Concert followed by artist talk with composer-in-residence André Cormier
7:00pm
Tuesday, July 26
St. Paul’s Anglican Church, 125 Main Street
‘Church Forest’ is a major piece for flute and three overhead projectors. A painter will use the projectors as an instrument to simultaneously diffuse onto walls as she paints on acetate transparencies. The score of ‘Church Forest’ notates the painter’s part — in measured musical time — similarly to a standard instrumental part. The painter will interpret the score in time and matter. Gerd Aurell fittingly calls this “performative painting.” The flute part is composed to function in combination with an overdub layering system. As paint gestures accumulate on the projections, the flutist, on the other hand, plays on, but will be recorded in ten six-minute layers, which at the end of sixty minutes, will all be revealed. Karin and Gerd Aurell commissioned ‘Church Forest’ in 2014 from André Cormier with the generous support of the New Brunswick Arts Board. The piece was workshopped by Karin, Gerd, and André in Reykjavík, Iceland in August 2015.
Sisters Karin and Gerd Aurell have been performing together since 2009. Karin, a classically trained flute player based in Sackville, plays flute, unsurprisingly, but in sometimes surprising ways. She has started to incorporate electronic sounds into the performance, using her computer to manipulate the sound of the flute in real time. Gerd, a visual artist based in northern Sweden, plays overhead projectors. During their performances, she draws/paints on the screens and manipulates images created ahead of time. The sisters’ collaboration intensified this past year, thanks to two separate occurrences – a week long artist residency in a tiny village in eastern Iceland and a grant from ArtsNB that allowed for their first jointly commissioned work.
André Cormier’s work has been presented in Canada, the US, Europe, and New Zealand. He has written for solo, small and large chamber ensembles, as well as music for opera, dance as well as collaborative work with visual artists. His works have been commissioned from a variety of artists in Canada, the US, and Europe. In 2008 he launched Éditions musique Sisyphe (www.emsis.ca), a publishing house primarily for experimental music scores and he also directs its performing branch, Ensemble Sisyphe. In 2011, after nearly twenty years on the west coast shared between British Columbia and California, André made his return to eastern Canada, first in Montreal, and then in the fall of 2012 he returned to his native Acadie.