Shattering the Silence 2011 is quickly approaching. Here’s a copy of the poster.

Click here for a larger pdf version.

The Williams College Department of Music presents The Symphonic Winds and Opus Zero Band directed by Steven Dennis Bodner on Friday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. in Chapin Hall on the Williams College campus. This free event is open to the public.

The Symphonic Winds will present the New England premieres of two works for band and electronics—one which rises (James Mobberley's Ascension) and one which falls (Derek Charke's Falling from Cloudless Skies)—as well as a piece which obstinately stays in place (Armando Bayolo's Fanfare: Treadmill). These three works, each in its own way, reveal both the powerful virtuosity and fragile transparency of the modern wind band. Rounding out the program will be two chamber works, David Lang's Increase and Brian Simachik's Like a Man. For this program, the Opus Zero Band and Symphonic Winds will be joined by the Handbell Quintet, as well as student conductors Chaz Lee '11 and Noah Fields '11.

Williams Symphonic Winds

Here are three recent press releases for Cercle du Nord III with the Kronos Quartet in Maine and Raga Cha with flutist Laura Barron in Vancouver. Quoted here in part, please click the links to see the full articles.

Portland Ovations Begins 2010-11 Season Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Posted: 07:09 PM - by BWW News Desk

The series, Traverser la Frontière, which is programming that celebrates the diversity of artists from Canada and Maine's shared heritage, includes the afore mentioned circus acrobat Jamie Adkins' and his one-man-show entitled Circus INcognitus, the French-Acadian sounds of the four-member female ensemble Gadelle, and a work by Canadian composer Derek Charke as part of Kronos Quartet's program, Music Without Borders. link

A focus on the new, and the new to Vancouver Concerts from the Turning Point Ensemble and Music On Main bring some adventure to the autumn program
By David Gordon Duke, Special To The Sun
Vancouver Sun
September 30, 2010 1:17 AM

A lavish assortment of events begins at Music on Main ground zero, Heritage Hall, with flutist Laura Barron and friends playing Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint, as well as works by Derek Charke, Arvo Part, and Radiohead. A late show has pianist David Jalbert tackling J.S. Bach's monumental Goldberg Variations. link

Music on Main's Modulus Festival aims to recharge chamber music By Alexander Varty
Georgia Straight
September 30, 2010

Other Modulus Festival participants are hoping to achieve something similar. Vancouver musician Laura Barron, whose 10-piece Flauto Perpetuo ensemble opens proceedings at Heritage Hall on Thursday night (September 30), wants to redefine audience perception of the flute by tackling a program of bold and unconventional sounds, running from Reich’s Vermont Counterpoint to Derek Charke’s percussive Raga Cha to arrangements of songs by Radiohead and Imogen Heap. “This is music that I think belongs together,” says Barron, by phone from her home. “I’m excited to demonstrate to audiences the classical and substantial qualities of Radiohead and also the very inclusive and catchy and popular qualities that something like the Reich might have. “We also wanted to truly exploit the timbres that are available from the flute,” she adds. “That’s always a challenge for those of us that play monochromatic treble instruments—but by including bass and alto flutes, and piccolo, we can get that full, orchestrated effect.” link

ART GALLERY PRESENTS TIDELINES - AN INTEGRATED PRESENTATION

September 23, 2010

Tidelines, conceptualized by photographer Dick Groot, is an integrated presentation of music, poetry, and photography inspired by the tidal landscape of Minas Basin. The central component of the exhibition is a large mobile with 32 suspended photographs, from Dick Groot's Tidescape series, a project in a continuing state of becoming.

The emotion engendered by the tidal landscape is reflected in recorded poetry and music integrated into a soundscape designed specifically for this exhibition by composer Derek Charke. The poetry is by Dutch poet Onno Kosters with the work of the late John Frederick Herbin. Michael Bawtree and Paula Rockwell with voice students Kyla Cook, Rosanna Harris, Haley Watson read the poetry, recorded by Carl Anderson with Stephen Naylor as Sound Installation consultant.

The audience experiences the photographs, poetry and soundscape simultaneously. As they are walking through the mobile to the view the photography, the whole structure moves suggesting the motion of the tides.

The exhibition will be view on from September 10 - October 22, 2010. An artist roundtable with Dick Groot, Derek Charke and Onno Kosters will be held on October 2, 2pm.
Established in 1978 the Acadia University Art Gallery presents a year-round exhibition program of historical and contemporary art.

For more information contact:

Acadia University Art Gallery
Tel: 902-585-1373
Email: artgallery@acadiau.ca
Web: http://gallery.acadiau.ca

There was a great turnout for the launch of Tidelines Installation last night at the Acadia Art Gallery.

Be sure to drop by the installation between now and October 22. There will be an artist roundtable on Sat. Oct. 2 at 2 p.m.

Acadia Art Gallery

New studio recording of Song of the Tides has been posted. Click here to listen. Mark Hopkins, conductor with the Acadia University Wind Ensemble. Rod Sneddon was the recording engineer. This work will be on an upcoming CD featuring the Acadia Wind Ensemble. More news will be posted when this CD is available.

A low brass recital featuring the world premiere performance of a new work by Nova Scotia composer Derek Charke will take place July 18, 2:30 pm at the Steel Recital Hall, UPEI, Charlottetown. It will feature Eric Mathis, Dale Sorensen, trombones; Bob Nicholson, bass trombone/tuba; Gregory Irvine, tuba; and Frances McBurnie, piano Read More...

Charke.com has been completely overhauled. The old site was becoming unwieldy and hard to manage. Ultimately it was taking more time to maintain than I wanted it to, and mostly because the format was a bit outdated and less flexible than I would have liked. This new site has been created using RapidWeaver, which I find rather intuitive to work with. You can sign-up to the new RSS feed for the news. I don't post material that often, so there is no worry of inundating your inbox with loads of material.

Because the website has been reworked, most of the old URL addresses have changed. Please take a moment to update any links that you might have had to this site. I've redirected some of the old links, and others should simply direct you to the home page.

A demo recording of Oikos / Ecos, a new work that was premiered by soprano Janice Jackson at Shattering the Silence 2010, has been posted. Oikos refers to the Greek word for our home. The text is personal responses to various news articles.

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Aurora Dances has been completely revised and updated as of May, 2010. This new version is (1) for a smaller and more practical orchestra and (2) has been reworked slightly, both harmonically and more important, structurally. Overall the work flows better. Three minutes of music were ultimately removed, and several ideas were completely reworked. The work is essentially the same, but hopefully flows better and is structurally more consistent. Both the score and parts will be available from the Canadian Music Centre by the end of May, 2010.

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Vancouver Courier

For the latest installment of Western Front's Clamour! series, Laura Barron and Liesa Norman, a.k.a. Forbidden Flutes, deliver a program of original works and arrangements of Imogen Heap and Radiohead paired with Canadian composer Derek Charke's "Raga Cha" and Steve Reich's "Vermont Counterpoint." We don't write this stuff. The flute-friendly affair goes down April 22, 5-7 p.m., at Grand Luxe Hall (303 E 8th Ave). $10 at the door.

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The Dr. Fred Prince Memorial Instrument Collection, a dedication concert featuring the Acadia University Wind Ensemble, will be held on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Festival Theatre, Acadia University, Wolfville. Mark Hopkins is the conductor and Mark Adam the percussion soloist. Prince, who was born in 1928 and died on June 4, 2009, was a general practitioner in Bridgewater for over 50 years. As a trustee and later chairman of the South Shore School Board, he was the driving force behind the implementation of school music programs and the formation of several community and school band programs, including the Bridgewater Firemen’s Band.

The concert features the percussion concerto Tongues of Fire by Toronto composer Christos Hatzis and Falling from Cloudless Skies by Derek Charke, an Acadia University composition professor.

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"Darwin's Origin of Species is not only one of the most important scientific works of all time, but one of the most beautifully written. In The Origin Cycle, eight contemporary composers from Australia set fragments of Darwin's great book to music, for performance by soprano Jane Sheldon and a chamber ensemble.This one took place in Halifax and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and featured the regions best chamber musicians."

Listen to a CBC Concerts on Demand recording. I was playing flute in the ensemble. And if you're wondering; they used a picture from a different performance on their website!

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Symphony Nova Scotia has just posted their 2010/2011 season. It includes a new 30 minute work that I'm starting on shortly!

Thursday April 7, 2011, 7:30 pm
Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, Dalhousie Arts Centre

This concert will also be performed Sunday April 10, 2011 as an Encore Matinee. Featuring: Robert Uchida, violin, Bernhard Gueller, conductor

Derek Charke: TBA (movements to include themes on Coal, Wind, Water, and Oil)
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D

Symphony Nova Scotia concertmaster Robert Uchida takes on Brahms’ fiery Violin Concerto, one of the most challenging concertos ever written for violin. We’ll also hear a brand-new work by acclaimed Nova Scotia composer Derek Charke, who uses the theme of climate change and power consumption in Nova Scotia to create an innovative, acoustic-electronic soundscape.

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Global Beat Fusion: Kronos Quartet's New York Tundra Derek Beres / Global music
photojournalist/DJ/producer, novelist, yoga instructor

"It was 12:45 when we finally stood, after being wrapped into Tundra mythology with the five movements of Derek Charke's commissioned piece for Kronos Quartet. When Charke, who has lived in the Arctic before, was asked to write it, he was immediately trekked to Nunavut, the northernmost edge of Canada, to record shrimp, krill, seals, ice, and ravens. These noises were sprinkled in throughout.

Nunavut is the size of Western Europe and houses less than 30,000 people. Looking at pictures of it reminds me Werner Herzog's documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, a place where humans can only live three or four months a year. So it was fitting that Kronos asked Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq to perform the vocal "parts" of Charke's piece. You often could not tell whether it was the seals and ravens that he recorded or Tagaq herself, which was the point. Her music is so outrageously unexplainable that while even if you can't bear to listen to some of it, you're intrigued and can't turn away. That's the sense I had when listening to her latest album, Auk/Blood, which featured Mike Patton, himself one of the more outlandish vocalists of our time.

Hearing Tagaq vocalize (while some of it is singing, that's really not the proper word) is a lesson in breath control. She is able to both utilize inhale and exhale, not to mention retention, with its own unique tone, while employing the overtone of a second "voice" to the mix. It is a ritual technique for entering trance, a state she most definitely reached while the four men nimbly ran over Charke's composition. The closest thing to compare Tagaq to is Bjork's Medulla phase, a no-brainer considering Tagaq sings on that record and toured the album with her."

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MUSIC REVIEW | KRONOS QUARTET From the Top of the World: Warmth Amid Ice By ALLAN KOZINN Published: March 14, 2010

"The Kronos and Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat singer from Nunavut, the Canadian territory, closed the program with Derek Charke’s “Tundra Songs,” a rich-textured five-movement work in which a combination of slowly unfolding, consonant string writing, Ms. Tagaq’s athletic vocalizations, and manipulated recordings of arctic sounds (ice cracking, raven calls, seals) evoke the change of the northern seasons and tell the story of Sedna, an Inuit goddess who is described, in Ms. Tagaq’s narration, as the foremother of humanity."

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The Acadia University Wind Ensemble, under the leadership of Mark Hopkins, premieres a new version of "Falling From Cloudless Skies" at the College Band Director’s National Association Northeast Conference.

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"On March 13 Kronos concludes an evening devoted to music from the Arctic Circle with the New York premiere of Canadian composer Derek Charke’s Tundra Songs featuring the raw, primal music-making of Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq." (From Carnegie Hall News)

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Tiresias is pleased to announce preparations for a new CD, Halos of the Moon, to be released on Redshift Records. This new project celebrates the cultural ties between Canada and Japan. Being both descended from Japanese-European ancestry, Iwaasa and McGregor have been fascinated with the concept of cultural hybridity since they began collaborating together. This CD will feature works that define Japanese-Canadian music from different angles: the album will feature works by Canadian composers Elliot Weisgarber, Hiroki Tsurumoto, Kara Gibbs, Anthony Genge, and Derek Charke, as well as Japanese composers Toru Takemitsu and Jo Kondo. This project was the recipient of generous funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Hear the complete performances with the Winnipeg Symphony and Tanya Tagaq at CBC Concerts on Demand:

Falling from Cloudless Skies - Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra
Cercle du Nord III - Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Tanya Tagaq
13 Inuit Throat Song Games - Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Tanya Tagaq
WARNING! Gustnadoes Ahead - Michelle Cheramy, flute and cd

"Canadian composer Derek Charke's 13 Inuit Throat Song Games, composed originally for the Kronos Quartet and re-envisioned for this concert, consists of thirteen evocative slices of Inuit life. Its 13 sections, with suggestive titles like Dogs and Story of a Goose, each flow into the next as one organic entity. The barefooted Tagaq's throaty voice provided both counterpoint as well as rising above the strings like a howling wolf."

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Some photos from the Winnipeg New Music Festival:


Steven Stucky, Derek Charke and Alexander Mickelthwate


Derek Charke, Tanya Tagaq Gillis & Vincent Ho


Pauline and Derek


Giving a lecture at FortWhyte Alive

"Also premiered were two arctic-themed pieces by Canadian composers. Derek Charke's “Falling From Cloudless Skies” was an enjoyable blend of electronics and orchestra. While the musicians played, Charke focused on his laptop, carefully executing more than 200 recorded sounds. The piece began with synthesized sounds and a mild pulse. Suddenly, it became chaotic as the audience was assaulted with full force chaos of the orchestra. There was a surprise when a recorded voice reported that a six-pound chunk of ice fell from the sky and that this and other extreme atmospheric events may be associated with climate change. The strings began undulating and the music took on a movie soundtrack quality. By the end of the piece, the orchestra sound had thinned out and the electronics had more prominently returned. It had an open feeling — perhaps the sky's relief after letting loose its ice chunks."

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Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival "Breaking New Ground"

I'm honoured to be invited as one of the Distinguished Guest Composers for this year's Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival. My wife and I will be in Winnipeg for the entire festival. On Sat. Feb. 6 the Winnipeg Symphony will perform the world premiere of Falling from Cloudless Skies, and on Thur. Feb. 11, Tanya Tagaq will join the symphony in performing two new arrangements of 13 Inuit Throat Song Games and Cercle du Nord III, which were originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. As part of a SOCAN residency grant I will also be participating in the Arctic Climate Change Youth Forum 2010 at FortWhyte Alive in Winnipeg on February 5, 2010, and will visit the University of Manitoba to give a talk on my music.

"Distinguished Canadian guest composer Derek Charke will debut Falling from Cloudless Skies. He has a special interest in acoustic ecology and the study of environmental sound. His experiences in the Arctic and concern for the state of the environment crystallize in his work. "Composers and sound artists can't recreate nature but they can shine a spotlight on it," he wrote."

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By Alexander Varty Georgia Straight
At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, January 30

"...This time around, the string quartet commissioned Derek Charke to create a score for the five players; between his deep understanding of the North and the band's growing comfort with their guest, Tundra Songs was every bit the masterpiece first violinist David Harrington had promised." Read More...

Composer Derek Charke headed to the ice floes to create Tundra Songs for the Kronos Quartet and throat singer Tanya Tagaq By Alexander Varty Georgia Straight in Vancouver.

"When he was asked to write a new piece, Tundra Songs, for the Kronos Quartet and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, composer Derek Charke knew that he'd have to make the physical presence of the North a central feature. So he donned a parka, hopped a flight, and got busy.

The end product, Tagaq reports, has lived up to Charke's hopes and exceeded her expectations.
"Derek gives me cues throughout the piece about when to sing, " she says, on the line from Yellowknife. "But he doesn't really tell me what to sing, so it's pretty open. I'm really fortunate that way, in that most people allow me to have my artistic freedom.

"I can really feel my home in the piece," she adds. "He nailed it on the head. He's brilliant."

The Kronos Quartet's leader and first violinist, David Harrington, agrees. "It's really one of the major, spectacular pieces that has ever been written for Kronos, I would say -- and I think it's a breakthrough piece for Derek Charke, too," he offers, reached at the quartet's San Francisco office. "It's fun to play; I think there's kind of an elemental quality to the music, and to the collaboration. It feels really great, to me."

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January 28 to 30, 2010

NewFound Music VII: Crossing Boundaries MUN's annual mid-winter festival celebrating the music of our time with concerts, workshops and seminars. Explorations of new classical music under the influence of rock, pop, jazz and world music, visual art or social issues. A side trip to the music of South America. Guest-composer-in-residence will be Derek Charke. Presented in collaboration with SOCAN.

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Thank you to everyone involved in our 4th annual Acadia New Music Festival, Shattering the Silence. It was a great success! Today however, I'm off to St. John's, Newfoundland to be a part of the Newfound Music Festival, where, as part of a SOCAN residency grant, I'll give a couple of school presentations, a talk on my own music and a lecture on Acoustic Ecology. Additionally I'm playing two of my own pieces for flute and electronics and giving a flute mastercasss. I'm looking forward to being a part of this, and meeting the students and other musicians.

A review of a Symphony Nova Scotia concert held on Jan. 7 by Stephen Pederson.

"...Charke's four Inuit Throat Singing Games (chosen from a longer compilation) was chiefly remarkable for the use of bowing techniques (circular bowing and a kind of scrubbing up and down), in imitation of the throaty, scratchy, in-breath and out-breath voicings of Inuit throat singers. ..."

Upcoming performance on January 7th with Symphony Nova Scotia and the New Music Network – part of their Forum 2010 being held in Halifax on Jan. 7 – 9, 2010.
Canadian composers unveil new music at Dunn Thursday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Sir James Dunn Theatre

Symphony Nova Scotia partners with the Canadian New Music Network, Upstream Music Association and Vocalypse Productions to present New Music for a New Year, a concert of all-new Canadian music on Thursday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Sir James Dunn Theatre, Halifax. Conducted by Symphony Nova Scotia Music Director Bernhard Gueller, it features six diverse works for orchestra by composers Mark Armanini, Sandeep Baghwati, Jérôme Blais, Tim Brady, Paul Cram, and Derek Charke.The performance also serves as the opening event of the Canadian New Music Network's international Forum 2010 conference, Partnering Diversity. Cram's Beyond Benghazi is a collision of jazz improvisation and high-energy orchestral composition, while Charke's Inuit Throat Singing Games crosses cultural boundaries into the North. Armanini's Heartland features erhu player Lan Tung, Blais' Dremlen Feigl oyf di tsvaygn is sung in Yiddish by Halifax's Janice Jackson and Brady's Three or Four Days After the Death of Kurt Cobain uses music from the Nirvana song Smells Like Teen Spirit. Tickets are $20, $15 and $10, and are available at the box office at 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669 or online at http://artscentre.dal.ca.