Esprit Orchestra Presents CONSTELLATIONS

Esprit Orchestra's 2018-2019 concert season continues in the new year with a concert titled Constellations, which simultaneously serves as the finale for the Royal Conservatory of Music's 21C Festival, and the launch of the University of Toronto's New Music Festival. Founding Music Director & Conductor, Alex Pauk will lead the orchestra in a program of music by Toshio Hosokawa, Alison Yun-Fei Jiang, and Claude Vivier, as well as the World Premiere of Christopher Goddard's work, Les tringles des sistres tintaient. The concert takes place at 8:00 pm in Koerner Hall on Sunday January 20, 2019.

Returning to the Esprit stage is Claude Vivier's Orion. This work, in six sections, takes listeners on a journey to the stars with Vivier's reverent cosmic soundscape. The main melody in the piece is heard most prominently from the trumpet. Vivier says of the melody: "[it] is cast upon itself without being able (wanting) to smash the wall of solitude." The piece is a vivid expression of Vivier's musical state of 'eternal homecoming'.

Emerging composers Christopher Goddard and Alison Yun-Fei Jiang are both featured on the Constellations program. Goddard returns to the Esprit stage for the second year in a row with the World Premiere of his commissioned work, Les tringles des sistres tintaient, an energetic re-imagining of the spellbinding gypsy song that opens act two of Bizet's Carmen. Jiang's River Memory is inspired by Niagara Falls at the very moment the Maid of the Mist arrives at the foot of the thunderous Horseshoe Falls. As the composer states in her note, "At that moment, everything as perceived by the human senses becomes solemn, peaceful, and pure. It reminds me of a kind of transformation humans go through in time-flowing down a river of memory; of past, present, and future." A new commission by Jiang will also appear on the New Wave Reprise program, the final concert in Esprit's 2018-2019 season on April 5, 2019.

Finally, Toshio Hosokawa's Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra will feature guest artist, saxophonist Wallace Halladay. In this work (with stereophonic arrangement of the orchestra onstage) the soloist symbolizes man and the orchestra the universe - inner and outer nature. The soloist interacts with the orchestra just as a person moves in nature, receiving vibrations from nature and reciprocating them. Hosokawa is the Roger D. Moore Distinguished Visitor for Composition for the University of Toronto's New Music Festival.

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