’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum, located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, manages to be both macabre and beautiful, with its signature 25-metre blue whale skeleton suspended in the atrium. It’s one of those places where, the moment I walked in, I thought, “OH MY GOD, I HAVE TO PLAY A CONCERT IN HERE.”

Well, what can I say: sometimes dreams come true.

On January 19, 2017, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum will present Nocturnal, from 5pm to 8:30pm. During this time the museum is pay-what-you-can and there are a number of special programmes and activities. At 6pm Redshift Music Society will present yours truly in a free one-hour concert that features six recent works for solo flute, selected from the Pacific Rim Call for Scores we had last year. Coincidentally, these works reflect the six permanent collections housed in the museum: tetrapods, fish, marine invertebrates, insects, herbarium (plant life) and fossils. The works to be performed are:

Pedro Alvarez (Chile/Australia): De Mares Imaginados (Fish and Marine Invertebrates Collections)

Philip Brownlee (New Zealand): Harakeke (Herbarium Collection)

Graham Flett (Canada): Stratus & Shale (Fossils Collection)

Kaiyi Kao (Taiwan): Jingzhe (Insects Collection)

Ellen Lindquist (USA): Nakoda (Tetrapods: mammals)

Nova Pon (Canada): Wrenegade (Tetrapods: birds)

I’m particularly excited to be performing this programme at the Beaty Museum, whose collections focus in particular on species of the Pacific Coast. As a venue, the Beaty ties in beautifully with the Pacific Rim theme of the music; as a music programme, these pieces resonate uncannily with the museum’s collections — it’s all delightfully symbiotic.

::               ::               ::               ::

NOCTURNAL :: presented by the Beaty Biodiversity Museum with Redshift Music Society

Mark Takeshi McGregor, solo flute

Works by Alvarez, Brownlee, Flett, Kao, Lindquist, & Pon

Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 6pm (note start time)

Beaty Biodiversity Museum 

2212 Main Mall, UBC Campus, Vancouver

museum is pay-what-you-can from 5pm – 8:30pm

The ability to travel is a privilege — one that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be able to afford. Artist life doesn’t typically generate a whole lot of income and those who know me know that I’m pretty dreadful at keeping track of what little money I earn. So I’m extra grateful for organizations, like the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, that provide travel assistance so that folks like me can share what we do with people around the world.

This past September I had the opportunity to spend a week in Curitiba, Brazil, as guest faculty at the International Symposium of New Music 2016, presented by Grupo de Pesquisa Núcleo Música Nova. During this time I taught some incredibly talented young musicians, worked with a wide array of composers, and presented two concerts: a chamber performance of Morton Feldman’s Why Patterns? with pianist Luciane Cardassi and percussionist Fabio Oliveira; and a solo concert of works by Brian Ferneyhough, Natalia Solomonoff, Dániel Péter Biró, Nicole Lizée, and Salvatore Sciarrino, whose All’aure in una lontananza can be heard below:

During my stay I was overwhelmed by the generous spirit of practically everyone I met. I was delighted to meet Natalia Solomonoff and Hans Tutschku — both marvelous, original composers; and I’m particularly happy to have met flutist Valentina Daldegan and her husband, the composer Maurício Dottori, who went out of their way to show me their city and share their enthusiasm for new music and music education (and for gifting me with a beautiful bottle of cachaça!); and I’m especially grateful to the festival organizers, Felipe Ribeiro and Caio Nocko, for inviting me and taking care of the myriad details that a symposium of this size and scope requires.

Back in April, I sat down with Redshift Music Society artistic director Jordan Nobles and discussed the possibility of putting out an international Call for Scores for solo flute. I think, living and working as a musician on the West Coast of Canada, it’s easy to become focused almost exclusively on those composers immediately around you (and easier still because so many of them are truly excellent). I was fascinated by the idea that there were any number of good composers out there who I knew absolutely nothing about — whether because of language, culture, geography… or simply because we all get busy and the world is a bloody enormous place.

For this particular Call for Scores, we decided to take it one step further: we asked for pieces by composers who live (or who have lived) in countries bordering the Pacific Rim. This might initially seem like a random stipulation, but lately I’ve been thinking more and more about the Eurocentricity of Western Classical Music and how this might be changing, particularly in our international Age of Instant Information. My practice as a musician is undeniably informed by its Western European roots, yet I myself am anything but Western European: I’m half-Japanese, half-Australian, born and raised on the West Coast of Canada. Does this change or inform my relationship with Western music? How do other non-European musicians and artists address the bridge/divide, if at all? Limiting submissions to the Pacific Rim, I felt, might produce results that were, at the very least, different than a simple international Call for Scores; but my hope was that it might provide some insight into how non-European artists view their relationship with Europe, with their homeland, and how this may or may not reflect itself in their craft — but what I wasn’t expecting was the sheer volume of submissions.

By the time August 31st rolled around, we had received just under 200 submissions from around the world. The idea of picking five or six for a single concert seemed outrageous, especially given the calibre and diversity of what was submitted. Fortunately, Jordan was gracious enough to suggest that, instead of a single concert, I could present three different concerts over the course of 2017, each featuring different submitted repertoire — increasing the number of presented works to seventeen (even still, there’s over a dozen excellent works that there simply wasn’t room to program). The selected composers/works are as follows, listed in alphabetical order:

Pedro Alvarez (Chile/Australia) – De Mares Imaginados

Phil Brownlee (New Zealand) – Harakeke

Eunho Chang (South Korea/Poland) – Sanjo III

Nirmali Fenn (Sri Lanka/Australia/Singapore) – Scratches of the Wind

Graham Flett (Canada) – Stratus and Shale

Robert Hansler (USA) – Broken Branch

Gleb Kanasevich (USA) – DUDK*=*FLÖT

Kaiyi Kao (Taiwan) – Jingzhe

Hope Lee (Canada) – forever after

Ellen Lindquist (USA) – Nakoda for solo alto flute

Mario Mora (Chile) – DOO

Rosalind Page (Australia) – courbe dominante

Maggi Payne (USA) – Reflections

Nova Pon (Canada) – Wrenegade

Thierry Tidrow (Canada) – Né à L’envers

Chun-Ju Yen (Taiwan) – Invisible Wings

Stephen Yip (Hong Kong/USA) – A Spring Morning

Because the number of concerts has increased from one to three, we’ve yet to nail down exact dates and locations. My personal feeling is that I would like the concert venues to reflect the Pacific Rim theme — forthcoming discussions with the folks at Redshift will reveal more very soon. Until then, my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to submit their works. I can’t wait to begin this very exciting project.

Artists are a thankless lot.

I speak, of course, as a thankless artist: We are capricious, volatile, and greedy; We spend our lives desperately seeking out patterns, rhythms, and order — and then, upon finding them, we immediately reject them; We begin every project, every endeavour, with the understanding that nothing will be good enough; We make unrealistic demands and, even when those demands are met, we’ll find a way to undervalue or abuse what we’ve been given. The pianist Rachel Iwaasa once shared with me the encapsulating words of Martha Graham: “No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching…”

Of course, there very well might be artists out there who completely disagree with the above, who are satisfied and thankful, who do not crave/despise the approval of others, who thrive on order. To you, I can only say this: I’ve got Martha Graham backing me up; you don’t.

This week, it is with mixed feelings that I step down from my position as artistic director of the Powell Street Festival Society, Canada’s largest expression of Japanese Canadian culture. I’m happy and humbled to pass the baton to the incredible Leanne Dunic, whose background in the literary, visual, and musical arts will energize and inspire the Society as it moves into its fourth decade. I’m entirely thankful for the experience: over the course of two seasons I learned about the complex and dark history of my Japanese Canadian heritage; I engaged with artists and communities I would never have had the opportunity to otherwise; I learned the nuts and bolts of curating a major Canadian festival (and for the record, there are a lot of nuts and bolts); and I learned how important it is for an artistic director to be surrounded by good, patient, informed, and inspired people. Most importantly, I learned that daily coffee breaks with Diane Kadota are generally awesome — they provided insight, inspiration, therapy, and caffeine. It doesn’t get much better than that.

But throughout my tenure, that “blessed unrest” was percolating beneath the surface, reminding me that, ultimately, I’m a musician before anything else. And so it is to music that I return, with renewed and refocused energy. This September I will join the faculty of the University of Victoria’s School of Music as their interim flute instructor (filling in for the sabbatical of my friend and colleague, Suzanne Snizek). It will mean a term of craziness as I zig-zag between the mainland and the Island, but it’s an experience I’m thrilled to begin.

September will also see my first sojourn to South America, as I join the faculty at the third International Symposium of New Music, presented by Grupo de Pesquisa Núcleo Música Nova in Curitiba, Brazil. From September 11 – 17 I’ll be giving masterclasses, workshops, and performances that will include the South American premieres of works by Nicole Lizée and Dániel Péter Biró, in addition to works by Sciarrino, Solomonoff, Feldman, and Ferneyhough, whose Carceri d’Invenzione IIb (inspired by the infamous etchings of Piranesi, pictured above) remains one of my all time solo flute faves.

But for now, it’s a whole lot of practising, score study, cautious stabs at beginner Portuguese, and coffee. A vida é maravilhosa!

Confession: I have always been a flute choir nerd. I love the idea of creating community and camaraderie within what’s really a very competitive profession — and let’s face it, flutists can be quite competitive with one another. So an environment where we convene in large numbers to work towards a common goal is, I’ve found, always a nice change. I can only assume, of course, that this warm, fuzzy, socialist euphoria is what violinists feel every day of their orchestral lives, right? Am I right??

Well, at any rate, multiple flutes sound bloody awesome.

This past May I packed my bags and headed over to Montreal for an intense and hugely rewarding week with Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal plus (ECM+), specifically the ECM+Flûtes with cellist Chloé Dominguez, under the direction of Véronique Lacroix. On May 18, we presented Les Cavaliers de l’Apocalypse, which featured the premiers four new works by Canadian composers, each inspired by one the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Charles-Antoine Fréchette‘s Torpeurs d’été was, in fact, an older work (2009/10), but its sparse, spectralist soundscapes perfectly captured the essence of the Black Horse, Famine; Brian Harman‘s virtuosic Dans la nuit profonde, complete with echoes of military marches and cannons, was inspired by the Red Horse, War; James O’Callaghan took the Green Horse, Pestilence, as the point of departure for his Into Sections — a work that cunningly fused the extended technique palette of the eight flutes with field recordings of insects; and Paul Steenhuisen wrote a kaleidoscopic (and not entirely pessimistic) take on Death — Y la conciencia-espejo se licua — complete with an extended slide whistle solo for yours truly. Don’t believe me? Check it out:

The evening was completed by a theatrical flutist tour-de-force: Dissection de l’oubli by Evelin Ramon, performed by the jaw-dropping Marie-Hélène Breault. The beautifully made video below provides some tantalizing glimpses into these complex, bizarre, and alluring sound worlds. Here’s to a Four Horsemen remount in Vancouver soon!

I’ve known Michael Oesterle way longer than I’ve known his music: we were students together at the University of British Columbia back in the 90s. I knew him primarily as a violin player in the orchestra (and once, he even played mandolin for a performance of Respighi’s Roman Festivals). It would be many years later when I got to know Michael the composer, primarily through my work with the Aventa Ensemble: Urban Canticle, territio verbalis, and tell tales (the latter two pieces written especially for Aventa) are all beautiful, colourful, and deftly wrought ensemble pieces. But it wasn’t until I heard Stand Still — his solo violin piece that he wrote in 2011 for Aisslinn Nosky — when I realized that here was a composer who understood the complexities and subtleties of writing for an unaccompanied instrument; who could reference the instrument’s incredibly rich history of both hedonistic folk music and 18th century polyphony, all the while cunningly maintaining his own unique voice. I cautiously approached him to ask if he’d consider writing a piece for solo flute… and after much scheming and generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Delilah was born in September of 2014.

Delilah was inspired, like many of Oesterle’s works, by the British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, computer scientist, mathematical biologist, marathon runner, and persecuted homosexual Alan Turing (1912-1954). In 2012, Turing’s 1944 reports on his “speech system” Delilah, were finally pulled from the British National Archives and opened to the public. This functional machine, designed to scramble and descramble voice messages, was so far ahead of its time that it resembles the way we currently store music in digital format. The musical construction of Delilah for solo flute was motivated by Turing’s unorthodox search for humanity or human intelligence within patterns and systems. It searches for answers to an unasked question, allowing this systematic approach to create subtle emotional shifts. Like Turing, it presents its puzzle playfully: in its persistence it becomes serious and then, as it begins to wallow in the process itself, lightens its mood again: a simple arc in a pattern of system, method, and discovery, its greatest motivation the joy of moving forward (from Oesterle’s programme notes).

A couple weeks ago I headed over to Jordan Noble‘s abode in North Vancouver and we spent the good part of the morning laying down a proper studio recording of Delilah. Thanks to Jordan’s editing skills and a bit of reverb you’d never know that this piece was recorded… in his bedroom. Delilah is joyful, mesmerizing, virtuosic, and bittersweet — and it’s a delight to be able to share it.

Anyone who has ever had to work towards a looming deadline will appreciate (or resent) the passage of time. For composers, time is of course the canvas on which they write — and if you’ve ever had the opportunity to talk to a composer working on a commission, you’re probably familiar with time-related statements like “I need to write another five minutes of music,” or “My piece is longer than what they asked for,” or even just plain old “Oh God, I need more time!” For us listeners, pacing and duration are key ingredients in how a piece of music impacts us emotionally: the 17-second brevity of Schoenberg’s Galgenlied from Pierrot Lunaire Op. 21 instantly conjures up images both horrific and humorous; whereas an hour+ long performance of Terry Riley’s In C can lull us into a trance-like state where an entire evening can slip by unnoticed.

Next week I’ll be giving the Vancouver premiere of a piece that definitely makes its home on the large-scale end of the time spectrum. On Wednesday, March 9th, 2016, Redshift Music Society and Little Chamber Music Series That Could will present Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4 for flute and MaxMSP by Moncton-based composer André Cormier. There are few artists I know who play with the concept of time like Cormier: Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4 is part of a series of pieces that gradually reveal themselves to the listener over the space of 90 minutes. One by one, notes are played by the flutist, which are recorded and looped back every six minutes through a multi-channel speaker installation. Ever so slowly, the piece becomes layered through the speaker playback: it becomes denser, richer, and more elaborate, until the final six minutes reveal the “complete” piece, with swirling flute lines and Tibetan finger cymbals.

In particular, the opening of Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4 is worth mentioning: essentially a blank canvas for sound, the piece begins with a full six minutes of silence. Some people have given me double-takes when I tell them this, but this extended silence serves an important role: the first two minutes is spent wondering what the hell is going on; after four minutes, your inner clock begins slowing down; and by six minutes, you’ve truly entered a deeper listening state, making the first utterance of the flute — a pianissimo F# — seem like a shattering intrusion. It’s a very special listening experience, the likes of which is almost impossible to achieve in our 21st century “Age of Instant Information”. Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4 is unquestionably challenging — and I’m the first person to say that it’s quite possibly not a piece for everybody. But after premiering this piece in New Brunswick back in 2013, I know that this piece can have a very powerful effect on those who are willing to be openminded to truly new listening experiences. 

Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4 takes place this Wednesday, March 9th, at 8pm at Celebration Hall at Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery (39th off Fraser St.). This event is FREE. There will also be a free artist chat at the Canadian Music Centre‘s BC Region (837 Davie Street) on Monday, March 7th at 4:30pm. Both André Cormier and myself will be there to talk more about the piece!

And just to give you a tiny, 21st century “Age of Instant Information” taste of what to expect, here is an excerpt from the final six minutes of Piling Sand – Piling Stone 4: 

Last night was a sad night indeed: the final drops of my Slivovica — the plum schnapps of Slovakia — was shared among friends and loved ones… and I’m left wondering how one can acquire more of this in Canada. But while the schnapps may be gone, there is no lack of fond memories of the week spent in Bratislava, where I gave the premiere of Nicole Lizée‘s Tarantino Études at the Melos-Ethos Festival. We heard some incredible performances, met lovely people, ate excellent food, and I spent a good part of an evening discussing the movie “Slap Shot” with a bartender who was kind enough to introduce me to his country’s national drink.

Bratislava is a beautiful city, situated on the Danube River and extremely close to neighbouring Austria and Hungary. The old town is closed to motor vehicles, so it’s easy to get the sense of what the place was like in ages past. Tarantino Études was premiered on November 12, 2015 to a packed hall at a4-Zero Space, a contemporary/experimental performance venue with a diverse and enthusiastic following. Those in the know will appreciate the unbelievable amount of work that goes into creating a festival of this size: we’re talking fifteen events over seven days. Kudos to everyone at the Melos-Ethos Festival, especially Festival Director Ol’ga Smetanova.

Almost immediately after the premiere, Lizée and I were back in Vancouver for the North American premiere at Music on Main, which was celebrating its tenth anniversary with its largest Modulus Festival to date — all the more impressive when you consider that the number of MoM staff who made the week happen could all fit comfortably in the back of a Škoda (bravo to Dave, Melody, and Genevieve!). The evening of November 17th included music by Stefan Prins and Caroline Shaw, as well as Lizée’s Tarantino Études and Karappo Okesutura, featuring the Music on Main All Star Band with the incomparable Charlotte Cumberbirch.

And what about the piece itself, you ask? How is the Tarantino Études? Well, I’m perhaps a bit biased, but Lizée has created a serious multimedia masterpiece: hours and hours of film footage were obsessively combed through to find a handful of incredibly potent but unlikely moments musicaux, which are looped and glitched. The result is an audio-visual world that is at once mesmerizing, visceral, disturbing, and hilarious. For a wee taste, here’s an excerpt from the premiere performance at the Melos-Ethos Festival in Bratislava — but be forewarned: it is the Tarantino Études after all, so there is some, uh, “language”.