Coming up soon! The world premiere of my ‘Concerto Grosso’, and a premiere of one of my composition students from Acadia, Lucas Oickle’s ‘Constellations’. The Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra, conducted by Dinuk Wijeratne. At Acadia University on Sat. April 27 (7 pm), and in Halifax at St. Andrew’s Church on Sun. April 28 (7 pm).

Check it out! http://www.novascotiayouthorchestra.com

MARCH 12, 2013, TORONTO, ON - Centrediscs, the recording label of the Canadian Music Centre, is thrilled to congratulate CMC Associate Composer Derek Charke on winning the “Classical Composition of the Year” at the 2013 East Coast Music Awards for his work … between the shore and the ships… from the album Between the Shore and the Ships. Helen Pridmore, soprano, and Wesley Ferreira, clarinetist, were also awarded an East Coast Music Award for their work on Between the Shore and the Ships for “Classical Recording of the Year.”

Read the full release here: http://musiccentre.ca/node/71160

My work, “Between the Shore and the Ships” won the 2013 ECMA Award for Classical Composition of the Year!

As well, the album, by the same title, was awarded Classical Recording of the Year. Congrats to everyone involved with this project!

Northern artists to take over Ottawa for spring festival

Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq performing live alongside a screening of the iconic Canadian film Nanook of the North is one of the high-profile performances of the Northern Scene cultural festival in Ottawa this spring.

Tagaq’s performance alongside the 1922 silent film casts a contemporary light on the film, considered a significant landmark in recording the lives of Inuit people. Her soundscape incorporates improvisation by Jesse Zubot and Jean Martin, as well as Derek Charke’s original score.

Read the full article

New Music Festival drew more than 6,500
Winnipeg Free Press

“… Glennie's performance of The Shaman, by WSO composer-in-residence Vincent Ho, will be part of the WSO's performance at the Spring For Music Festival at Carnegie Hall in New York in May 2014. The orchestra's Carnegie program will also include Derek Charke's 13 Inuit Throat Song Games, featuring throat singer Tanya Tagaq, as well as R. Murray Schafer's Symphony No. 1.”

Read the full article

My work “… Between the Shore and the Ships …” has been nominated for ‘classical composition of the year’ at the East Coast Music Awards, 2013. Congrats also to Jérôme Blais, Bob Bauer, Scott Macmillan, and Steven Naylor, who are also nominated, as are Helen M. Pridmore, and Wesley Ferreira for Classical Recording of the Year. Good luck everyone!

A winter celebration of new music
BY STEPHEN PEDERSEN

January is new music month in Nova Scotia.

Upstream Music’s three-day Open Waters New Music Festival ended in mid-month, a Musikon concert followed soon afterwards, and Scott Macmillan premiered his first symphony Monday night.

As a grand finale, Acadia University is leapfrogging into February with its 6th annual Shattering the Silence New Music Festival — five days of concerts, lectures and master classes featuring student, faculty and guest artist performances from Jan. 30 to Feb. 3.

Read the full article

For Immediate Release January 9, 2013

The Acadia New Music Society presents Shattering the Silence 2013

Wolfville, NS – The Acadia New Music Society proudly presents the Sixth Annual Acadia New Music Festival, “Shattering the Silence” January 30 to February 3 on the campus of Acadia University.

This year, Shattering the Silence welcomes one of the defining voices of his generation, Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Michael Colgrass (http://www.michaelcolgrass.com). During his residency Mr. Colgrass will lecture, lead workshops, and coach students, professional and Acadia Faculty musicians as they prepare and perform his music.

We are also pleased to introduce the Maritimes to Montreal's extraordinary Quasar Saxophone Quartet (http://quasar4.com) as headline performers and soloists.

All told there will be 18 World Premieres of new works by regional composers and regional professional musicians as part of the Festival. There will be six main concerts, two mini concerts with the Acadia Gamelan, and various masterclass and lecture opportunities.

Highlights include a recital by Quasar on Friday night, and a New Music Kitchen Party on Sunday. On Saturday Feb 2 all three forces – Acadia & Nova Scotia musicians, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, and Michael Colgrass – join to perform Colgrass's epic concerto ‘Urban Requiem’ for saxophone quartet and wind ensemble, under the tutelage of the composer himself.

Shattering the Silence, Co-Directed by Derek Charke and Mark Hopkins, is rapidly becoming known as the most interesting and innovative new music festival on the east coast. Through fifteen events over five days, Shattering the Silence celebrates the joy of creating and performing new music, presenting compelling performances for 21st Century ears.

Events take place on the campus of Acadia University in the town Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Tickets for all shows are available at the door. For a full schedule with dates, times locations, artists, and ticketing information visit www.shatteringthesilence.ca

Musicworks Magazine has published a particularly lucid article––written by composer WL Altman––about my music; and in particular highlighting my work with northern sounds, the Kronos Quartet, and Tanya Tagaq.

The current issue also features composers Jean-François Laporte, Cassandra Miller, and Rose Bolton.

Preview this issue (including Altman’s full article) online at: http://issuu.com/musicworksmagazine/docs/issue113_preview/15

Derek Charke—writes for Kronos Quartet in the Arctic, page 20, track 3 by WL Altman

Juno-award winning classical composer Derek Charke is an accomplished flautist, composer, and professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. His music is characterized by the use of tonal material in unusual ways, his ability to let the musical materials determine the formal structure, and the incorporation the “wrong note” in the right place—a technique he picked up while studying with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam. What sets his work apart more than anything else is his use of the sounds of the Arctic. A recent commission from the Kronos string quartet had him composing with recorded northern soundscapes and working with throat-singer Tanya Tagaq.

Johnathon Bakan
SF Asian Music Examiner (http://www.examiner.com)
May 15, 2012

“The entirety of the second half was devoted to one piece: “Tundra Songs” (2007) by composer Derek Charke. It featured the amazing and powerful voice of Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Tundra Songs is divided into five continuous movements each exploring a unique sound world. Based loosely on the four seasons, it uses extended bowing techniques to make the string quartet sound similar to Inuit throat singing.

This was very effective as it was often hard to grasp where the strings ended and the throat singing began. This is in part also due to Tanya Tagaq's extended range voice and unusual vocal techniques that made her sound like a human resonating string.

Was this a string quartet and vocal piece or was this a string quintet was always the question that often came up during the performance. In the middle of it all the dramatic tale of Inuit goddess Sedna who created all living things was recounted.

Tundra Songs also featured a soundtrack comprised of many field recordings the composer gleaned in the Arctic north. The sound of ice breaking, ravens wings and shrieking, whale sounds, a dog sled race, and snow mobiles to name a few interwove themselves into the sonic fabric.

Tundra Songs was very effective in creating imagery in the mind of the listener. One could easily imagine the arctic tundra, open expanses, ice flow, and exotic wildlife. Although Tundra Songs was lengthy, there was never a dull moment it was the kind of sound that one would want to go on and on all night if it could.

“Women's Voices” was a delightful success. It provided the maximum value for the entertainment dollar, chock full of memorable performances, interesting exotic instruments, unusual sound worlds, top-shelf musicianship, and the finest compositions.

Hopefully, it will tour to other cities in the future and become more widely known and celebrated.”

For the full article please click here.

Stephen Smoliar
SF Classical Music Examiner (http://www.examiner.com)
May 12, 2012

“The other vocal offering was the Bay Area premiere of Derek Charke’s Tundra Songs, featuring the Inuit performer Tanya Tagaq. The composition was structured in five movements, following the annual cycle of seasons from winter through spring, summer, and fall, to the anticipation of the next winter. Tagaq performed primarily through a broad repertoire of vocalizations, creating sonorities that blended intimately with the sounds of the quartet and their electronic context. Text only emerged in the middle movement, in which she shifted from vocalizing to spoken storytelling.

As was the case in much of Võ’s score, Charke’s music involves evocation of the natural world. It is programmatic to an extent that one could almost imagine it as the soundtrack of a film portraying the natural setting of tundra geography for each of the seasons in his cycle. Here again the overall rhetoric was a quiet one, owing much to the effectiveness with which all the contributing sonorities created an integrated, and highly distinct, atmosphere.”

For the full article please click here.

Sepia Fragments won a JUNO award for ‘Classical Composition of the Year’.

For a complete list of nominees click here.


Accepting the award in Ottawa.


Shawn Bostick (Director of the Atlantic CMC) and Derek Charke (Juno Award Ceremony in Ottawa)


Pauline and Derek Charke (Juno Award Ceremony in Ottawa)


Derek Charke and Christina Petrowska Quilico, who gave a performance of Sepia Fragments, arranged for piano on 30/03/2012 at the National Arts Centre Main Lobby for ‘Classical JUNOS in Concert’.


Derek Charke at the parliament buildings (Ottawa) after a performance of Sepia Fragments with Dr. Andrea McCrady, Dominion Carillonneur.


Watch the acceptance speech.

A few reviews from the premiere of Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra:

"A full house (almost) at Roy Thomson Hall—for a concert of New Music? Yes! And standing ovations that wouldn’t quit for the première of Derek Charke’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra? Too right! Charke’s music is eclectic, hectic and sometimes electric. The concerto’s finale is a post-climactic mix of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing mournfully, while out of the speaker system issue loud chords by Kronos String Quartet infused into a taped soundscape of eerie narwhal and ring seal vocalizations that is simply beautiful. It prepares a silence that is the hallmark of a fulfilled audience resting before an explosion of appreciation. Backing up from the concerto’s finale we find ourselves excited by a toe-tapping, percussive frenzy of rhythms driving in successive, serialist waves that rock the room like its back ain’t got no bone. And backing up towards the beginning we get broken bits of sound and silence that gather into oscillating melodies broken by guttural grunts, yells and cries by Kronos. Listening backwards or forwards, Charke’s music is about the freedom to be an individual, and the audience got it." Opus One Review by Stanley Fefferman (March 4, 2012) Read the full article here

"This composition was a gem of musical genius, embodying a vast variety of diverse emotions and themes into a single piece. The final descent from celebration led into a darker and mysterious theme featuring the soundscape technique with distinct seal, whale and dolphin sounds. This immense sense of imagination and imagery concluded the piece, earning the performers and the composer a well-deserved standing ovation." Bachtrack.com by Daniel Frasca (March 4, 2012) Read the full article here

"With this concerto, Charke staked out a vast sound-world as his musical territory. His horizons are very broad – encompassing not just the fragmented syntax of Widmann or the subtle timbres of Eotvos, but also familiar modal harmonies, a steady, danceable beat and even a dash of Hollywood film-score glitz. As if that weren’t enough, there was also some shouting from the orchestra players, and prerecorded seals and narwhals from Nunavut." The Globe and Mail by Colin Eatock (March 7, 2012) Read the full article here

‘Sepia Fragments’ composed for the St. Lawrence String Quartet has been nominated for a JUNO award in the category of ‘Classical composition of the year’.

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra announced Monday that it is one of six major regional orchestras heading to the famous New York City venue in 2014 for the fourth annual Spring for Music (S4M) festival. The orchestra plans to perform pieces from its New Music Festival, including Derek Charke’s 13 Inuit Throat Song Games featuring throat singer Tanya Tagaq, WSO Composer-in-Residence Vincent Ho’s The Shaman: Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra featuring Dame Evelyn Glennie as well as R. Murray Schafer’s Symphony No. 1.



The full article can be found at the Winnipeg Free Press

The 5-Penny New Music Ensemble, a group comprised of some of Sudbury’s leading musicians, will be giving the next concert in the 5-Penny Concert Series. The concert is on Saturday, Feb. 4, at 8 pm at St. Peter’s United Church, Sudbury. General admission for each concert is $20 and $15 for students and seniors.  Tickets are available at Black Cat, 96 Durham Street, Sudbury, or at the door.  The debut of this ensemble, which includes violinists Christian Robinson and Geoff McCausland, violist Jane Russell, cellist Alexandra Lee, flautist Myriam Valley, and pianist Yoko Hirota, represents a new phase in programming for the series. It will serve as a core unit that will perform masterworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in future seasons. For its inaugural concert, the ensemble will perform music by Canadian composers. Works will include “Surface” for solo flute by Brian Harman (World premiere), “Five Pieces” for flute and cello by Alice Ho (Canadian premiere), “Piano Piece No. 1” by Brian Current, “Adagio and Rondo, op. 3” for string quartet by Jacques Hétu, “Rolling” for solo piano by Laurie Radford, “Flute Quartet” for flute and strings by Derek Charke, and “Territoires intérieurs” for piano and strings by Robert Lemay. 

By Michael MacLennan
15 May 2011 13:48 GMT

“Finally it was the truly inimitable Tanya Tagaq who joined the Kronos Quartet for an entire mini-set, who before and after performance was obviously delighted to be in attendance and so rapturously received by the audience, looking demure and smiling sweetly. But for the duration of Tundra Songs, oh my! Almost impossible to take your eyes off as she took centre-stage in between the quartet, gutturally growling and moaning rapidly heavy-breathing and gyrating and crooning and then calmly narrating and at all times looking as though she was locked in some sort of trance state, the Canadian’s skills in Inuit throat-singing allowing a development into something quite extraordinary as the Kronos Quartet provided swirling, engrossing accompaniment and kayak, paddle and other natural recorded sounds ricocheting around them. It was an epic sweep with which to end the night, and entirely fitting when over the course of a couple of hours the audience been exhilaratingly flung around several far corners of the globe.”

Read the full article here

By STEPHEN PEDERSEN
Concert Review

© Sat, Apr 9, 2011, Chronicle Herald, Halifax


Derek Charke and Bernhard Gueller Backstage after the premiere of Symphony No. 1

It was blockbuster night for Symphony Nova Scotia on Thursday at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium.

Only two pieces filled the program, which will be repeated Sunday at 2 p.m., the world premiere of Derek Charke’s Symphony No. 1 Transient Energies and the great Brahms Violin Concerto.

Both challenged the limits of possibility, though by now the Brahms, written in 1878 and initially considered unplayable, is standard repertoire for college level violinists.

Certainly concertmaster Robert Uchida made it sound, well, not easy, but formidable still, though he transformed each of the profound technical challenges into artistic opportunities for ever-deeper musical expression.

Charke’s challenge was to integrate sounds associated with energy production from wind, water, oil and internal combustion, into a contemporary symphonic palette of instrumental colour, rhythmic invention and electronic manipulation.

And he had to guide his audience’s attention span, challenged even by the sweetly sonorous soundscape of the Brahms and much more so by contemporary music where the safety rope of intelligible melody has been heartlessly swept away.

Charke took care of this, partly, by means of unexpected changes of direction and tireless building and rebuilding musical momentum, all packaged into a tightly knit, four-movement score of unusual length.

His ear for instrumental tone as well as the shimmering timbres of natural sounds of automobiles, wind turbines, flowing water, gurgling oil, shovelled coal and the clatter of trains over buzzing steel rails is amazingly acute and all-inclusive.

Charke’s ability to extract rhythmic episodes from subtle sonic hints was paid for with hours of listening and the compilation of 450 sound files, some reproduced as recorded, others subjected to state-of-the-art digital manipulation, and all of it accumulated into a mind-boggling mass of musical material.

Consistently and forcefully, Charke marshalled them into order, while maintaining firm artistic control of imagery, shape and playability.

Moments of extraordinary tranquility, as in the mystical vision at the end of the hectic fourth movement, echoed through the Mahler-esque cello solo, played so expressively by principal cellist Norman Adams in the melancholy first movement.

The sound image of cars swooping by on a busy Highway 101 outside Kentville began the first movement and returned at the end of the fourth to diminish into the silence of vanishing momentum, a strangely sad sound.

The orchestra played the score like the musical Olympians they are when meeting such a challenge. Bernhard Gueller, the symphony’s music director, maintained control with an extremely light but unalterably sure touch.

Resident conductor Martin MacDonald sat at a small table back of the cellos, furnished with a notebook computer screen and a controller with eight pads on it that allowed him to play the prepared electronic score with the timing of a trained musician.

After intermission, the opening measures of the Brahms concerto, radiant with warmth and dark-tone colour, took us into the 19th century sound world as quickly as a click of the mouse on a computer.

Before long Uchida, Gueller and the orchestra revealed the details woven by Brahms into musical tapestries alive with subtle colour and melodic variation.

The controversy that raged around Brahms’ head in his day between his "absolute" music and the "program" music of Berlioz and Liszt is long gone. Yet, in a curious way, the complexities of Brahms’ musical invention, and the pictures deliberately painted by the tone painting of some of his contemporaries, was unselfconsciously combined in Charke’s music of more than a century later.

Whatever energized that somewhat abstract debate in the musical politics of the 19th century has yielded, in the 21st, to the growing confidence of contemporary composers in the art of organic musical invention, where everything is made new, and impossibility is seen only as opportunity.

(spedersen@ns.sympatico.ca)

Stephen Pedersen is a freelance arts writer who lives in Halifax.

Charke brings Transient Energies to the symphony
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN

© 2011-04-06, Chronicle Herald, Halifax

Symphony Nova Scotia brings the outside world into the concert hall on Thursday.

In a concert, which also features concertmaster Robert Uchida playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, the orchestra premieres its latest commissioned work, Transient Energies, by Acadia University flutist-composer Derek Charke.

Charke integrated more than 400 recordings of traffic, wind turbines, water gurgling and coal being shovelled into a 40-minute, four-movement symphony with an environmental, energy-inspired soundscape.

But the piece does not have an ecological purpose, Charke said in a Saturday afternoon interview in Halifax.

"I’m using environmental sounds, sounds which have been derived from energy production in Nova Scotia, but I have no environmental agenda with this piece," he said.

Charke took his microphone and digital recorder to capture the sounds of the diesel generators in Acadia’s power plant, stood under giant wind turbines in Pubnico, hunched down in a ditch beside heavily travelled Highway 101. He pointed his microphone at running water on the Bay of Fundy’s tidal flats, squeezed a bottle of ketchup to get that gulping sound that oil also makes when poured, recorded trains clacking over the tracks and even shovelled small rocks and gravel in his backyard to suggest shifting coal.

With 450 files of what he calls "power sounds," Charke spent hours listening, cataloguing and manipulating their pitches.

"There are various levels of processing the sounds," he said. "The first is just the raw sound, which makes its way into the piece at points where you hear just that. The traffic is one of them. Water is another, the sound of the wind turbine another. Many other sounds make their way in maybe for only a couple of seconds, electric saws, for example."

Charke began to manipulate the sounds after listening long and closely to understand the characteristics of each sound, the rhythms that can be related to it, for example.

"At one moment, the train sound comes in and several layers of things happen and (conductor) Bernhard Gueller has to ignore the soundtrack to make sure it does not affect the tempo of the orchestral sounds," he said.

"The last movement is a large scale accelerando, which starts at a slower pace and gradually builds up to a climax. Bernhard has to go through something like 15 tempo changes in it."

The four movements are titled Highways (eight minutes), Dis-shovel’d (nine minutes), Rotations (11 minutes) and Crude (12 minutes).

Charke has written several other long works, the 30-minute Tundra Songs commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet, a 20-minute concerto for Kronos and the Toronto Symphony and, in 2009, Falling From Cloudless Skies, his first work for symphony orchestra with electronic soundscape that was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

"Transient Energies does have references to traditional symphonic structure," Charke said. "But I did not set out to imitate symphonic form. The material the orchestra is playing and each one of the movements is very different from the others. Each movement has its own form."

Audiences will find much in the piece that resonates with what they have heard before. But not exactly, given the electronic soundscape, he said.

"The actual shape of the piece, I think they are going to find that it is absolutely natural. I hope, I hope, you never know."

(spedersen@ns.sympatico.ca)

Stephen Pedersen is a freelance arts writer who lives in Halifax.

BY KATE GALLAGHER, TC DAILY PLANET
February 16, 2011

Friday’s program opened with Derek Charke's Cercle du Nord III, a piece written for Kronos that begins with the sounds of the Canadian far north: sled dogs barking, wind howling, boots crunching on snow, and then the sounds of civilization: truck tires on snow, a car door slamming. As the quartet began to play, a driving pace was established that continued throughout the work. I often find it difficult to visualize what instrumental music may be trying to suggest, even after reading the program notes, but as Cercle du Nord III took off, my mind was flooded with images of sled dogs racing across a vast frozen landscape, their panting and the sound of the paws breaking the crust on the snow the only noises to interrupt the frozen landscape. Even in this world the sounds of humanity were never far away; I was pulled from my imagined world by Inuit throat singing also featured prominently in the work. I had never heard throat singing before and was struck by the depth and intensity of the music.

Quoted in Part. Read the full article here: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/arts/kronos-quartet-walker-art-center-review

Sea to Sea
St. Lawrence String Quartet (Centrediscs)





In Sea to Sea, the St. Lawrence String Quartet (currently the resident string quartet at Stanford University in California) acknowledges its roots with six new compositions by Canadian composers. These tend to acknowledge their roots, too, referencing Canadian fiddle tunes and birdsong, Inuit folk songs and throat singers. This risks a certain provincialism – it’s a bit like sewing a Canadian flag on the back of one’s jacket – although at their best the allusions serve as mere points of departure, soon enough obscured. Derek Charke’s smeared lines and quivering textures have an immediate appeal; Brian Current’s Rounds is more bracingly abstract; Marcus Goddard contrasts whip-snapping exchanges with a delicate lyricism. The SLSQ plays with its trademark commitment, precision and fantasy, giving all the pieces a cosmopolitan polish.

© By Elissa Poole Link

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra Announces Its 90th Season (Jan 26, 2011 11:08 ET ) The TSO continues its tradition of orchestral commissions and première performances with four TSO 90th season commission premières. In the first programme of the 2012 New Creations Festival, TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian conducts the TSO and the Kronos Quartet in the world première of a TSO commission from Canadian composer Derek Charke, his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (Mar 3, 2012).

Click here for the full press release.
Click here to visit the TSO’s website.

Students and faculty from Acadia University say their music festival is different every year. This year, they pushed for variety by holding one of the events at a new location: the Seaport farmer's market.

Read the complete story: http://unews.ca/story/item/acadia-music-festival-hits-Halifax-market/

Just released: ‘Sea to Sea’ with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Includes “Sepia Fragments” by Derek Charke plus works by Brian Current, Suzanne Hérbert-Tremblay, Marcus Goddard and Elizabeth Raum.

SEA TO SEA
St. Lawrence String Quartet 
Various 
2010 Centrediscs / Centredisques 
CMCCD 16310 
Purchase

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

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...

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.

More Information

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.

More Information

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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"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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"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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"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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"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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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.

Kings arts - as of Nov. 3 by Wendy Elliott/The Advertiser
http://www.novanewsnow.com/article-395130-Kings-arts-as-of-Nov-3.html

"The St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) has established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation. Since winning both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1992, the quartet has delighted audiences with its passionate and dynamic performances and will be in Wolfville Nov. 13. The SLSQ is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new recording of Haydn and Dvorák quartets (two composers whose work will be featured at the Wolfville concert) through a partnership with the innovative company ArtistShare.com. In concert, the foursome regularly delivers traditional quartet repertoire, but is also fervently committed to performing and expanding the works of living composers. This season sees them performing new works by both John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov.

In 2008, following a nationwide search, Acadia’s Derek Charke was one of five Canadian composers, each representing a region of Canada, invited to create a new work celebrating the 20th anniversary. The SLSQ is delighted to have the opportunity to premiere this work in Atlantic Canada.

Violist Lesley Robertson is a founding member of the group, and hails from Edmonton. Cellist Christopher Costanza is from Utica, NY and joined the quartet in 2004. Violinists Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John both grew up in London Ontario; Geoff is a founding member and Scott joined in 2006. Depending on concert repertoire, the two alternate the role of first violin. All four members of the quartet live and teach at Stanford University in California. For tickets ($26 adults/$17 students), call the Acadia Box Office at 542-5500."

Written by Jason van Eyk Thursday, 29 October 2009 18:11

Quoted in part... be sure to read the full article here: http://thewholenote.com/

"The St. Lawrence was hard pressed to select just five composers from the trove of almost 90 submissions they received back in the fall of 2007, when this project as launched. “To hold in our hands such a body of work from Canadians, coast to coast, was tremendously inspiring,” said Robertson, who coordinated the project. In trimming the selection down to the final group, the quartet was struck again and again by the diversity, creativity and strength of all the submissions. But in the end, only five could be selected, and so composers Marcus Goddard, Elizabeth Raum, Brian Current, Suzanne Hébert-Tremblay and Derek Charke were invited to join the St. Lawrence’s Anniversary Commissioning Team. The resulting works are themselves as diverse as Canada itself.

"New Brunswick-born composer Derek Charke offers a musical journey from the present to the past in his Sepia Fragments. The work plays off of several quotations, both original and borrowed, that appear to be sometimes clear, sometimes blurred, like memories captured in a time capsule. Fiddle tunes and reels dissolve to fragments of harmonics and trills. Snippets of Shostakovich transition into parlour music. Tchaikovsky-inspired tunes gives way to Vietnamese folk melody."

In addition to this culminating concert, the St. Lawrence has opened their November 16 afternoon rehearsal to the public. Anyone wishing to attend this free session may benefit immensely by observing the interaction between the Quartet and the composers, some of who will be hearing their work for the first time. The session, which will run 1-4 pm in Walter Hall, will include demonstrations and conversation with the musicians and the Commissioning Team."

A remarkable night at Acadia’s Shattering the Silence By STEPHEN PEDERSEN Arts Reporter Sun. Feb 1, 2009

"Flutist/composer Derek Charke demonstrated his quality as both composer and performer Friday night on the third concert of Acadia University School of Music’s six-concert Shattering the Silence New Music Festival.
His Raga Cha for amplified flute quartet opened the program in Denton Hall by Acadia Faculty and Friends with captivating minimalism, featuring himself as well as flutists Chenoa Anderson, Jack Chen and Brenna Harriss. Charke led the ensemble with a series of chuffing bursts of air containing the merest hint of tone, played with exciting energy in a repetitive jazz-like rhythm. Chen echoed the chuffs while maintaining a machine-gun stream of short notes in step with Anderson and Harriss. The three flutes built a slowly unfolding harmonic spectrum over which Charke’s rhythmic thrusts danced and under which Anderson’s low-pitched alto flute painted a halo of resonance.

The admirable simplicity of the concept kept the audience riveted on catching the tiniest details.
On the second half, Charke returned to play Brian Ferneyhough’s Cassandra’s Dream Song for solo flute. Ferneyhough threw the kitchen sink at the performer with tremolos, multiphonics, tongue rams, key clicks, whistle tones, bent pitches and fourth octave notes, all arranged in a rapid fire series of gestures which also included singing and playing at the same time.

Charke described the technique as The New Complexity, in introducing this remarkable work. His mastery of everything Ferneyhough demands of the player was mind-boggling.

In other first half works, Acadia guitarist Eugene Cormier played a fascinating, if a little long-winded, transcribed improvisation by Carlo Domeniconi, called Koyunbaba Suite. The guitar is tuned down a minor third from its usual E minor tuning to the key of C-sharp minor. The effect was surprisingly bright for such a low tuning.
Clarinetist/professor Stan Fisher played the Abime des oiseaux movement from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written for violin, clarinet, cello and piano while Messiaen was incarcerated in a German prison camp in the Second World War. He was followed by Symphony Nova Scotia second clarinetist Eileen Walsh in a lively interpretation of Muczynski Time Pieces, accompanied by pianist Jennifer King.

Chenoa Anderson returned with pianist John Hansen and guest percussionist Russell Hartenberger on vibraphone to play John Luther Adams’s haunting exploration of the resonances hidden in slowly evolving work based on the harmonic "ladder" of natural overtones.

Conductor Mark Hopkins led the Acadia Wind Ensemble in Morton Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium and Adams’s Lollapalooza to end the concert. The Wind Ensemble is a student/community performing group not yet ready for prime time perhaps, but accomplished enough to give more than just an idea of what these works were about. Many moments of fine ensemble playing gave promise of potential development to a high level.

The Acadia Shattering The Silence New Music Festival, co-directed by Charke and Hopkins and in its third year, ends today. It is a valuable addition to the Nova Scotia music scene."

Shattering the Silence festival will feature 20 world premieres by Atlantic composers By STEPHEN PEDERSEN Arts Reporter Thu. Jan 29, 2009
"FLUTIST-COMPOSER Derek Charke and conductor Mark Hopkins are Shattering the Silence at Acadia University in Wolfville this week.

Tonight to Sunday the two music professors will present 20 world premieres by Atlantic composers, performed by Acadia School of Music students, faculty, and guests.

"Derek and I started this three years ago," Hopkins said over the phone from his studio at Acadia last week. "In previous years the festival has been more of a showcase or tapestry of different styles and ideas.

"The whole idea is we can recognize strengths within the School of Music itself. The percussion studio at Acadia is truly astonishing thanks to Mark Adam. We asked him about bringing in someone to work intensely with the percussion studio while here, to teach and perform as well. He suggested the ideal candidate: percussionist Russell Hartenberger."

Hartenberger is a founding member of Nexus, Canada’s ground-breaking percussion ensemble since 1971. He will do workshops and coach student percussionists as well as perform Steve Reich’s Marimba Phase (with Mark Adam) and other works
"Mark has a great percussion studio here," said Charke, who teaches flute and composition at Acadia. "Besides Hartenberger, we’ve invited Dalhousie University Music Department’s percussion teacher D’Arcy Gray. He’ll be doing Brian Fernyhough’s Bone Alphabet. It’s an incredibly difficult piece. It turned out D’Arcy was looking for an opportunity to play it."

Charke, who will be playing a Ferneyhough flute piece at the festival, describes Ferneyhough as a "new complexity" composer.

"He’s pushing the boundaries of what is possible and what is not possible," Charke said.
"Most of his pieces have this kind of hyper intensity. Performers have to attempt to get in all these gestures and all these notes and articulations and rhythmic structures such as playing 15 notes in the time of 16 . . . the page is just black."

Of the six concerts the main one is the big gala on Saturday night featuring the Ferneyhough percussion piece as well as Charke’s own Disturbances of Circadian Rhythm for flute and computer, written for and played by Sackville flutist Chenoa Anderson.

His work and Halifax composer Bob Bauer’s Nuovo Gamelan, played by Wolfville Tidal Pool Collective Ensemble, conducted by Hopkins, are world premieres.
"Derek and I both landed here intrigued with Acadia and the Annapolis Valley three years ago," Hopkins said. "We felt the place was underachieving, that there was good work to be done. The teaching was great, but an active new music community was missing.

"I have this voracious appetite for music. I drive a 20-year-old car, but I have more scores and recordings than you can think of. Derek is the same. In our second year, we decided to form a musical ensemble that does regular performances of music that we want to hear."

Meanwhile, Hopkins and Charke are bringing a group of Halifax performers to Wolfville for the Saturday night concert, including Gray, pianist Simon Docking, guitarist Bob Bauer, violinist Isabelle Fournier and Symphony Nova Scotia musicians clarinetist Eileen Walsh, cellist Norman Adams and doublebassist Max Kasper.
School of Music faculty performers include guitarist Eugene Cormier, clarinetist Stan Fisher, and pianists John Hansen and Jennifer King as well as Charke and Hopkins.

The festival ends Sunday afternoon in the Al Whittle Theatre with student composers who have written music for a segment of the film, Man With A Movie Camera, by Dziga Vertov (1896-1954).

They include James Fogarty (Université de Moncton), Robert Drisdelle (Dalhousie University), Denis Callaghan (Memorial University), Lukus Uhlman (Mount Allision University) and Carmen Braden (Acadia University).
The concert is part of the Canadian Music Centre (Atlantic Region) New Music in New Spaces project.
"Five Maritime universities have composition majors," Hopkins said. "We would like them to be a part of what’s going on too."

Tickets for most concerts are $15 at the door. Acadia students get in for free with a university I.D.
For complete details of programs and performers see http://music.acadiau.ca/shatteringthesilence"

A short review by Joe Banno of the Washington Post came out today for a Kronos Quartet concert at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Centre in Maryland on October 30th, 2008.

"... Elsewhere on the program, Canadian composer Derek Charke's "Cercle du Nord III" wove Inuit throat-singing and barking sled dogs into a taped rhythm track that chugged along under toe-tapping minimalist writing for the quartet ...

... These composers could hardly have hoped for more dedicated or virtuosic advocacy than what the Kronos gave them."

A review by Colin Marshal of the Santa Barbara Independent came out today for a Katona Twins concert at the Santa Barbara, Museum of Art on October 14, 2008.

"... Spanning over three centuries and no fewer than five countries, the evening’s eclectic program included an astonishingly fast-fingered arrangement of the overture to Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito; an entertaining (if less than perfectly polished) rendition of the universally recognizable overture to Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia; Villa-Lobos’s haunting, and at times slightly goofy, Alma Brasileira; and the contemporary Canadian composer Derek Charke’s Time’s Passing Breath, a piece layering the dual guitars atop a prerecorded bed of crystalline bells, their rings electronically stretched and skewed nearly beyond recognition. If such a diverse, enticing sample is representative of their repertoire, it would be surprising indeed if any audience member left without wanting to hear what other musical surprises the brothers Katona have up their black sleeves." Time's Passing Breath

A review of "What do the Birds Think?" by Bruce Hodges. Read the full blog here.

"Structure is important to Derek Charke, who takes a poem by Al Purdy and dissects it letter by letter, while analyzing it numerically. Although his description of What Do the Birds Think? is almost impossibly complex, the results would be engaging no matter how they were created. Charke asks the players for high frequencies, percussion accents, a shrieking second section and a more agitated final one, before the piece ends with the cello in a long bout of static, as if a radio station had gone off the air."

A great review of the Xanthos Ensemble concert came out today in the New York Times by Steve Smith. Included is a short review of "What do the Birds Think?"

"Among four newer pieces, only Derek Charke’s “What Do the Birds Think?” could be said to extend the modernist tradition. The work’s animated outer movements call for a catalog of unorthodox expressive techniques. In between, an onstage trio (alto flute with muted violin and cello) is juxtaposed with an offstage duo (bass clarinet and percussion). While physical separation was impossible here, the layered sounds still proved fascinating."

If you happen to be in New York City on the 24th be sure to check out the following concert:
Xanthos Ensemble http://www.xanthosensemble.com Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. Roulette http://www.roulette.org/ 20 Greene Street New York City, New York Admission is $15 (students and seniors $10)

"Xanthos Ensemble, currently Ensemble in Residence at The Boston Conservatory, will perform a program to include Charles Wuorinen’s New York Notes, Pierre Boulez’s Dérive, and Mario Davidovsky’s Flashbacks, and world premiere of Three Nature Songs by Ohio native Daniel Knaggs, student of Bright Sheng. Also included on the program will be works by Brooklyn resident Donald Hagar and Canadian composer and flutist Derek Charke."

If you happen to be in New York City on the 24th be sure to check out the following concert:
Xanthos Ensemble http://www.xanthosensemble.com Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. Roulette http://www.roulette.org/ 20 Greene Street New York City, New York Admission is $15 (students and seniors $10)

"Xanthos Ensemble, currently Ensemble in Residence at The Boston Conservatory, will perform a program to include Charles Wuorinen’s New York Notes, Pierre Boulez’s Dérive, and Mario Davidovsky’s Flashbacks, and world premiere of Three Nature Songs by Ohio native Daniel Knaggs, student of Bright Sheng. Also included on the program will be works by Brooklyn resident Donald Hagar and Canadian composer and flutist Derek Charke."

A review of Tundra Songs by Mark Swed of the L.A. Times (quoted here in part) Read the entire review

"Tagaq appeared at the end of the evening as well for a new work by Derek Charke commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which presented the concert. Before that, the Kronos played short, engaging pieces by the Norwegian group Xploding Plastix, the popular Icelandic band Sigur Rós and the Finnish accordion and sampling duo Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen, along with an arrangement of a Swedish folk song as haunting as a Bergman film. Kronos also revived Kaija Saariaho’s "Nymphéa," a sensual sonic landscape of bows scraping on amplified strings that the Finnish composer wrote for it 21 years ago.

Charke, a Canadian composer, provided a long, compelling program note about traveling to Nunavut's capital, Iqaluit, to prepare for his collaboration with Tagaq and recording nature sounds, which accompany the Kronos and the singer in "Tundra Songs." But one remarkable aspect of this extraordinary half-hour piece in five connected sections is that you can't tell what is what. This is music that goes far beyond the composer's vivid descriptions of howling dogs, whizzing snowmobiles, buzzing mosquitoes, honking geese and hoof-clicking caribou.
The score also goes beyond the notes on the page. Tagaq, who sat (though hardly still) behind the quartet, had music in front of her. But her eyes were elsewhere. She seemed to take her cues from the music absorbed in her body. She became one with the strings and the prerecorded soundscape.

Charke's style is not far out. He has a command of likable post-Minimalist techniques. He creates grooves. He matches string textures, through devices such as circular bowing, with atmospheric sounds. But he understands Tagaq's ability to inject a life force into sound, and the piece took off. In the central movement, Tagaq recited an Inuit myth, "Sedna's Song," about a drowned goddess whose severed fingers became the creatures of the sea. It was mesmerizing.

"Tundra Songs" is the 600-and-somethingth piece written for Kronos over more than three decades -- and another keeper. The playing all evening was passionate and superb. If ever an ensemble has found a fountain of youth, it is this one."

by Wendy Elliott The Advertiser

"Composer Derek Charke’s new work will have its world premiere in Wolfville this weekend.

“Silenced” is for string quartet and clarinet, commissioned by Charke’s Acadia University music colleague, Stan Fisher. Funding was provided by Nova Scotia department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage.
The premiere will take place Saturday, Nov. 17 at Wolfville’s Festival Theatre.

The genesis of this special evening came from Fisher, who plays the clarinet. “He wanted to deal with the issue of violence against women, and essentially asked me for a work of an elegiac nature. I thought about the project quite a bit before responding.” Charke wasn't too sure about tackling the subject matter: “for one thing, I'm not a woman, and I didn't think that I had any direct experience with violence against women. But after a while I came around and realized that this is a subject that affects us all: our wives, sisters, daughters, or friends, other relatives.” Watching the horrific events unfold in the Robert Pickton trial inspired Charke’s composition.

“I grew up in the lower mainland of B.C. This was such a terrible tragedy, made worse because of the lack of interest from the police for such a long time. All of those missing women - and no one really paid any attention.”
He says he decided to call the work “Silenced” so it would be more encompassing. He and Fisher set the premiere to coincide with the École Polytechnique Massacre in Quebec, so the title became more apropos. Students from Acadia have been recruited to extinguish 14 candles, representing the 14 women killed in Montreal.

Charke composed the work over a four-month stretch, then talked with Donna Smyth about her poem. Smyth, who used to teach creative writing at Acadia, is contributing a newly commissioned poem, “Spirit-wind,” her response to violence directed at women. The Halifax-based Blue Engine String Quartet, along with Fisher, will perform a Brahms clarinet quartet, along with Charke’s new work."

"Derek Charke has a way with sound and music. Charke is an assistant professor at Acadia University. And these days he is working on a new composition commissioned by the world-renowned string quartet The Kronos Quartet. The working title of the piece is called "Tundra Songs". It will feature Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq. And will also include many natural sounds recorded by Charke in Nunavut. Arts producer Phlis McGregor dropped by Derek Charke's studio outside of Wolfville to put together this piece. [runs: 5:17] Listen here (real audio)" by Phlis McGregor In The Arts - Maritimes

Classical composition includes ravens, throatsinging CHRIS WINDEYER
(Quoted here in part)

"Vivaldi had his four seasons. Derek Charke has six to work with.

Charke was in Iqaluit this past March collecting sounds for a piece he's composing for the Kronos Quartet, a California-based string quartet who are as close as it comes to stars in the world of classical music these days.
The composition is to be part of a program entitled "Nunavut," which the quartet will perform with Cambridge Bay throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis in Los Angeles next April.

The Kronos Quartet is "pretty much scouring the globe for anything and everything in terms of integrating world music into their repertoire," Charke said from his home in Kentville, Nova Scotia.

Charke was just sitting down to start work on the piece June 1 when a reporter called. Its working title, for now, is "The Seasons." Relaxed and affable, Charke's demeanour stands in contrast to the image of the tortured composer tearing his hair out over a score. He works at a drafting table, with a computer to one side and a piano to the other.
"I was actually combing through literature this morning and trying to figure out the whole idea about the seasons and the Inuit mythology about the seasons," he said. "It's very different, obviously, than the southern seasons."
Armed with an array of microphones and escorted by Iqaluit outfitter Matty McNair, Charke set out to find sounds that will serve as accompaniment for the Kronos Quartet's strings and Gillis' throat singing. Charke collected the sounds of sled dogs, wind, and skidoos and even stuck a microphone under the sea ice.

But even out on the sea ice, while taping McNair's dog team, Charke found he couldn't escape the creep of high technology.

"I get 20 minutes of great sounds and then I get about an hour of the airplane engines starting and taxiing, with a few raven sounds in between," Charke says, laughing.

"But then there's something that's typically northern: transportation in the north now. And the whole thing about this is not just keeping it historical because that's not what Tanya does with her music either."

The professor of composition at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia also collected the sounds of local storytellers and drum dancers which will all be melded together to create a backing track that will morph from sound to sound, drifting in and out of rhythm. When he's finished writing the score, Charke will send the completed soundscape and string parts to the other musicians who will overdub their tracks.

Gillis and the Kronos Quartet have performed together several times, including two shows last month in Paris and Koln, Germany. Charke has also written music for the quartet before: 2005's Cercle du Nord III involved similar experimentation with Arctic sounds, tape loops and stringed instruments and was broadcast on CBC Radio Two.
And while Charke says some might resist the integration of traditional forms like throat singing with contemporary sounds, he restates the rock musician's maxim of stealing from everybody.
"This is happening all over the world now," he says. "[Artists are] begging, borrowing and stealing from every culture in the world and mixing it. It's one of the ways forward for music as a whole."

Out with the old, in with the new (music) Thur Feb. 8, 2007 Shattering the Silence festival begins this Friday - compositions by students, professors and international musicians alike By Katie Fahey

"Between the innovative student composers and performers, the showcase concerts and the Cabaret evening at On the Verge, you can brace yourself for some very cool music this weekend. This weekend marks the debut of Acadia’s first annual New Music Festival aptly named, Shattering the Silence.

“We want to mix this up and give students and the community a chance to hear sounds they haven’t encountered before… hence the theme Shattering the Silence!” says enthusiastic co-founder and co-artistic director of the festival, Dr. Derek Charke. He, along with fellow music professor Dr. Mark Hopkins, conceived of the event. “There is so much beautiful music being written right now, today, by living composers that it’s a shame to not have a showcase festival that specifically addresses, promotes and fosters new music creation.”

Charke says a good percentage of the music being performed has been written in the past ten years. “What makes this festival special is the sheer number of world premieres.” He goes on to say “there will be so much variety that the audience is sure to walk away with some memorable experiences!”

The weekend kicks off Friday afternoon with a free preview concert at Denton Hall Auditorium. It continues with showcase concerts throughout the weekend and includes an evening at On the Verge. Excitingly, there are two specifically student focused concerts both at noon on Saturday and Sunday.

Student composer Justin Wah Kan will be debuting a piece involving two flutes and his own live electronic mix. “It’s great to be able to be a part [of the festival] and watch it grow,” he says, adding that “its part of being in composition to have your pieces performed at these type of events (and as many as we can get into).”

Fellow student composer Greg Harrison says his pie was one of five chosen from Dr. Charke’s composition class to be performed at the festival. “This isn’t your conventional music festival (i.e. selected Bach works on piano). There will be some wacky performances and works out there,” he says. “For instance, the piece I wrote is for marimba and a guitar loop pedal.”

On the programme are 10 world premieres by student composers including Andrew Anderson, Nick Bedell, Mitch Burke, Rebecca Crisp, Kevon Cronin, Edward Enman, Greg Harrison, Amanda Riley, Ryan Neilson and Justin Wah Kan. Student performers include Stephen Ambra, Alaina Boyd, Mitch Burke Greg George, Laura Gillis, Greg Harrison, Kathyrn Humphries, Megan Johnson, Emily Lang, Kristen Lenz, Chad Nelson, Erin O’Toole, Joel Rudolph, Kattie Titus, Roy Richardson and Casandra Widdifield."

New Music Culture-Hopping and Boundary-Free By ALLAN KOZINN Published: December 24, 2006 (Quoted here in part)

"The Kronos Quartet, which has been arguing for omnivorous multiculturalism for years, offered its latest manifesto in its “Live Mix” series at Carnegie Hall and Zankel Hall in March and April. The three-hour closing concert was especially illuminating: after a section that included striking works by composers from Ethiopia (Getatchew Mekurya) and Canada (Derek Charke), as well as the quartet’s arrangements of short pieces by the Icelandic rock band Sigur Ros, the Kronos joined forces with the Indian singer Asha Bhosle for an extraordinary performance of film songs by Ms. Bhosle’s husband, Rahul Dev Burman."

Posted by Matt Sedlar Kronos Quartet at GW's Lisner Auditorium, Washington D.C. (Quoted here in part)

"The quartet began the night with perhaps one of the strongest arrangements, Derek Charke's "Cercle du Nord III." Commissioned by Canadian public radio, the piece utilized sound recordings taken from a 2005 trip to Canada's Northwest Territories, where Charke attempted to record nature but discovered that the presence of mankind kept interfering -- whether through the sound of snowmobiles, trucks or even an Inuit power plant. The arrangement, which played out in three distinct sections, combined the sound recordings with Harrington, violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt playfully trading off parts. The piece also showed off Larry Neff's excellent lighting design, which effectively followed the mood throughout."

Dr. Mark Hopkins conducts the Acadia University Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble in the world premiere performance of SONG OF THE TIDES. Sat. October 21, 2006 8pm Harvey Denton Hall on the Campus of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

New approach to wind band comes with “Song of the Tides” Acadia music profs debut composition By Kathryn Furtado

"Saturday, October 21 marked the first concert of the year for Acadia University’s Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble. Dr. Mark Hopkins, conductor of both groups, described the evening as a “concert of firsts”. Not only did the Acadia University Wind Ensemble, a group newly created this year, give their first-ever performance, but they also premiered a brand new piece of music, “Song of the Tides.” This piece was commissioned by Dr. Hopkins for the Acadia University Wind Ensemble, and composed by Acadia’s Dr. Derek Charke. The piece looks beyond simple performance and, with funding from the Canadian Music Centre and SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada), it serves as a teaching tool for junior high school bands across Nova Scotia and the other Atlantic provinces.

“Song of the Tides” looks to emulate the sounds of the shore of Nova Scotia, while keeping developing players within comfortable ranges and rhythms. Accompanied by a collection of pre-recorded sounds from around Nova Scotia, it encourages students to make less standard sounds with (and without) their instruments to achieve the proper effect. All these sounds serve a purpose, such as teaching students about intonation and tone, or making them more aware of their breathing. The piece hopes to expose junior high students to quality wind band music. It will allow them to explore both a different style of composition and a different type of performance than the more mainstream, mass-produced, developing wind band literature (which is described as “the musical equivalent of a fast food diet”).

The piece has two movements. The first, “Low Tide,” has the soundtrack playing while either select soloists, or all the players in the ensemble, improvise along with it. This freedom makes it an ideal movement for a workshop setting, and allows the students to explore the music as well as the various styles of playing. The ensembles will also be invited to write their own scores for the first movement, making it their own. The second movement, “High Tide”, is fully scored with the soundtrack only playing periodically throughout the movement. Like the first movement, the second seeks to introduce different techniques, but also includes more ‘traditional’ writing for wind bands, all within the technical abilities of a junior high ensemble.

The next performance of “Song of the Tides” by the Acadia University Wind Ensemble will take place on Friday, October 27, at 4:00pm at the Nova Scotia Music Educators’ Association (NSMEA) conference in New Glasgow. At this conference, junior high band teachers will hear the piece played, and, following this, (thanks to the funding from SOCAN and the Canadian Music Centre) will have the chance to sign a list to receive a score and set of parts, completely free of charge.

Drs. Hopkins and Charke will then set up clinics with the schools that are interested (an estimated minimum of twelve schools), during which they will attend rehearsals to workshop the techniques involved in the piece, allow for exploration with the improvisational section, and provide students with a rare opportunity: the chance to meet and quiz the composer of a piece they are playing. As Dr. Hopkins pointed out during the Saturday night concert, this is a rare occasion, because the bulk of the works students will perform were composed by people who are now dead.
Though Dr. Charke admits that it’s difficult to judge just how long it took to compose a piece of music, he estimates that “Song of the Tides” was completed in about four months. Drs. Charke and Hopkins toured the province in August to collect the sounds found on the CD, which include the waves rushing over the rocks, the calls of seagulls, and even the horn of the Princess of Acadia ferry, blown especially for the recording.

“Song of the Tides” is an outreach initiative born at Acadia University that is already well on its way to enriching both the developing wind band’s repertoire and the musical training of young players in Nova Scotia."


Mark Hopkins and Derek Charke recording sounds for Song of the Tides

Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle Make Not-So-Strange Bedfellows By ALLAN KOZINN (Quoted here in Part)

"For the final concert of the Live Mix series, on Saturday evening, the Kronos Quartet moved upstairs to Carnegie Hall's main stage from the comparatively intimate confines of Zankel Hall. It had good reason to make the jump, with the singer Asha Bhosle as the soloist in the second half of the program. The concert drew a huge audience, with the quartet's usual following dwarfed by Indian-music fans who were well versed in Ms. Bhosle's repertory and responded to it as rapturously as a Western pop audience responds to a band playing its biggest hits...

The three-hour concert began with a few non-Indian works, including arrangements of short pieces by the Icelandic rock band Sigur Ros and an Ethiopian composer, Getatchew Mekurya, as well as "Cercle du Nord III," an inventive, rich-textured score for quartet and electronic sound by the Canadian composer Derek Charke."