Derek Charke RSS Feed

JUNO Award

Derek Charke — 2012-04-03T07:05:47-03:00

‘Sepia Fragments’ received the JUNO award for ‘Classical Composition of the Year’ this past weekend in Ottawa. For a complete list of nominees click here.

Reviews of Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra

Derek Charke — 2012-03-07T17:25:23-04:00

Here are a few reviews from the premiere of Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra: ...And standing ovations that wouldn’t quit for the première of Derek Charke’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra? ...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. ..."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. ...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."

Premiere of Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra

Derek Charke — 2012-02-28T20:51:25-04:00

“Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra” will be premiered on Saturday, March 3 at Roy Thomson Hall, as part of the New Creations Festival in Toronto. The work will be performed by the Kronos Quartet and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Oundjian. This new work was commissioned by the TSO and was generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Concerto for String Quartet was composed over a span of about nine months in 2011 at my home studio in Kentville, Nova Scotia. This is my third commission for the Kronos Quartet; the first two were: Cercle du Nord III and Tundra Songs. It's an honour to have this opportunity to compose a work for these world-class musicians! For tickets, and more information please visit: New Creations Festival, TSO

JUNO Nomination

Derek Charke — 2012-02-08T10:29:50-04:00

‘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’. An arrangement of ‘Sepia Fragments’ has now been created for piano (to be performed by Christina Petrowska Quilico at a JUNO awards pre-show). More on this later... Click here for the complete list of nominees.

WSO to play Carnegie Hall

Derek Charke — 2012-01-24T19:17:54-04:00

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

5-Penny New Music

Derek Charke — 2012-01-24T19:13:07-04:00

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. ... 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.

First posting 2012!

Derek Charke — 2012-01-12T16:40:39-04:00

Happy New Year! Here are a few highlights from January 2012: On January 12 Janice Jackson performs Oikos/Ecos at the Open Waters Festival in Halifax. January 18, 19 and 20: Carmen Braden (an Acadia University Composition Alumni) is presenting a paper on 'Tundra Songs' at the conference Music and the Imaginary of the North and the Cold in Montreal, at L'Université du Québec à Montréal. Three Studies for Flute (which was written in Inuvik, NWT) will also be performed by flutist MariÈve Lauzon during the conference. On January 21 Cercle du Nord I receives a performance by the Quebec group Erreurdetype27 at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. Disturbances of Circadian Rhythm was selected as an official selection for the 2013 ISCM World Music Days in Košice, Bratislava and Vienna.

Edge of the Center

Derek Charke — 2011-10-26T13:54:07-03:00

A blog posting about my studies at SUNY Buffalo is online at the University at Buffalo’s Center for 21st Century Music blog: Edge of the Center.

Spring for Music

Derek Charke — 2011-10-26T13:53:36-03:00

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra needs your vote! The WSO has entered a proposal for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 2014, and it's now in the public voting stage. They need more votes to get this to happen. The proposed concert has a work of mine, a new work by Vincent Ho (resident composer with the WSO) and Murray Schafer's new symphony. Although public votes aren't the only criteria, they will help. If you could take a moment to vote for this it would be greatly appreciated! ...http://springformusic.com/2011/10/2014-program-27/

Raga Saat – New Flute Quartet

Derek Charke — 2011-09-12T11:03:42-03:00

A new flute quartet is now available. Raga Saat is the companion work to Raga Cha. The work is available from me, and will be available soon from the Canadian Music Centre. To learn more about this work visit: Raga Saat

Symphony No. 1 on CBC Concerts on Demand

Derek Charke — 2011-09-07T17:35:55-03:00

Symphony no. 1 ‘Transient Energies’, performed by Symphony Nova Scotia, is now available on the CBC website. http://music.cbc.ca/#/concerts/Symphony-Nova-Scotia-Charke-2011-04-07

SNS offers huge works by Brahms, Charke

Derek Charke — 2011-04-09T15:10:32-03:00

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. ...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. ...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. ...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.

Sounds of the world make music

Derek Charke — 2011-04-06T07:09:47-03:00

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. ..."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. ...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. ...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.

Kronos Quartet surprise, unsurprisingly, at the Walker Art Center

Derek Charke — 2011-02-16T09:06:06-04:00

BY KATE GALLAGHER, TC DAILY PLANET ...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. ...Read the full article here: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/arts/kronos-quartet-walker-art-center-review

Review of Sea to Sea in The Globe and Mail

Derek Charke — 2011-02-01T08:58:40-04:00

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.

Acadia music festival hits Halifax market

Derek Charke — 2011-01-26T08:27:01-04:00

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/

New work for the Toronto Symphony and Kronos Quartet Announced

Derek Charke — 2011-01-27T08:18:17-04:00

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.

Sea to Sea

Derek Charke — 2011-01-06T08:51:30-04:00

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 ...Lawrence String Quartet ...2010 Centrediscs / Centredisques CMCCD 16310

Shattering the Silence 2011

Derek Charke — 2010-12-12T10:57:36-04:00

Shattering the Silence 2011 is quickly approaching. Here’s a copy of the poster. Click here for a larger pdf version.

Williams Symphonic Winds and Opus Zero Band to Perform "Rising/Falling."

Derek Charke — 2010-11-23T08:55:19-04:00

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

Art Gallery Presents Tidelines

Derek Charke — 2010-09-23T08:21:29-03:00

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. ...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.

September Press

Derek Charke — 2010-09-30T07:50:30-03:00

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. ...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 ...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. ...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. ... “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. ... “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

Tidelines Opening

Derek Charke — 2010-09-11T08:19:35-03:00

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. ...

Song of the Tides

Derek Charke — 2010-08-23T17:12:02-03:00

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.

The Island Low Brass Mafia

Derek Charke — 2010-07-06T08:59:37-03:00

For Eric Mathis, Bob Nicholson and Dale Sorensen, that opportunity has been rare in recent years; in fact, they have not performed together since 2002. Eric Mathis has just recently moved back to the Maritimes to play Principal Trombone with Symphony Nova Scotia and serve as the orchestra’s Director of Operations, after spending the last 14 years in Hawaii performing with the Honolulu Symphony. ... Dale Sorensen, who also plays with the Charlottetown Festival, brokered a deal where the planets could align and these three musicians would be on the Island together long enough to give a performance. In addition to their Island connection, these three trombonists have two other important things in common: they have all had UPEI Professor of Brass, tubaist Gregory Irvine, as a teacher, and they have all been mentored by pianist Frances McBurnie. On July 18 at 2:30 pm, all five of these musicians will present a recital at Steel Recital Hall, UPEI, featuring music for various combinations of low brass from solo to quartet, with and without piano accompaniment. The highlight of the concert will be the world premiere performance of a brand new work by Nova Scotia composer Derek Charke, whose music is performed and commissioned by world renowned artists such as the Kronos Quartet, the St. ... Commissioned by Sorensen with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Charke’s Quartet for Low Brass is an exciting and substantial addition to the repertoire.

New Website for Charke.com

Derek Charke — 2010-05-24T18:26:15-03:00

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. ... 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.

Cercle Du Nord III

Derek Charke — 2006-01-20T09:06:05-04:00

On tour with the Kronos Quartet! The Kronos Quartet recently commissioned and premiered two of Derek's works, 22 INUIT THROAT SONG GAMES FOR STRING QUARTET and CERCLE DU NORD III at the Chan Centre in Vancouver, Canada.

Guggenheim

Derek Charke — 2006-05-19T09:05:43-03:00

Derek was at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City for a performance of WHAT DO THE BIRDS THINK? by the Group for Contemporary Music as part of the Works and Process at the Guggenheim, Mary Sharp Cronson, producer. The program was curated by Howard Stokar. For over forty years The Group for Contemporary Music has distinguished itself as a leading force in the discovery of new talent. The explosive new works of five young composers - Drew Baker, Yu-Hui Chang, Derek Charke, Jason Eckardt, and Paul Nauert will be performed.

Carnegie Hall

Derek Charke — 2006-04-08T09:05:29-03:00

Derek was in New York City to hear CERCLE DU NORD III receive it's NYC premiere by the Kronos Quartet on a sold out program with legendary Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium.

World Music Review – NY Times

Derek Charke — 2006-04-11T09:05:08-03:00

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."

European Premiere of CERCLE DU NORD III

Derek Charke — 2006-05-18T09:04:21-03:00

Kronos Quartet presents the European Premiere of CERCLE DU NORD III at the Vienna Concert House, Vienna, Austria.

Raga Cha

Derek Charke — 2006-05-14T09:04:21-03:00

London Flutes present the World Premier of four new works for flute quartet at a series of events throughout May 2006. Each programme include new works by British composers Hywel Davies, Edmund Jolliffe, Tara Guram, and Canadian composer Derek Charke. The evening concerts in Brighton and London each follow one of the quartet’s highly successful one-day flute workshops for flutists of all abilities and ages. Tickets are £10, £8 concessions and £5 for students attending the Brighton and London one-day flute workshops. All tickets include a glass of wine or soft drink, and are available online or on the door. Doors open at 7pm. Sunday 14th May 2006, 7.30pm, Brighton College, Brighton, UK Sunday 21st May 2006, 7.30pm, Lauderdale House, London N6, UK Saturday 27th May 2006, 7.30pm, Bristol Music Club, Bristol, UK

SONG OF THE TIDES

Derek Charke — 2006-10-21T09:04:00-03:00

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.” ... 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. ...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 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. ...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. ...“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."

Cercle du Nord III

Derek Charke — 2006-10-23T09:03:43-03:00

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."

SONG OF THE TIDES

Derek Charke — 2006-10-27T09:03:27-03:00

ONG OF THE TIDES performed at the 2006 NSMEA Conference on Friday Oct. 27, 2006 at Trinity United Church, Temperance St., New Glasgow.

New Music Culture-Hopping and Boundary-Free

Derek Charke — 2006-12-24T09:03:11-04:00

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."

Out with the old, in with the new

Derek Charke — 2007-08-02T09:02:54-03:00

"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. ...“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!” ... “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.” ...He goes on to say “there will be so much variety that the audience is sure to walk away with some memorable experiences!” ...“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).” ...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."

Iqaluit

Derek Charke — 2007-03-19T09:02:15-03:00

In Iqaluit, Nunavut March 19 - 27 to record sounds for a new Kronos Quartet commission.

New CD

Derek Charke — 2007-04-10T09:01:58-03:00

New CD released by Composer Michelle Boudreau contains Derek Charke's "Cercle du Nord II" and a performance by Derek on flute of Michelle's work "La chasse caribous", part of her work "L'Intruse" from 2002.

Banff

Derek Charke — 2007-06-01T09:01:25-03:00

At the Banff Centre for the Arts for a Composer Residency

Nunavut’s first symphony

Derek Charke — 2007-08-29T09:01:09-03:00

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. ...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. ..."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. ...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. ...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.

CHARKE & MARK

Derek Charke — 2007-09-04T09:00:51-03:00

The free improv duo returns on the last Tuesday of each month at On The Verge Restaurant and Music in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Mark Adam on percussion and Derek Charke on Flutes with special guests from time to time.

Nunavut in Los Angeles...

Derek Charke — 2007-10-09T09:00:18-03:00

"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

Colombia Guitar Festival

Derek Charke — 2007-10-22T09:00:03-03:00

October 22 - November 1 , 2007 The Katona Twins perform Time's Passing Breath at the Colombia Guitar Festival

Words, music, break the silence

Derek Charke — 2007-11-13T08:59:45-04:00

“Silenced” is for string quartet and clarinet, commissioned by Charke’s Acadia University music colleague, Stan Fisher. ...“He wanted to deal with the issue of violence against women, and essentially asked me for a work of an elegiac nature. ... 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.” ...He and Fisher set the premiere to coincide with the École Polytechnique Massacre in Quebec, so the title became more apropos. ...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."

World premiere of "Silenced"

Derek Charke — 2007-11-07T08:59:09-04:00

Stan Fisher, Clarinet / Blue Engine String Quartet / Donna E. Smyth, Poet / Featuring "Silenced" a new work by Derek Charke / Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 7:30pm / Festival Theatre, Wolfville, Nova Scotia More

Shattering the Silence 2008

Derek Charke — 2008-01-24T08:58:33-04:00

January 24 – 27, 2008 Shattering the Silence 2008 Mark Hopkins and Derek Charke, Festival Directors Rodney Sharman, Guest Composer www.shatteringthesilence.ca

Looking forward to a busy summer. . .

Derek Charke — 2008-04-14T08:58:11-03:00

Pauline and I are traveling to San Francisco and Los Angeles at the end of April for the world premiere of Tundra Songs at the Disney Hall with the Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq on May 3. Then it's off to Cleveland to play flute for a concert and recording of David Felder's "Dionysiacs" with the Slee Sinfonietta. At the end of May Xanthos Ensemble from Boston is performing What do the Birds Think? ... We head to Toronto for the Luminato Festival in June where Kronos is playing Tundra Songs again for two evenings, June 12 and 13. Straight after this we hop on another flight to Winnipeg to visit Pauline's family. In July it's back to Wolfville to participate in the Acadia Wind Conducting Symposium. Then more travel in August, to Kansas City to hear WARNING, Gustnadoes Ahead at the 2008 National Flute convention.

Tundra Songs Premiere

Derek Charke — 2008-05-03T08:57:49-03:00

World Premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The premiere of Tundra Songs with Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq was a resounding success!

Tundra Songs Review - L.A. Times

Derek Charke — 2008-05-05T08:57:25-03:00

"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. ...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.

Dionysiacs

Derek Charke — 2008-05-07T08:56:30-03:00

Just returned from a successful performance and recording of David Felder's Dionysiacs in Cleveland, Ohio. Performers included Tino Scirri, Derek Charke and Alice Teyssier, Kathleen Chastain, Cheryl Gobbetti-Hoffman and Anne Thompson

Xanthos in NY

Derek Charke — 2008-05-24T08:56:12-03:00

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."

Xanthos

Derek Charke — 2008-05-24T08:55:52-03:00

Xanthos – New York Times Review

Derek Charke — 2008-05-26T08:55:29-03:00

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."

Tundra Songs

Derek Charke — 2008-06-12T08:54:59-03:00

Canadian Premiere of Tundra Songs with Tanya Tagaq and Kronos Quartet. Isabel Bader Theatre, Toronto, ON at the Luminato Festival. June 12 and 13, 2008

Structure – What do the Birds Think?

Derek Charke — 2008-07-01T08:54:30-03:00

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."

Radio Broadcast

Derek Charke — 2008-07-03T08:54:15-03:00

Between 4:05pm and 5:50pm (Atlantic Time) there will be a radio broadcast of the Katona Twins in concert. Included in this program is the world premiere of Time's Passing Breath www.dradio.de (note you have to choose the stream for "Deutschlandfunk".)

World Premiere in Kansas City

Derek Charke — 2008-08-07T08:53:44-03:00

WARNING! Gustnadoes Ahead will have it's world premiere at the 2008 National Flute Association Convention. It was commissioned for the High-school soloist competition.

Time's Passing Breath Review

Derek Charke — 2008-10-23T08:53:19-03:00

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

Cercle du Nord Review

Derek Charke — 2008-11-01T08:53:05-03:00

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."

Ecology

Derek Charke — 2008-11-23T08:52:39-04:00

I've added a new page to my site on Sound Art & Ecology . . . please be sure to visit!

New Music in the Air

Derek Charke — 2009-01-29T08:52:22-04:00

"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. ...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. ...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. ...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).

Remarkable Night

Derek Charke — 2009-02-01T08:51:55-04:00

"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. ... 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. ...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. ...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. ...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. ...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.

Shattering the Silence 3

Derek Charke — 2009-02-02T08:51:31-04:00

I'd especially like to thank the many volunteers who worked behind the scenes to make this happen, and of course all of the performers and composers who did a phenomenal job! All told there were 6 full concerts, two lecture presentations by Jeff Hennessy and Russell Hartenberger, 2 composer master classes, including one by Ian Crutchley, a percussion master class with Dr. ...The Thursday concert was perhaps the most eclectic but also the most exciting with such a diverse array of talent; the vocal ensemble, symphonic band and various faculty and student performances. ...The performers did an excellent job on all the pieces, especially Zwilich's Trio, and I was particularly moved to hear John Luther Adams' work, The Farthest Place, performed to such an exacting standard. ... Can't forget Bob Bauer who wrote us a wonderful new gamelan inspired work, and Simon Docking who graced us with a performance of music by Tristan Murail. ...Plus thanks to all of the ensembles and solo performers who took time to learn and play such wonderful music for our festival this year. I am particularly grateful to Russell Hartenberger for giving his time so graciously, also to Mark Adam for his tireless contributions, even with a full on cold.

Updates

Derek Charke — 2009-07-25T08:50:55-03:00

It's been quiet on this news page lately so I thought it might be time to post something... I've taken some time this summer to simply read, study scores and listen to music – and also to travel and to attend my sister's wedding in Nanaimo. ...A new 15 minute work for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (it includes an electronic soundscape, which has taken a considerable amount of time to complete!) ...A reworking of some Inuit Throat Song Games for string orchestra that will be premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Tanya Tagaq during the Winnipeg New Music Festival in February 2010 (along with the new orchestra work mentioned above (2.) and a string quartet – Cercle du Nord III – which was originally composed for the Kronos Quartet); ...And I'm starting a new work this August for Halifax soprano Janice Jackson that will be premiered at our New Music Festival in Wolfville this January 2010. ...In addition I'll begin work this year on a composition for 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone and tuba, that has been commissioned by PEI trombonist Dale Sorensen with funding provided by the Canada Council for the Arts. ...This is from a trip my wife and I took to Maui earlier this month; be sure to click on the photo for a larger resolution.

Updates

Derek Charke — 2009-09-24T08:50:18-03:00

I've been thinking about the direction the work will take and will, in all likelihood, steer it towards themes of earth and acoustic ecology with ecopoetics as source material for the text. ...Two Canadian Music Centre 20th Anniversary concerts will happen this October; (1) on October 24 in Antigonish at St. ...The Winnipeg Symphony has invited me to be one of their "Distinguished Canadian Guest Composers" for the 2010 New Music Festival, whose theme is also Earth. ... I've finished the scores and parts for three works, two arrangements of earlier string quartet pieces that I discuss in my posting below this one, and a new commission for full orchestra and soundscape, which I also discuss below. I'll be in Winnipeg for more than a week in February and will have a chance to take in the entire event. ...We've commissioned two new works, one from Jerome Blais and the other from Peter Togni, which I'm excited about! We're in the process of securing our special guest performer and solidifying the concerts and other events which will take place during the 5 days.

SLSQ Premieres Five

Derek Charke — 2009-10-29T08:49:47-03:00

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. ...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. ...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."

SLSQ Preview

Derek Charke — 2009-11-03T08:49:17-04:00

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. ... 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. ...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. ...John both grew up in London Ontario; Geoff is a founding member and Scott joined in 2006.

SLSQ Premieres

Derek Charke — 2009-11-12T08:48:28-04:00

Lawrence String Quartet premieres "Sepia Fragments" which was Co-commissioned by The Kathleen and Alan Huckabone Family of Petawawa, Ontario, and CBC Radio 2 on the following four concerts: ...UPEI Thursday, November 12, 7:30 PM Dr. Steel Recital Hall http://www.upei.ca/music/upei-music-department-concert-series Acadia University Friday, November 13, 7:30 PM Festival Theatre http://www.acadiau.ca/artsacadia/apas/index.html Memorial University of Newfoundland Saturday, November 14, 8:00 PM D.F. Cook Recital Hall. http://www.mun.ca/music/concerts/ University of Toronto Monday, November 16, 7:30 PM Walter Hall All five works on this concert were co-commissioned by CBC Radio and will be recorded for future broadcast on Sunday Afternoon in Concert and The Signal. http://www.music.utoronto.ca/events/calendar/

Winter

Derek Charke — 2009-12-24T08:47:00-04:00

It's winter in Nova Scotia. No snow, yet, but loads of rain. Today there was a spectacular rainbow after the rain let up.

10 Electroacoustic Studies

Derek Charke — 2009-12-24T08:46:43-04:00

10 Electroacoustic Studies are finished today! I've been slowly working on these studies in order to practice my EA skills. I think in 2010 I'll create a longer EA piece; we'll see what happens. You can listen to all 10 studies here. For all of the studies I've been using a combination of Digital Performer and Max/MSP to edit the soundfiles. Here's the soundfile for the last one, created using mostly airy and aeolian flute sounds, on a piccolo, C and alto flutes. More

Happy New Year

Derek Charke — 2010-01-01T08:38:10-04:00

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. ...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.... 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.

Symphony Nova Scotia

Derek Charke — 2010-01-09T08:37:48-04:00

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. ..."

Newfound Music

Derek Charke — 2010-01-28T08:37:10-04:00

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. More Information

Shattering the Silence

Derek Charke — 2010-01-26T08:36:31-04:00

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.

Composer Derek Charke's Tundra Songs tapping a northern cool

Derek Charke — 2010-01-30T08:36:05-04:00

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. ..."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. ..."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.

Tanya Tagaq and the Kronos Quartet made Tundra Songs a masterpiece

Derek Charke — 2010-02-01T08:35:43-04:00

Almost four years to the day after the Kronos Quartet’s first-ever performance with Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, the five musicians returned to the scene of their debut in triumphal fashion. Making their return even more gratifying was the fact that their collaboration was a bit of a mess the first time round—a striking mess and a promising one, but a mess nonetheless. In that initial offering, Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s featured composition, Nunavut, failed to cohere, instead devolving into a series of halfhearted duo improvisations in which Tagaq’s ferocity overwhelmed most of the Kronos musicians. This time, 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 in an earlier interview with the Straight. Like most of the other pieces on Saturday’s program, Tundra Songs is an electroacoustic composition, with the strings amplified to better match Charke’s eerie mesh of found and manipulated sounds from the polar ice. ... His writing for strings featured propulsive rhythms, many borrowed from Inuit music, and the playing—as one would expect from North America’s premier new-music string quartet—was impeccable. ...Tundra Songs is a complex and ambitious piece of work, but the audience felt its impact on an emotional level and replied with an exuberant standing ovation—which it repeated after a generous encore that featured the quartet’s arrangement of the Sigur Rós song “Flugufrelsarinn”, a solo improvisation from Tagaq, and the weirdly affecting digital maelstrom that is John Oswald’s Spectre.

Breaking New Ground

Derek Charke — 2010-02-06T08:35:18-04:00

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. ... 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.

New Music Festival features eclectic lineup By: Gwenda Nemerofsky

Derek Charke — 2010-02-04T08:34:44-04:00

"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." More Information

An Enlightening Journey By: Chris Hay

Derek Charke — 2010-02-09T08:34:09-04:00

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. ... 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."

Tagaq's throat-singing defies description, captivates crowd By: Holly Harris

Derek Charke — 2010-02-12T08:33:25-04:00

"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." More Information

Winnipeg New Music Festival

Derek Charke — 2010-02-12T08:32:52-04:00

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

CBC Recordings

Derek Charke — 2010-02-19T08:32:30-04:00

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

Tiresias CD

Derek Charke — 2010-03-04T08:31:54-04:00

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. More Information

Falling from Cloudless Skies for Wind Ensemble

Derek Charke — 2010-03-13T08:31:30-04:00

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. More Information

Tundra Songs premiere at Carnegie Hall

Derek Charke — 2010-03-13T08:31:03-04:00

"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) More Information

Kronos Quartet's New York Tundra

Derek Charke — 2010-03-14T08:30:32-03:00

"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. ...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. ... 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. ...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. ... 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."

From the Top of the World - NY Times

Derek Charke — 2010-03-14T08:29:51-03:00

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." More Information

Symphony Nova Scotia

Derek Charke — 2010-03-15T08:29:10-03:00

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 ...This concert will also be performed Sunday April 10, 2011 as an Encore Matinee. ...Derek Charke: TBA (movements to include themes on Coal, Wind, Water, and Oil) ...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.

Origin of Species

Derek Charke — 2010-03-17T08:28:34-03:00

"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! More Information

Acadia concert celebrates Prince’s generosity

Derek Charke — 2010-03-19T08:27:00-03:00

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

Let There Be Flute

Derek Charke — 2010-04-21T08:20:34-03:00

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

New Version of Aurora Dances

Derek Charke — 2010-05-06T08:17:22-03:00

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. More Information

Oikos / Ecos

Derek Charke — 2010-05-17T08:14:52-03:00

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. More Information