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Four incredible concerts you won’t want to miss!

October 27, 2013 @ 2:30pm & 8:00pm

The Forbidden Music: Weill, Hindemith, Schulhoff and Haas

Simon Fraser University, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

A tribute to music and composers banned by the Third Reich, including two works from Berlin in 20’s – Kurt Weill’s ‘classic’ Little Threepenny Music and the brilliant early Kammermusik No. 1 by Paul Hindemith. Included is music by Czech composers Erwin Schulhoff and Pavel Haas; both died in concentration camps in WWII.

February 20, 21 & 22, 2014 @ 8pm

Grace Symmetry with Ballet BC

Queen Elizabeth Theatre

A collaboration of live music and dance with a new work from the internationally acclaimed choreographer Kevin O’Day (Ballet Mannheim) with music by New York’s John King, and In Motion with Wen Wei Wang choreography and composer Owen Underhill.

March 29 @ 7:30pm &  March 30, 2014 @ 2:30pm & 7:30pm

Thirst: Music of Ana Sokolovic, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Oesterle

Telus Studio Theatre, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

Turning Point Ensemble, musica intima and the Nu:BC Collective collaborate for a concert of instrumental music and voice featuring the music of one of Canada’s most innovative and heralded composers, Ana Sokolovic. The concert will also include thirst, a major work for voices and ensemble about ‘water’ by the exciting post-modern American composer Julia Wolfe and a new work by Montreal’s Michael Oesterle.

May 2 & 4, 2014 @ 8pm

TPE HyperEnsemble: Metacomposition, Interactivity, and Robots

Simon Fraser University, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

A groundbreaking concert, TPE is transformed into a technology expanded ensemble with the assistance of composers and researchers Arne Eigenfeldt, Keith Hamel and David Eagle. The concert will feature metacreation with music ‘composed’ by computers in real-time performed by musicians on IPADS, with musical robots, sophisticated interaction between electroacoustic music and ensemble, and horizontal and vertical spatialization of sound. Generously sponsored by Sparkjoy Studios and ArtsVest Vancouver

Generously sponsored by

  Jazz pianist/trombonist and composer, Joseph Makholm has lived and worked in Paris since 1982.  He currently teaches jazz composition and arranging and jazz history at the Bill Evans Piano Academy in that city. Since the early 1990’s, Makholm’s music has drawn increasing inspiration from the rhythmic, harmonic and formal character of jazz.  His Three Impressions for Solo Piano is listed on the syllabus of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in the United Kingdom.  The British magazine Classical Piano wrote that the piece “really sets new standards of craftsmanship in this idiom.”  That piece, along with the companion Three Reflections for Solo Piano, has been recorded by Louisiana-based pianist Willis Delony on the Centaur label. His more recent Rhapsodie for Alto Saxophone and Piano, premiered in 2009, has been recorded by the Duo Portejole-Lagarde on the Corelia label. Makholm’s three-volume pedagogic collection for piano, Jazz Tonic, is used extensively in conservatories throughout France and abroad.  A parallel collection, Jazzosphere, also in three volumes, for clarinet and alto saxophone with piano accompaniment, has just been completed. Both are published by Billaudot in Paris. He performs regularly in small groups – solo jazz piano, duos and trios - and with the Paris Jazz Repertory Quintet.

Composer Christopher Butterfield’s career highlights include performing Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata on tour with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in the US and Europe in 1996/97; the production of his opera Zurich 1916, at the Banff Summer Festival in 1998; the premiere of his score for Bill Coleman’s dance epic Convoy PQ17 in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2001; the first performance of his complete settings of Jacques Prévert’s Contes pour enfants pas sages in Toronto by Continuum and Choir 21. Recent activities include coordinating the Cage 100 Festival in Victoria, celebrating American composer John Cage’s centenary; and judging the International Gaudeamus Composition competition in the Netherlands. Current projects include translating Théatre by Paris Dada Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes for publication by the Wakefield Press, and composing a new work for Victoria’s Aventa Ensemble. Christopher Butterfield lives in Victoria BC, where he teaches composition in the School of Music at the University of Victoria.

David MacIntyre, composer

David MacIntyre is a composer of music for the stage: opera, music theatre, instrumental theatre, site specific projects, music for dance, music for orchestra, chamber and choral ensembles. “MacIntyre is a new opera pioneer,” says the Vancouver Sun newspaper. His work is performed and broadcast in nearly twenty countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia. His opera cabaret Love in Public, recently premiered at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, was nominated for two Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards including Outstanding Original Composition in 2012. He’s currently working on the narrative sequel to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with playwright Hiro Kanagawa titled Tom Pinkerton, and a new opera monodrama for baritone titled The Resistance of Mr. in collaboration with writer Stephen Miller. Since 1979, David MacIntyre has been teaching composition and collaboration in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. www.davidmacintyre.ca

          Music is sometimes the most potent when it defies simple categorization and transcends traditional stylistic boundaries.  The music of Monk and Komorous by the force of its chiseled individuality seems to exist both inside and outside the place in which it was created, coming from a particular situation and time but stretching to forms of expression and other worlds that are not contained in jazz or new music.

            Thelonious Monk’s melodies have an unmistakable angular and rhythmic quality.  Each tune is unforgettable and different although they fit within standard blues and jazz structures.  Once heard, they stick in your head delighting with their intervallic personalities and rhythmic playfulness and confounding like a Rubik’s cube in how the various pieces fit together.

Rudolf Komorous writes melodies and harmonies that have a straightforward and natural presence, yet through unpredictable juxtaposition a more complex and multi-layered expression emerges.   Often influenced by extra-musical elements including the visual arts or poetry, his music has a distinctive iconic stamp and a direct and rare expression that readily captures the attention of the listener.

Round Midnight’s program includes Rudolf Komorous’ Strange Sphere.  Sphere is Thelonious Monk’s middle name, and the work, written for the Turning Point Ensemble in 2003, is dedicated to Monk’s memory.  Certainly Monk was strange and reclusive in personality and his unusual behaviour is legendary.  That being said, Komorous’ title enigmatically suggests multiple meanings including the strangeness of human experience, and the wonder of a simple twelve-bar form which includes the unusual sounds of Indian elephant bells, African gourd rattles, and a soaring piccolo trumpet solo.

Thelonious Monk is probably the jazz musician more than any other that has piqued the interest of and is universally admired by contemporary and avant-garde composers.  Tonight’s concert includes arrangements, and compositions that reference Monk in ways unique to each composer.  We have also included two piano solos from the Round Midnight solo piano project initiated by Emanuele Arciuli and based on the famous Monk tune of the same name.  In addition to the three Rudolf Komorous works represented, the David MacIntyre commission is dedicated to Komorous, his former teacher.

In conclusion, Thelonious Monk and Rudolf Komorous share a strangeness, boldness, simultaneous simplicity and complexity, love for melodic gesture with spare but rich harmonic underpinning, and an artistic expression that is both individual and universal.  Their voices have an underground subversiveness that over time seems to have greater and greater impact as their music and influence continues to resonate.

- Owen Underhill

$10-$35 plus service charges

In Strange Sphere, the Turning Point Ensemble links two iconoclasts whose music has a unique signature and startling originality. Thelonious Sphere Monk, with his quirky genius and sharply chiseled music, is influential to jazz musicians and contemporary composers alike. Rudolf Komorous, recently turned 80, is one of Canada’s most inventive and influential composers. His music, with its melancholy and strange beauty, has a Monk-like purity and individuality. The concert includes Komorous’ Strange Sphere based on Blue Monk, and 23 Poems about Horses for narrator and ensemble based on the Tang dynasty poetry of Li Ho.

An assortment of the West Coast’s most distinctive musicians including Christopher Butterfield, John Korsrud, David MacIntyre, and Tony Wilson pay homage to the music of Monk and Komorous with new works. In addition, the TPE will premiere Fantasy on Themes of Thelonious Monk by Paris-based Monk scholar and jazz musician, Joe Makholm.

I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing? even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. I don’t know what other people are doing – I just know about me.

Thelonious Monk

Thursday, March 21 2013

7:30pm

Orpheum Annex

823 Seymour Street, 2nd Flr Vancouver

$20 | $10 (STUDENTS/SENIORS) |$50 (FESTIVAL PASS)

TICKETS AT THE DOOR (cash or cheque only)

Turning Point Ensemble returns as ensemble in residence with Vancouver Pro Musica’s 2013 Sonic Boom Festival – a festival of new music featuring creations by emerging and established composers in our community as well as workshops. As the culmination of four fall 2012 workshops co-designed by Turning Point with Vancouver Pro Musica, the ensemble will present their first performance in the Orpheum Annex space on March 21, 2013, featuring jury selected scores of new music by emerging and established Vancouver composers such as Rita Ueda.

Other programs in the festival include guitarist Adrian Verdejo in performance with pieces by …….as well as mixed programs…..and on March 24th Turning Point Ensemble musicians Mary Sokol Brown (violin), Ariel Barnes (cello), and Jane Hayes (piano) will present a workshop to composers interested in writing for piano trio.

Check out all the Sonic Boom Festival events here!

The subtitle of this event – Music and Film, a Live Conversation – does really describe what is special about the evening – it is a unique opportunity to hear six compositions and six video/films that each have their own separate integrity, and yet are conversing together to build something greater than their traditionally accepted roles (can I say “typecast”?).   What I am anticipating with great excitement is not only the visual artist/composer partnerships that make up this program – but also the conversation that these pieces inspire amongst our audience – who likely will be comprised of folks like me who might be more familiar with the music, but whose learning curve in visual arts is quite steep – as well as those with a much stronger visual arts back-round for whom the music we play will be less familiar.    There’s a great line I keep close – “Depending on how you spend your time, you will either know an awful lot about an awful little, or an awful little about and awful lot – so a lot of humility is always warranted”.  

Cinema Musica is, I think, Turning Point’s fourth presentation within a PuSh Festival – and as an organization we are so thrilled to have again been invited to be part of this internationally recognized signature arts festival in Canada.  We know that by being part of this festival one of the most important artistic conversations we’ll have is with the special festival audiences that are keen be amongst the few to witness and participate in something dynamic and extraordinary – and as our preparation for this presentation this past year has been just that, I am confident our audiences will take from this event a better appreciation for the spirited artistic negotiations that help us better know our place in this world.

- Jeremy Berkman, Co-Artistic Director & Trombonist

Turning Point Ensemble

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$10-$35 plus service charges

In Strange Sphere, the Turning Point Ensemble links two iconoclasts whose music has a unique signature and startling originality. Thelonious Sphere Monk, with his quirky genius and sharply chiseled music, is influential to jazz musicians and contemporary composers alike. Rudolf Komorous, recently turned 80, is one of Canada’s most inventive and influential composers. His music, with its melancholy and strange beauty, has a Monk-like purity and individuality. The concert includes Komorous’ Strange Sphere based on Blue Monk, and 23 Poems about Horses for narrator and ensemble based on the Tang dynasty poetry of Li Ho.

An assortment of the West Coast’s most distinctive musicians including Christopher Butterfield, John Korsrud, David MacIntyre, and Tony Wilson pay homage to the music of Monk and Komorous with new works. In addition, the TPE will premiere Fantasy on Themes of Thelonious Monk by Paris-based Monk scholar and jazz musician, Joe Makholm.

I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing? even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. I don’t know what other people are doing – I just know about me.

Thelonious Monk

This  Sunday, November 25th at 3:30PM in Rose Gellert Hall, members of Turning Point Ensemble will be presenting five new compositions created by the youth participants (ages 12-20) in our Creating Composers program – a project presented in partnership with Langley Community Muisc School.

Turning Point Ensemble has been encouraging compositional creativity in young artists for over six years with partner schools in Vancouver, North Vancouver, Burnaby, and Langley, and this will be the second year of concerts at the Langley Community Music School.

Joining Turning Point Ensemble musicians is internationally renowned BC resident composer Rodney Sharman, who provides professional mentorship for the young composers.

This year Creating Composers is specially supported by the SOCAN Foundation, Telus Community Board, Metro Vancouver, and the Province of British Columbia through Direct Access to Gaming.