COMPOSERS IN PLAY XV: Ink from the Shield at Merkin Concert Hall

Pianists Anthony de Mare and Adam Sherkin join forces for this all-Canadian program. In sets for both one and two keyboards, music from our continent’s north is highlighted in fresh relief, featuring works by Vivian Fung, Andrew Stanliand, Ann Southam, Heather Schmidt, Linda Catlin Smith and Rodney Sharman. With every selection written in the last twenty-five years, de Mare and Sherkin take on solo sets, then team up for special commissions on two pianos: a novel version of Jared Miller’s "The Bright Exuberant Silence" – from the second movement, “Effervescent” – and Adam Sherkin’s Ink from the Shield: musical postcards taking inspiration from the time Benjamin Britten and Peters Pears spent in Canada – as pacifists – during the Second World War.

Sherkin’s new work, Ink from the Shield, takes inspiration from the places in Canada that Benjamin Britten and Peters Pears stayed: Montreal and St. Jovite, Quebec; Bala (in Muskoka) and Toronto, Ontario and finally, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Sherkin has evolved these materials into a two-piano structure and recreated musical forms from his own improvisations (dating back to 2013). The “shield” in question is the Canadian Shield: a broad northern region of Precambrian rock, much enhanced with a nod to the music Britten penned on his North American journey.

PROGRAM:
VIVIAN FUNG – White on Black (2023)
JARED MILLER – Effervescent (2025) for 2 pianos*
KELLY-MARIE MURPHY – Star Burning Blue (2000)
HEATHER SCHMIDT – Twelve for Ten: Prelude-Fugue for Glenn Gould (2007)
RODNEY SHARMAN – Selected Opera Transcriptions: Don Giovanni (2021); La Rondine (1991); I Capuleti e i Montecchi (2022-24)
ADAM SHERKIN – Northern Frames, Op. 15, No. 8: Draco (2018); Ink from the Shield (2024) for 2 pianos*
LINDA CATLIN SMITH – The View from Here (1992)
ANN SOUTHAM – Rivers: Set 3 No. 4; Set 1 No. 1 (1979, 1981; rev. 2004)
ANDREW STANILAND – Etudes: Symmetry, Of the Sea and Flower in Nighttime (2018) **

* WORLD PREMIERE; Piano Lunaire commission
** US PREMIERE