Directed by Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Music focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors.
Flutist Paolo Bortolussi is a soloist, chamber artist and new music pioneer. Raised in Halifax, NS, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across Canada, the US and abroad. A specialist in contemporary music, Bortolussi is the flutist and co-director of the Nu:BC Collective, a new music and multimedia arts ensemble in residence at UBC. To date he has premiered over one hundred and fifty solo and chamber works. In 2016, Bortolussi released his first solo album, Israfel – music for flute and electronics, on the Redshift label, which includes works by Keith Hamel, Larry Lake, John Oliver and Kaija Saariaho. Currently principal flutist with the Vancouver Island Symphony, Bortolussi has appeared as soloist with the VIS as well as the Albany (NY) Symphony and the Turning Point Ensemble, and has performed with the Aventa Ensemble, the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra, as well as the Vancouver and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. Bortolussi is on the music faculty of the University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Trinity Western University. He holds a BMus in performance from the University of Ottawa as well as Masters and Doctoral degrees from Indiana University. He is currently director of the UBC Contemporary Players
Once again, we are pleased to welcome the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin Art Gallery for a concert inspired by the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT. Directed by UBC School of Music faculty Drs. Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with exciting world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors.
For this concert, School of Music composer Mariah Mennie works with UBC Contemporary Players in conjunction with the final Readers Respond event as part of Alexandra Bischoff’s project, Rereading Room. Mennie’s composition incorporates her own reactions to the exhibition, as well as the performers’ reactions in real time, through guided improvisation passages. The program also features Lied by Vancouver New Music artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi, which similarly involves directed improvisatory passages combined with a richly enveloping electronic track.
The UBC Contemporary Players concert is a collaboration with the event series The Readers Respond. Rereading Room is activated by The Readers: a performance orchestrated by Bischoff wherein thirteen trans- and cis-women and non‑binary artists, authors and activists have been invited to occupy the installation for the duration of the exhibition. They work with and against an inventory of early feminist literature by reading, annotating and supplementing the collection to form a dossier of responses. The Readers today are Elisa Ferrari, Kay Higgins, Beverly Ho and Kathy Slade.
Marina Antoniou (trombone), Yi-Hsien Chen (clarinet), Adam Dopierala (percussion), Paul Hung (flute), Louis Lam (bass trombone), Emily Richardson (flute), Rachel Rozelle (French horn), Willy Wang (trumpet)
Yi-Hsien Chen (clarinet)
Corey Hamm (conductor), Marina Antoniou (trombone), Aaron Eggen (tuba), Dasa Silhova (trumpet)
Jeongah Choi (violin)
Emily Richardson (flute)
Luke Hildebrandt (percussion)
Paolo Bortolussi (conductor), Marina Antoniou (trombone), Jeongah Choi (violin), Adam Dopierala (percussion), Aaron Eggen (tuba), Emily Richardson (flute), Dasa Silhova (trumpet), Susan Xia (piano)
Conceived and developed by Shelly Rosenblum
Directed by Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Music focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors.
Flutist Paolo Bortolussi is a soloist, chamber artist and new music pioneer. Raised in Halifax, NS, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across Canada, the US and abroad. A specialist in contemporary music, Bortolussi is the flutist and co-director of the Nu:BC Collective, a new music and multimedia arts ensemble in residence at UBC. To date he has premiered over one hundred and fifty solo and chamber works. In 2016, Bortolussi released his first solo album, Israfel – music for flute and electronics, on the Redshift label, which includes works by Keith Hamel, Larry Lake, John Oliver and Kaija Saariaho. Currently principal flutist with the Vancouver Island Symphony, Bortolussi has appeared as soloist with the VIS as well as the Albany (NY) Symphony and the Turning Point Ensemble, and has performed with the Aventa Ensemble, the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra, as well as the Vancouver and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. Bortolussi is on the music faculty of the University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Trinity Western University. He holds a BMus in performance from the University of Ottawa as well as Masters and Doctoral degrees from Indiana University. He is currently director of the UBC Contemporary Players
Celebrating the excessive abundance of the archive, Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT is concerned with language, depictions of the woman reader as an artistic genre and the potential of reading as performed resistance.
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