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.

Program

Mariah Mennie, Movement: A 1970s Social Odyssey (2018) in 12 movements:

1. To Begin
2. Alone
3. A Call to Social Movement
4. A Meeting of Voices
5. The Excitement of a Movement
6. Inspiration
7. Reading as Performed Resistance
8. Inspiration Speaks
9. GLUT
10. A Uniting of Voices
11. Gaining Momentum
12. Voices in Harmony

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)

Jon Bogert, Three Explorations for Clarinet

Yi-Hsien Chen (clarinet)

Alex Tosh, Misatone

Corey Hamm (conductor), Marina Antoniou (trombone), Aaron Eggen (tuba), Dasa Silhova (trumpet)

Jean Papineau-Couture, Aria (1964)

Jeongah Choi (violin)

Toru Takemitsu, Air (1995)

Emily Richardson (flute)

Gene Kosinksi, Swerve

Luke Hildebrandt (percussion)

Giorgio Magnanensi, Lied

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