Esprit Orchestra to Present ESPRIT LIVE 2022! - ACT 3

On Thursday May 12, 2022 at Koerner Hall, Esprit Orchestra, conducted by Alex Pauk, will feature Claude Vivier's Orion for large orchestra. The program also includes three World Premieres of music by young composers making new impacts on Canadian musical life - Stephanie Orlando (riptide), Julia Mermelstein (in water suspended) and Christina Volpini (waves, breaking, reflecting light).

Claude Vivier is now a celebrated composer world-wide and Orion is a main work from a period in the mid-1970s when Vivier produced most of the music that, years later, lead to his international recognition. Orion exhibits Vivier compositional hallmarks that crystallized subsequent to a long journey of self-exploration in Asia. The piece exemplifies the sense of Vivier's meditations on an "eternal homecoming". This performance follows in Esprit's long history of championing Vivier's music going back to the orchestra's founding in the early 1980s.

The themes and images of the Orlando, Mermelstein and Volpini pieces make reference to water in different ways and elicit profound emotional, physical and mental states.

Orlando's riptide, with its sense of ebb and flow, is a creative exploration of the "wave technique" - a mindfulness practice used to help navigate strong emotions or urges.

Mermelstein's in water suspended is inspired by the way memory continues to evolve and shift as we live through new experiences. Memories "are like watercolours, suspended between water, resin, and surface, always held with us yet balancing between transparency and colour".

Volpini's waves, breaking, reflecting light paints a sonic portrait of light refracted through a shifting, aqueous environment. "Just as light traveling from air to water slows and changes direction, the reverberations of impulses shift through the orchestra, morphing and varying in colour."

Adding an immersive visual dimension, a highlight of the program will be exquisite onstage video projections by artist Moira Ness interpreting and accompanying each work by Orlando, Mermelstein and Volpini. In the lobby, Ness will also have an exhibit of photographic stills from the videos.

This concert's World Premieres are part of Esprit's Three-Year Creative Strategy with long-term production and development support from the Azrieli Foundation. The Three-Year Creative Strategy engages two emerging composers each year to compose a new work for Esprit in each of three successive seasons.

For more information call (416) 408 0208 or visit espritorchestra.com.

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