Domagoj Ivanović, violin
Michael Pepa, Musical Offering No. 2 "Golani", for viola and ensemble, first performance
Michael Colgrass, Chaconne, for viola solo
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Rita Ueda, Hummingbird Lovers, for two violins solo and ensemble
Owen Underhill, Bee Studies, for soprano and ensemble
Ana Sokolović, ... and I need a room to receive five thousand people with raised glasses... or... what a glorious day, the birds are singing "halleluia"..., for ensemble
Under the guidance of its artistic director, composer, and conductor Owen Underhill, the members of the prestigious Canadian ensemble will perform works by three female composers and three male composers to the Zagreb audience - Ana Sokolović, Rita Ueda, Helena Skljarov, R. Murray Schafer, Owen Underhill, and Michael Pepa. They will be joined in by the renowned Canadian soprano Robyn Driedger Klassen, who collaborated with Turning Point Ensemble for the first time while performing Raymond Murray Schafer's work Arcana. Rivka Golani, one of the world's leading violinists, will also accompany the ensemble.
R. Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer, and writer who has popularized the concept of "soundscape", leading the development of acoustic ecology as a relationship between sound, humans, and the environment, wrote a cycle of fourteen songs entitled Arcana in 1972. The imaginative composition was commissioned for the International Competition in Montreal in 1973, and got its title after a text written in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs discovered in the early 9th century.
A 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner for music, Michael Colgrass studied composition with Darius Milhaud, Lukas Foss and Ben Weber, and has collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others. The composition Chaconne was commissioned by Rivka Golani in 1984 as a Viola Concerto which she premiered with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth. Rivka Golani extracted the version for solo viola from this very Concerto.
The song cycle for soprano and large ensemble, Bee Studies, belongs to the more recent achievements from the diverse compositional opus of Owen Underhill. The cycle was created in 2019, based on the poems of Canadian writer and lawyer of Indian origin, Renée Sarojini Saklikar.
Michael Pepa, the founder and artistic director of the Les Amis Concerts concert cycle and a resident composer of the Canadian Sinfonietta ensemble, wrote his Concerto for Viola and Chamber Ensemble specifically for violist Rivka Golani, having in mind performances in Zagreb, Belgrade, Toronto and Cobourg.
Among many distinguished composers originating from Canada, or having worked there for many years, this occasion will also feature a young Croatian composer and musicologist, Helena Skljarov. Her opus already consists of more than forty works, here extended by the premiere of a new piece for a chamber ensemble. The Glazba.hr music web portal ranks her among the top 10 young authors in 2022.
Ana Sokolović combines the musical tradition of Serbian heritage with the 25 years of experience gained in the rich musical culture of Montreal. She creates a flexible and diverse musical language based on universal questions and themes. Her composition with the striking title and I need a room to receive five thousand people with raised glasses… or… what a glorious day, the birds are singing 'halleluia'... was commissioned by the Turning Point Ensemble and inspired by musical elements from two songs by the Serbian rock band EKV (Ekatarina Velika). She dedicates the piece to the urban generation of 1980s Belgrade, as well as to Owen Underhill and the Turning Point Ensemble.
Composer, sound designer, and educator Rita Ueda was born in Japan but has spent most of her life in Vancouver. Her concert for two violins and chamber ensemble, Hummingbird Lovers, is a musical depiction of tiny, colourful feathered lovers flying from one flower to another in a garden, always managing to find each other amidst the buzz of plants, birds, and insects, thusly symbolizing love, joy, and beauty.
