For the eight aspiring orchestral musicians who’ve been selected by the jury, Monday’s final round is an opportunity to show off their skills and compete for a top prize of $7,000.
Earlier this week, 30 musicians between the ages of 16 and 24 auditioned for a jury consisting primarily of NAC Orchestra musicians. Behind closed doors backstage at the NAC, this jury heard the music students perform challenging excerpts from orchestral repertoire, as well as solo repertoire such as concertos or sonatas, and then selected the eight who made the strongest impression. These eight promising young performers are now polishing their repertoire, and on Monday, May 7th, they will compete before the jury and a live audience in the NAC Studio at 3:00pm. This is a free, non-ticketed event, open to members of the public.
The eight finalists for 2012 are:
- Riccardo Nazario del Castello, trombone
- Lara Deutsch, flute
- Aidan Dugan, oboe
- Nicholas Galuban, clarinet
- Darren Hicks, bassoon
- Antoine Malette-Chénier, harp
- Graham McVeety, flute
- Christian Paquette, flute
The top prize, the NAC Orchestra Bursary, is $7,000, but the runners-up won’t walk away with nothing. Also up for grabs are the Harold Crabtree Foundation Award of $5,000, the Friends of the NAC Orchestra Award of $3,000, the NAC Orchestra Vic Pomer Award of $2,000, and the Piccolo Prix of $1,000. Beginning this year, the NAC Orchestra Special Prize for excerpts has been raised from $750 to $1,000. Competitors who do not receive an award may receive one of three Honourable Mentions, which comes with a cheque for $225.
For more information about the competition, please visit nac-cna.ca/en/education/training/bursarycompetition.
As the English Theatre Company continue rehearsals for next week’s opening of the much anticipated production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Kevin Loring prepared a blog about being part of this one-a-kind production.
http://hokaheh.blogspot.ca/2012/04/augies-dream.html
Kevin speaks of the dream August Schellenberg had about an all-Aboriginal King Lear, a dream he heard August speak of when they were working on The Ecstasy of Rita Joe in 2009, and how, in 2012, that dream has been realized.
King Lear begins next week, running in the NAC Theatre May 8 – 26.
Widely regarded as the most anticipated theatre event of the 2011-2012 Canadian Theatre season, the NAC English Theatre Company for King Lear has been in rehearsals in since early April. Yesterday, members of the media were invited for an early look at the production, as they sat in on a rehearsal. Check out the stories from CBC TV and APTN:
Set in 17th Century Canada, amidst the pressure of early contact and confrontation, King Lear features a cast of entirely Aboriginal actors from across the country, including the renowned August Schellenberg as Lear.
This production of King Lear, directed by Peter Hinton, runs in the NAC Theatre May 8 – 26
The great majority of the work of performing artists is unseen and full of sacrifice. The conductor greeted with thunderous applause spends much of his life in isolation, studying a score in silence. An actor spends hours in her apartment, running lines for a callback she will not win. The dancer performs through painful injury. The great majority of artists take other jobs—some satisfying, others devastatingly not so—to pay the bills.
Performing artists will tell you they are deeply grateful for their chosen careers, that the sacrifices are worth it because there is no other thing they could possibly do.
The Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards are our chance as a country to recognize the performing artists whose hard work and sacrifice over a lifetime have given meaning, beauty and joy to our lives.
Every year the National Arts Centre honours the year’s recipients with a Gala full of tributes and emotional moments.
It’s also a serious party, and a really great show.
This year is the 20th anniversary and there will be dazzling performances, major Canadian and international guest stars, entertaining short films, and a few jaw-dropping surprises.
Come and say thank you to our artists.
And have an amazing time while you’re at it.
GGPAA Facbook Page
Garrick Ohlsson, pianist
April 25-26: the concert is called Sublime Mozart, and that is truly truth in advertising. No composer is more sublime than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The concert program includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 70 as well as two masterworks by Mozart:
- Piano Concerto No. 9 “Jeunehomme” (1777), was composed by a 21-year old Mozart. It was said that he wrote the piece for a French pianist “Jeunehomme” when she visited Salzburg — but scholars could never positively identify the woman for whom he actually wrote it. It’s been called “perhaps the first unequivocal masterpiece [of the] classical style” and “one of the greatest wonders of the world.”
- Symphony No. 36 in C major (known as the “Linz”) was written by Mozart during a stopover in the Austrian town of Linz as he and his wife were on their way home to Vienna from Salzburg in late 1783. The entire symphony was written in four days to accommodate the local Count’s announcement, upon hearing of the Mozarts’ arrival in Linz, of a concert. The première in Linz took place on 4 November 1783; it was performed in Vienna on 1 April 1784.
Value added! Piano Concerto No. 9 will be performed by international superstar Garrick Ohlsson, one of the world’s finest pianists, praised for his “clarity, command and wit.” Garrick Ohlsson possesses magisterial interpretive and technical prowess; he is both technically flawless and free of Romantic mannerisms. He has the ability to traverse the entire spectrum of 18 dynamic degrees discernible on the modern piano, from the thundering fortississimo to the finest pianississimo. Garrick Ohlsson is 6’-4” and he can stretch an octave and a 5th with his left hand and an octave and a 4th with his right hand. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire and is noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart.
Even more value added! Writer/broadcaster Eric Friesen hosts this concert, and he also gives a pre-show chat entitled A Musical Equation: H¹ + M² = Perfect Harmony in Le Salon at 7 p.m. Pinchas Zukerman is on the conductor’s podium, and during the evening, Messrs. Friesen and Zukerman will talk about Mozart’s masterworks. But wait! There’s more! After the concert – onstage in Southam Hall – Eric Friesen will moderate a chat with both Pinchas Zukerman and Garrick Ohlsson. All three gentlemen are highly intelligent, widely read, and very articulate, so the chat should be very enlightening and entertaining.
- By Gerald Morris
Yaniv Dinur. photo by Fred Cattroll
We are excited to share with you the following interview with Summer Music Institute Conducting Program Alumnus Yaniv Dinur (YD) and blogger Pamela Hickman*(PH). Yaniv speaks quite thoroughly and complimentary about his experience at SMI in 2005-2006 and his studies with our Conductor’s program director Kenneth Kiesler at the University of Michigan.
PH: I understand you went to the USA in 2007 for further studies. What influenced this decision?
YD: Two years previously, I went to Canada, with the help of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and its CEO Gideon Paz. The purpose of this trip was to attend the Summer Music Institute in Ottawa. The program, which also offers coaching in string-playing and chamber music, is run by Pinchas Zukerman and there is a wonderful orchestra there – The National Arts Centre Orchestra. That year, the conducting course was run by Finnish conductor Jorma Panula and it was a great success. Zukerman invited me to come back the following year, and this time the course was run by Kenneth Kiesler, an American, who teaches at the University of Michigan. On completing the 2007 workshop under his guidance, I decided to follow Kiesler and study with him in Michigan. I spent three years in Michigan, completing a doctorate in conducting. The course itself rose above all my expectations, but adjusting to Kiesler’s approach was no easy task for me. My career had been developing very nicely and I had already had much conducting experience for my age: I had conducted the Israel Camerata Jerusalem when I was 19, being the youngest person ever to conduct an orchestra in Israel. I had travelled Europe conducting many orchestras – in Portugal, Russia, Italy and in Ireland. I had won the Yuri Ahronovitch First Prize in the 2005 Aviv Conducting Competition in Israel. You could say that I was a little arrogant when beginning the course in Ottawa – I was an experienced conductor and was, indeed, familiar with the world of conducting. Kiesler, however, took upon himself to teach me new things, things I was not accustomed to, and it took me a little while to open up to this new experience. But it was there that I discovered new sides to the profession that, till then, had not been familiar to me. Kiesler’s approach certainly changed my way of thinking.
PH: Can you elaborate on that?
YD: Yes. For him, the most central issue is that the conductor should be the visual expression of the music. That means that every little detail of the music…to the point of one conducting movement being suitable to the key of C major and a different movement to interpreting E-flat major! This is most important, because it has a direct effect on orchestral musicians and, therefore, on the quality of the sound they produce. Producing a forte sound does not require large conducting gestures, rather, intense movements. Indeed, if the horns are to play an interval of a fifth, my gesture will be different than if they are playing a fourth. In other words, everything you do as a conductor must be tailored to the music. The important question is how one gets to that. It is a matter of developing a very expressive body language and of reaching the stage that you do not need to “plan” each movement. Kiesler’s advice was “You have to be vulnerable to the music.” This is a very beautiful idea, but suggesting it is easier than putting it into practice. I think that it is only recently that I have learned how to do this myself: to forget all and free myself in order to be open to having the music exert its influence on me. Only following that process can you convey the music to the players, letting yourself be the music. Needless to say, this approach has changed me very much and done much to form me as a conductor.
PH: What other conductors have influenced you?
YD: Another great musician who has influenced me immensely is Pinchas Zukerman. He is simply a magician. I learned a lot from watching him rehearse the orchestra, from discussing music with him and studying his own personal markings on orchestral parts. We are frequently in touch and I learn something new from him every time we meet.
You can find the interview with Yaniv in its entirety here. Please note that the original interview is in English only.
More information about the Conductors program at the Summer Music Institute can be found here. Keep coming back to read up on this year’s SMI, we will be introducing the class of 2012 in the coming weeks!
*Pamela Hickman is a music teacher, critic and translator. Born in Australia;in Israel since 1968.Studied at Melbourne University(BA Languages,Music,Education),the Jerusalem Academy of Music(Theory,Composition),New York University(Music education.)
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“The soloist, replacing Lang Lang at short notice, was Alice Sara Ott, who gave the kind of gawp-inducing bravura performance of which legends are made.” -Tim Ashley, The Guardian, November 2010
All are created equal, or goes a saying, but now and again we come across artists that counter this philosophy.
Many of us are surrounded at an early age by music of all genres and encouraged to listen and learn as much as possible. But in the end, competing interests and talents discovered in other capacities can compromise further musical development, and childhood dreams of becoming concert pianists morph into new paths.
Still, some individuals possess an awe-inspiring combination of musical talent, power, discipline and drive that somehow materializes into something exceptional. And on Tuesday, March 20, the NAC will be graced by such an individual: Alice Sara Ott. Having been hailed as the “Most Promising Artist” at the Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition, the German-Japanese soloist continued onto a path of success, winning the top prize at the Silvio Bengalli International Piano Competition as its youngest contestant, and has since performed with the London Symphony and Tokyo Symphony orchestras, San Francisco Symphony, Wiener Symphoniker, Bamberger Symphoniker, as well as the Philharmonia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Royal Scottish National orchestras. These achievements, along with additional debuts forthcoming around the world, can only prove my point: Ms. Ott, still in her early twenties, is in a class of her own, and the NAC Orchestra is delighted to welcome her later this month for her Canadian debut to perform a captivating recital that will include Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and Liszt compositions.
But I wouldn’t feel too sorry for the rest of us mere mortals – while most of us don’t have the ability to perform the way the beautiful Alice Sara Ott does, we will still have the opportunity and absolute pleasure of sitting back in Southam Hall to be carried away along Ms. Ott’s musical journey. Not a bad trade-off if you ask me!
Violist Paul Casey will be performing at the upcoming NAC Orchestra Bursary Benefit Concert this Sunday, March 4th, 2012. I had the opportunity to spend some time getting to know Paul a little better as we chatted about music, and about some outstanding memories from his experiences with us here at the National Arts Centre, including as an alumnus of the Summer Music Institute.
Paul Casey
AW: What got you interested in music?
PC: I always listened to music growing up; my mom always had the radio on and was a big fan of Beethoven. One of the first concerts I went to was an NAC Orchestra concert when I was 6 years old. Apparently I pointed out the violin and showed a lot of interest in the instrument. My parents registered me in lessons right away, but I was definitely the one who picked what instrument I wanted to play.
I took up the viola when I had to do an independent project at Canterbury High School. I thought that it would be easy to learn viola, and ended up falling in love with it. I was then asked to play Principal Viola in the Ottawa Youth Orchestra, and again when I was in the National Youth Orchestra. Although I didn’t officially switch to viola until October of last year, I’d been considering the change for a long while.
AW: What is one of your most memorable moments in music?
PC: Every time I sub with the NAC Orchestra I get such a nice feeling, and I can’t help but smiling like a complete goof when the audience applauds the orchestra. Also, when I performed part of the Handel/Casadesus Concerto as soloist with the NAC Orchestra at this year’s FanFair concert in December, though it was kinda nerve-racking, it was extremely memorable. To be up there with such an amazing orchestra, and the adrenaline pumping… I’ll never forget it!
AW: You were invited to participate in the 2011 Summer Music Institute* (SMI) Young Artist Program (YAP) as part of an additional ensemble. What was the best part about your experience with SMI?
PC: Having the opportunity to work with all the amazing coaches was so great! Each one of them approached the music from a different angle, so we really saw the pieces from so many different aspects. Since I was in about 4 groups, I had so many opportunities to perform, which is so rare in summer festivals. Also, the musicians that were in my ensembles were pretty wonderful (and super talented), and I still keep in touch with all of them. The cellist who was in my ensemble is actually now my girlfriend; we met at YAP. We always joke that someone over at the NAC is playing matchmaker for us.
AW: If you were to pass on any advice for upcoming participants, or recall one of the best pieces of advice that was given to you during SMI what would it be?
PC: The best piece of advice I heard while I was attending SMI was from Steve Dann, one of the viola coaches. He said that when working with an ensemble, especially short-term at a summer music festival like the Young Artist Program, it is so easy to fall into the trap of disagreeing and arguing with each other about musical choices. He said the best way to approach this is to “just say yes” to a colleague’s musical suggestion. Playing it will often prove him/her to be right or wrong, and it can save so much precious rehearsal time! I think it is important to not only come prepared, to know your music before you go, but it is also so important to approach the process with an open mind and willingness to try things that you maybe think are not such a great idea at the time.
Photo by Paul Casey
AW: If we were to turn on your iPod right now, what would you be listening to?
PC: It’s not classical (laughs). I listen to a lot of different kinds of music. Rihanna, Cœur de Pirate [Paul met this Montreal artist’s mother at a music camp he taught at in Ireland last summer], Sigur Rós – I would love to arrange some of their music for a quartet - The Barr Brothers, and the song Call Your Girlfriend by Swedish pop sensation, Robyn.
AW: Is there anything that you could listen to over and over again?
PC: Actually the song Cheers (I’ll Drink to That) by Rihanna saved my life this year! I was practicing for the NAC Orchestra viola auditions this fall and was having a really hard time mastering the excerpt in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I couldn’t for the life of me get it, or feel it, and I was almost ready to break my viola out of frustration. I took a breath and turned on Rihanna’s Cheers (I’ll Drink to That), and realized that it was the perfect tempo for the Beethoven. I turned it up – really loud – picked up my viola, and played through the Beethoven excerpt with Rihanna on repeat until I got it. Sure enough, they asked me to play Beethoven 5 at the audition, so I walked into the audition singing the song to myself!
AW: The Bursary Benefit concert is coming up this weekend on March 4th, and you will be playing Stravinsky’s Elegy. Why did you choose this piece?
PC: I was asked to select a solo unaccompanied piece and I knew right away that I wanted to learn something new. I’ve been playing Bach Cello Suite No. 3 quite a bit, and I definitely wanted something different. It was between two pieces for me; Penderecki’s Cadenza and Stravinsky’s Elegy. I thought the Penderecki piece might be a bit hectic for a small room, even though it is one of my favorite pieces. I think the Stravinsky will be quite beautiful, and sound really great in the room. The whole piece is performed with mute, so it should help create a very intimate atmosphere in the Salon.
AW: This is the first time you will be performing with members of the NAC Orchestra in a chamber ensemble, what are you looking forward to most?
PC: I’m really looking forward to working with Yosuke [Kawasaki, NAC Orchestra Concertmaster] and Jessica [Linnebach, Associate Concertmaster] one on one. I’m interested to hear what they have to say about the music we will be playing. They both have a sound that is rich like butter, and they’re both such brilliant players, it should be a lot of fun!
The Bursary Benefit Concert is on Sunday, March 4th, at 2:00pm in the NAC Salon. Tickets are $15.00 at the box office and through Ticketmaster. We’re also happy to accept donations at the door. You can learn more about the concert here.
In the meantime you can listen to Paul’s rendition of the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3
Paul Casey Viola – Bach Cello Suite No. 3, Prelude
*This year’s Summer Music Institute Young Artist Program will be taking place June 11-30th. We will continue to catch up with SMI alumni, faculty and participants in the upcoming months.
The 2012 edition of the National Arts Centre’s Summer Music Institute is only a few short months away. The program consists of three divisions: the Young Artist Program, the Conductors Program and the Composers Program. It’s a time to study with world-class coaches and exceptional fellow students for a three-week period. Friendships that last a lifetime are made, and every day presents a new exciting opportunity.
We have edged one step closer to this year’s festival; applications are now closed and faculty are busily reviewing submissions to select this year’s participants.
It looks like we have yet another exciting year ahead of us, and we can’t wait to share the experience with you.
Keep checking the NAC blog to learn more about:
- who our participants, faculty and alumni are
- what events you can attend
- highlights from the program
- a behind the scenes look at our preparations for the 14th edition of the NAC Summer Music Institute.
SMI Students. Photo by Michel Dozois
This morning I was sitting in a huge backstage rehearsal hall for the Canadian Conductors Workshop, in which five young conductors come from across Canada to work with American conducting teacher Kenneth Kiesler.
They also get to practice their craft on none other than the National Arts Centre Orchestra. For three days in rehearsal, this is the orchestra these young conductors have, quite literally, at their fingertips.
At the workshop’s first session, one of the conductors, who had been leading the orchestra through the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, said he wasn’t getting out of the orchestra quite what he had in mind.
“If there’s a problem on the outside, check yourself first,” Kenneth said.
I love watching master teachers work with young artists, maybe because I used to be one. For three years I trained at George Brown Theatre School. It was an extremely intense program. But what I loved most about it was how great teachers forced us to lock in on the moment, paring away all that was extraneous to what we were trying to express.
I also loved that inevitably, what emerged when working with these teachers were not only lessons on acting, but on what it means to be a human being.
Which brings me back to Kenneth’s little gem:
“If there’s a problem on the outside, check yourself first.”
Most of us could probably take quite a lot from that statement. Is it a variation on the Golden Rule? Yes.
A lesson on how to get along with your co-workers, your partner, your family? Absolutely.
And of course, as I learned today, it can help you conduct an orchestra.
