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Building up to BISQC: the jury is in

by on April 11, 2013 in Arts, Banff International String Quartet Competition, Music

Earlier this month I dropped into one of the studios in our Music building to meet with three people who had just made a very large decision. Or more like a series of very large decisions. Norman Fischer, Roger Tapping, and Jerzy Kaplanek are all preliminary jury members for the 11th Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC). Working with BISQC director Barry Shiffman, they spent most of Easter weekend narrowing down the field to ten quartets who will be coming to Banff in August to compete.

BISQC preliminary jury (from right) Jerzy Kaplanek, Roger Tapping, and Norman Fischer, with BISQC director Barry Shiffman. Photo: Don Lee.

Each quartet was asked to send an unedited DVD with close to an hour of music, chosen from a selection of Haydn, early Beethoven, 20th century compositions, and Romantic pieces. It’s the first year that quartets have been asked to send a video. “I was pleasantly surprised at the level of preparation (of the entries)”, Fischer says. “I was expecting it to be easier to eliminate people.” Kaplanek agreed: “With all the groups we had, we would have thought we’d come to a conclusion a little easier.”

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Jill Barber’s The Poem Song onscreen

by on March 26, 2013 in Arts, Banff, Film & Media, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Music, Videos

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Jill Barber in the Hemingway Studio in 2012. Photo: Kim Williams.

Every now and then while producing for The Banff Centre, an opportunity comes up to work on something outside of the usual, something free and artistic. Resources are often limited with these projects, and it becomes an exercise in making the maximum possible with the least available. For example, when I worked on a music video for Jill Barber’s The Poem Song. I had 24 hours after meeting Jill to come up with a concept and prepare for the half-day shoot. It was tight, so I had to think instinctively about the visuals, follow my gut, and be a little daring. Jill had asked for something experimental, personal, and unique to the location, but other than that, all of the inspiration came from the music.

For the shoot, Tory Kendal, the videographer, and I filled the Hemingway Studio with as many lights as we could pull up the icy service road and worked with a Canon 7D and a vintage lens to get a nostalgic feel. Working with Sasha Stanojevic, the lead animator, we designed the inkblot effects and set about filming food dyes and bleach on various papers for the transition effects. One of the parts I really enjoyed with this video was making the drawings. It’s always been a part of my artistic practice and it’s been the foundation of my path into video.

This project was an unusual challenge. I’m used to taking myself on a process of artistic discovery that requires experimentation and trial as a part of development, but to take a team and three vfx/motion graphics guys on a process like this is quite different. It required a lot of very open discussion, trust, and patience but in the end I think we were able to pull off a delicate and detailed piece of work. Take a look for yourself.

Edwin Hasler, is a UK-based filmmaker who was here at The Banff Centre during 2011-2012 doing a work study residency as video producer with our Film & Media department. Singer / songwriter Jill Barber was here in early 2012 for a creative residency in our Leighton Artists’ Colony.

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A little Socalled magic

by on March 25, 2013 in Arts, Events, General, Music, Theatre, Visiting Artists

New Image2Socalled is an intensely animated and zany performer. Earlier this year I caught him at The Club as he interspersed his hits with improvised songs, magic tricks, jokes, and whimsical repartee. We couldn’t get enough as he danced, rapped, and manoeuvred his accordion through the crowd, introducing us to one of his homemade puppets.

Listen to this short clip from our interview to get a sense of Socalled’s personality. He talks about his favourite records and love of puppet-making. You’ll be happy to hear I finally solved the mystery of the paper shredding captured in this clip. It was a magic trick he used during his performance.

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Abby Aresty: the electronic exhale

by on March 20, 2013 in Arts, Audio, General, Music

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Sound artist Abby Aresty and her breath / electronic music interface. Photo: Kim Williams.

Flutes, vocals, trumpets: breath has always been closely linked with music. Sound artist Abby Aresty takes a different approach, she uses to breath to trigger electronic sound. Visiting The Banff Centre as part of  the Winter Residency Program in Music and Sound, she’s been developing a breath interface that attaches itself to the chest, absorbing the expansions and contractions as breath rises and falls. The rhythm is fed into the computer and mixed with the sound of the breath itself from a stethoscope microphone at her throat. The result is a rich texture of bubbling, breathing sound. In this short audio piece I spoke to Abby about the interface and listened to some of the sounds it produces.

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“The deep roots of all music…must come directly from the earth”

by on March 13, 2013 in Arts, Creative Music Residency, General, Music

Catherine Thompson with her self-made instrument. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Catherine Thompson with her self-made instrument. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Catherine Thompson – folk instrument builder, multi-instrumentalist, and a current music resident at The Banff Centre is something like wild fruit; tarter, rarer and more unruly than its mass-produced counterpart.

Throughout our meeting last week from inside her rustically decorated music hut, she moved between intoning sweet melodies and radical pronouncements: “My work revolves around the idea that the deep roots of all music and language must come directly from the earth.” Before picking back up her melody, she added, “and that modern industrial civilization has a death wish and will devour everything it touches, including itself!”

If you haven’t caught Thompson performing rollicking folk tunes at the Rolston concerts in-between sittings of Beethoven and Brahms, you might have spotted her serenading tourists around Banff on a self-made traditional African- or Asian-inspired instrument. She’s raising cash for her upcoming five-month journey by horse throughout Southern Alberta. Thompson says that her travels (this is her third trip of this kind) are also sustained by the “respect, hospitality, and tolerance” of the farmers and ranchers she meets along the way; strangers who routinely let this wild fruit plant herself overnight on their land.

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Simon Lasky: Mozart to Mahler to Michael

by on March 12, 2013 in Arts, Classical, General, Jazz, Music, Piano

London-based musician Simon Lasky has recently added a new skill to his set. A classically trained pianist, teacher, and composer of contemporary classical and jazz music, he’s now the driving force behind It’s All Music, a lively series of presentations about the close connections between classical and popular music.

Simon Lasky, presenting It's All Music. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Simon Lasky, presenting It’s All Music. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

He draws a tight line between the musical stylings of Stevie Wonder and Mozart. “Yes, one is a black soul singer from America and one is a dead German guy with a wig on, but I want to show people how they compare.” It’s All Music runs a musical arc from Mozart to Schubert to Gershwin to Jimi Hendrix to Paul Simon and on from there. It started with visits to London schools (mostly high school level) to share a universal appreciation of all musical forms. “I’m not trying to say ‘Your music is inferior,’” he says. “I care about good music, and I don’t like people thinking classical music is only for affluent, middle-class white people.”

This was his fourth visit to Banff as a composer, and he experimented with presenting It’s All Music to a few more diverse audiences, like the Canmore Seniors’ Life Long Learners, a room full of Banff Centre staff, and some indie musicians here for a recording session. He reports that they were all into it. Given his vast knowledge of centuries of music, I asked Lasky about a few tunes that are most meaningful to him.

What was the first piece of music you ever bought with your own money? It was a CD of Jacqueline du Pré playing the Elgar Cello Concerto. She was at the peak of her powers, but she knew she was sick and she didn’t have a lot of time left. I also bought Faith by George Michael. I still have it.  

What’s a song that brings back a particularly significant memory for you? The live version of Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd. When I was 15 or 16 I was visiting my cousin in Israel, and this song seemed like the sound of what being a grown-up would be like.

Do you have a song on your iPod that’s a guilty pleasure? Anything from The Killers’ Day and Age album. It’s a really good pop record, but I think if my friends saw me listening to it they’d go ‘hmmm’.

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