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Cultural exchange of note(s) |
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Written by Caroline Zentner Lethbridge Herald
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Tuesday, January 05 2010, 9:09 PM |
Londoners will have the opportunity to learn about the history of southern Alberta and the life of Jerry Potts through a unique exchange between the Empress Theatre Society and London’s Trinity College of Music.
The Windy Mountain Music Festival, which will change its name to Fort Macleod International Festival this May, wanted to build on its four-year tradition of success by commissioning a new work.
The classical chamber music festival brings anywhere from 12 to 20 Canadian expatriate musicians together with Alberta musicians. They spend a week together rehearsing music and then put on a series of concerts. This year the festival will feature six concerts, three of which will be held at the Empress Theatre with the others held at the Galt Museum, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and the University of Calgary.
“This concert in London is an outgrowth of an idea that began last year,” said Gerard Gibbs, executive director of The Empress Theatre Society. “Last year was the first year that we actually commissioned a new work for the festival.”
Rivka Golani, the music director of the festival, has had hundreds of works written for her and she’s a strong advocate for contemporary music.
“She said your first work should be based on your place,” Gibbs said.
The group decided to focus on the area’s history with the establishment of the North West Mounted Police and forging ties with the Blackfoot people. Who better to illustrate the story than Métis scout and interpreter Jerry Potts?
Golani, who teaches at Trinity College, wanted to explore the duo-concerto repertoire, such as viola/cello, viola/ piano and viola/spoken voice. So they commissioned Canadian composer Allan Bell to write the music and Fred Stenson, an award-winning author of historical novels, to compose a text for the spoken voice. The new work, called Bear Child, is scored for solo viola, spoken voice and strings. It was first performed at the 2009 festival with John Heighway, vice-principal of Trinity College of Music, filling the role of spoken voice. A second performance in London is planned for this February.
“It’s important when a festival or an orchestra or an organization like ours commissions a new work by a composer that we make sure it gets performed more than once. We want to make sure it gets performed before different audiences,” Gibbs said.
Bear Child uses the spoken word in a dramatic musical setting to depict the struggle Potts must have felt when the Blackfoot met a new Canada.
“If we were just to perform the work without providing any sort of background I think most London music patrons would scratch their head thinking ‘What was that all about?’” Gibbs said. “We thought we need to bring some people with us to help flesh out the picture and tell the story.”
To that end, Brian Black and Tanya Harnett, both professors of fine arts at the University of Lethbridge, will accompany the group to provide the background information on Alberta history, Blackfoot culture and native American artwork. Harnett will focus on Blackfoot culture and artwork.
Black, a pianist and musicologist dedicated to music history, will discuss the historical background on Potts and southern Alberta. Potts, born to a Scottish father and a Peigan mother, lived between two civilizations and knew them both. He was respected by the Bloods as a warrior and as a scout by the NWMP, he helped suppress the whisky trade and was interpreter for the meeting that led to Treaty 7. Potts is also credited with saving the NWMP by guiding them to a place where they could winter.
The concert is scheduled for Feb. 20 and Gibbs hopes it will be the start of other cross-cultural events in the future.
Southern Albertans can look forward to the Fort Macleod International Festival in May, for which two new works have been commissioned.
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