WNMF 5: Theofanidis & Stafylakis: Sunset
For this closing concert of WNMF 2026, music director Daniel Raiskin and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra begin with two nature-inspired works.
Swedish composer Jacob Mühlrad comes to Winnipeg for the first time to present the Canadian premiere of his RESIL I, a sonorous work that considers humanity’s role within Earth’s complex natural systems.
The WSO then welcomes guest soloist Stephen Williamson – principal clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony – to give the Canadian premiere of distinguished guest composer Christopher Theofanidis’s Indigo Heaven. Composed for Williamson, the work evokes the majesty we experience as we navigate between epic natural landscapes.
Guest ensemble CC Duo then returns, joining the WSO in a performance of Kelly-Marie Murphy’s characteristically energetic, playful, and virtuosic The Confectioner’s Handbook, one of a series of concerti for two guitars commissioned by the ensemble for their 2025 album – a collaboration with string ensemble Collectif9 – Re/String.
The festival comes to a resounding end with the Third Symphony of Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, his last major work composed for the WSO as part of his historic 10-year tenure as the orchestra’s composer-in-residence and co-curator of the Winnipeg New Music Festival.
PROGRAM NOTES
Jacob Mühlrad – RESIL I (2024) for orchestra [Canadian premiere]
When the lights are dimmed, in the silence that follows the applause, you hear something – you are not sure what: a collection of quiet sounds drowned in excessive air, vibration, and resonance, some of them very low, others uncomfortably shrill, some actually inaudible to the human ear. Noise, out of which anything could appear. As we are drawn to listen intently, tensions appear towards pitches, chords, like a camera lens trying to focus on an object, found and lost again in a colorful blur. We are beginning to enjoy the cinematic effect, but intervals emerge, stretching on individual instruments into scales and simple rhythmical cells. Instruments start collaborating, based on timbral affinities, structures get more complex, something larger forms, that has a pulse. Seamlessly melodies appear, and you start following them, only to get lost in a factory of mechanical pounding that overcomes the heartfelt tunes. As we seem to have anticlimactically returned to shapeless noise, something unexpected happens: these different components start overlapping, assisting each other, in a motley combination of musical worlds that shouldn’t belong together, both epic in breadth and full to the brim with heterogeneous fragments and ideas. The sound masses grow leaner, settle around the fundamental overtone series, like iron dust under the influence of an invisible magnet. The piece ends in almost liturgical recollection, as we process the whirlwind of these dense ten minutes that feel like a fast forward, or maybe a rewind.
Perhaps all of this should be experienced by the listener before reading in this program note that the composer Jacob Mühlrad was inspired by the writings of environmental scientist Carl Folke and his concept of panarchy: the idea that, understood as a whole, our Earth is an aggregate of systems (biological and social, among others) nested in each other, bound by complex relationships of mutual influence. Then we understand RESIL I not just as a symphonic movement, but a symphonic poem that presents us with an accelerated history of life on our planet, from its humble beginnings to the incredible diversity of biological forms spawned by the Cambrian Explosion, and the many complications that followed, in which our species has come to leave its controversial mark. Knowing all this in advance, the listener might be tempted to try to read the events of this chronology in the details of the music, looking to decipher them as a story; and in doing so one might miss out on the fact that the work does not simply deliver an encrypted message on what Professor Folke calls resilience, meaning our planet’s systems’ ability to transform by adaptation and integration, to constantly reinvent themselves – rather, we are offered an opportunity to experience resilience for ourselves. Jacob Mühlrad doesn’t challenge our ability to understand meanings hidden in music, but the very ways in which we listen, by repeatedly switching between styles and techniques, therefore demanding continuous refocusing of our ears and attention. Our recent history shows that comprehending such a process of resilience intellectually is insufficient: if we are to invent sustainable ways of living on Earth, it has to be a skill that we train actively. In making that experience in a controlled environment, more concentrated in space and time than any natural scenery, we might actually get a glimpse of a humbling realization: the deeper under-standing of ourselves as a fleeting state of an ever-changing system, bound to the lives, speeds, and accidents of other ever-changing systems.
Aleksi Barrière, November 2024
Christopher Theofanidis – Indigo Heaven (2025) for clarinet & orchestra [Canadian premiere]
I. Hypnotic, easy
II. Vast, patient
Solo Cadenza
III. Brilliant
Stephen Williamson, clarinet
Indigo Heaven is a title taken (with permission) from author Mark Warren’s wonderful post-civil war era novel of the same name. In an affecting scene, the protagonist, a former soldier named Clayt, sees a work of art and finds a deep truth in the representation of nature in it, as if there is no barrier between the landscape’s depiction and reality he knows. In our case, the story’s setting of Colorado and Wyoming is personal here, as clarinetist Stephen Williamson spent most of his early life between those two states, and I spend time in both places each year myself. The description of the sky at dusk, an indigo heaven, is haunting and tied to the beauty of the end of the protaganist’s life. Each of the movements in my work take their affect from imagery from the novel.
The concerto is approximately 27 minutes, and is structured:
I. Hypnotic, easy
II. Vast, patient
Solo Cadenza
III. Brilliant
Steve and I met at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 1990, and it has been a dream long in the making for us to do a concerto together. I am grateful to the Chicago Symphony for the opportunity to bring this work to life, and for the Albany Symphony for making the recording of the work.
—Christopher Theofanidis
Kelly-Marie Murphy – The Confectioner’s Handbook (2022) for 2 guitars & strings
CC Duo: Adam Cicchillitti & Steve Cowan, guitars
Published in 1883, The Confectioner’s Handbook, is a practical guide to the art of sugar boiling. A successful sugar boil requires the right equipment, and very precise temperatures. It can go horribly wrong if the confectioner is not careful, and in that case, must be discarded.
When commissioned by the Cowan-Cicchillitti Duo for a concerto with string orchestra, I decided to reflect on these processes and draw a parallel with music-making. The heat, the bubbling mixture, the precise temperatures; long strands, threads, and fractures. There is an element of danger and a risk of failure at all times. But there are also moments of beauty and indeed, sweetness. Over its 9 minutes, the concerto touches on all these images.
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis – Symphony No. 3 (2026) [World premiere / WSO commission]
N/A
Partnering with the Winnipeg Classical Guitar Society, WNMF heads for the second time to the beautiful Marcel Desautels Concert Hall to present award-winning Canadian ensemble CC Duo.
In recent years, guitarists Adam Cicchillitti and Steve Cowan have undertaken numerous projects that have explored new sounds and possibilities in the classical guitar. Together and individually, they have commissioned works from Canadian and international composers like Kelly-Marie Murphy, ICEBERG New Music, and WSO’s own Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis, together developing a corpus that blends an appreciation for tradition and a fascination with innovation.
Enjoy an evening of music that ranges from delicate sonorities and intimate expressions to grandiose and bombastic interjections, tied together by electronic soundscapes that will fill the University of Manitoba’s resonant new concert hall.
PROGRAM NOTES
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis & Adam Pietrykowski – Focus (Van Tilberg Remix)
I. Radial Glare
II. Inward Gaze
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
—Alexander Graham Bell
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
—Aristotle
My artistic persona is deeply informed by two musical lineages that are historically distinct: classical music and progressive metal.
I first began developing my compositional voice as a metal songwriter. Later in life, switching lanes to the world of (“classical”) concert music, there was a pervasive sense in my new milieu that one must hide or subsume such “popular” influences in order to be taken seriously. Naturally, then, my artistic output over a dozen years of composing concert music has largely been concerned with both fusing and highlighting these two lineages explicitly and unabashedly.
Focus is an ode to my love of both metal and classical musics – passions I share with my friends Steve Cowan and Adam Cicchillitti, the two guitarists to whom it is dedicated.
The piece is set in two movements. The first, Radial Glare, leans heavily on the metal end of the spectrum, deploying both classical and electric guitar idioms in an unrelentingly virtuosic, ferociously extroverted stream of sound and tight ensemble work. The second, Inward Gaze, shifts over to the classical domain, exploring the more delicate and coloristic qualities of the nylon-string guitar, while building on a thematic foundation drawn from one of the most beautiful works in Western music history: the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Focus was commissioned by the Cowan-Cicchillitti Duo with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The Van Tilburg Remix was created for the 21st Century Guitar conference in Ottawa, Canada.
—HS | www.hstafylakis.com
The sun burns bright only because of its own self-destruction. It is a sea of fire in a vast nothingness, violently burning its own essence. Harry’s piece captures this disarray and directs this fervor into a focused beam. Still, the tension of such a process is not alleviated. The fire is still unwieldy, the filament still burns hot, and the noise is present in our light whether we notice it or not.
When dealing with music like Focus, I prefer not to remix in overtly destructive ways. The piece is already there for me to decorate and pull from. Think of this remix as a photograph of a familiar subject, but captured on different wavelengths. My interpretation adds nothing that wasn’t already there, it merely makes that spectra visible.
—Van Tilburg
Returning to our familiar concert hall, music director Daniel Raiskin leads the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in a series of works that raise the spirit, evoking a sense of hope even in the face of great turmoil and tragedy.
Chealse Komschlies’s A Hidden Sun Rises offers a luminous and poetic symphonic opening to the concert. Distinguished guest composer Christopher Theofanidis then returns with A Thousand Cranes, a lyrical and contemplative work that features the WSO’s string section in nuanced dialogue with the harp.
The WSO is pleased to present the world premiere of Centuries of Hope: Variations + Theme by Winnipeg composer Neil Weisensel. Created for WNMF 2026 as a statement of perseverance and triumph over oppressive forces, this powerful new work carries a strain of strident resistance as it responds to world events.
Closing out the evening is Grammy-winning composer Gabriela Ortiz’s shimmering work TZAM, an epic orchestral statement that sees the composer taking a metaphorical step back to contemplate the Earth — and humanity’s place within it.
PROGRAM NOTES
Chelsea Komschlies – A Hidden Sun Rises (2019) [Canadian premiere]
A darkened orb, long dormant, and unseen by human eye
Begins to stir and wake at last, and glow within, and rise:
This, Of a great new dawn, the turning of the age, a sign.
Christopher Theofanidis – A Thousand Cranes (2015) [Canadian premiere]
A Thousand Cranes (2015) has been a piece I have long wanted to write. Many years ago on a visit to Japan, I encountered the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was affected by the radiation of the atomic blast in Hiroshima during World War II. There have been many artistic efforts written in response to that terrible event, most of which have had an understandably intense and dark impulse. The story of Sadako seemed to me to have a different focus- her short life met the unspeakable with the only response that can reflect true good- hope and faith in the future, and a belief in beauty.
After Sadako became sick, she followed an old custom that said that said that if she folded 1000 origami cranes, her deepest wish would come true. In an effort to heal herself, she folded the 1000 cranes, and then when she didn’t get better, the story goes that she still believed in the creative gesture so much that she started to fold another 1000 cranes. This hope and belief in a better future, even in response to such a tragedy, is what attracted me to the subject, and it is what underpins the impulse of my piece.
A Thousand Cranes is also in some ways a fulfillment of a promise that I made to my friend, Masakazu Hoshima, who hosted me and many others in Hiroshima, and took us to the memorial museum there, introduced us to a survivor who shared his story with us, and showed us many other facets of life in that remarkable city.
This work was facilitated by the Yellow Barn festival and was originally written for the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) with Sivan Magen on harp and premiered in December of 2015 at the Nasher Museum in Dallas, Texas. It is commissioned by Charles and Jessie Price and dedicated to Nash and Marion.
The piece is approximately 25 minutes long.
—Christopher Theofanidis
Neil Weisensel – Centuries of Hope: Variations + Theme (2026) for orchestra [World premiere / WSO commission]
N/A
Gabriela Ortiz – TZAM (2022) for orchestra
Due to circumstances that are entirely personal, heartfelt emotivity is conveyed in TZAM through a musical discourse that is, in turn, deeply rooted in the experiences life has to offer. Over the past two years, I have lost my father and two dear friends who were fundamental not only to me, but to musical development in Latin America: Carmen Helena Téllez, an orchestra conductor and tireless promoter of contemporary Latin American music, and Mario Lavista, my mentor and professor of musical composition. Somehow, as I began to compose TZAM, I found it impossible to defer what I felt was a pressing need to express my gratitude toward all of them through music.
Dedicated to the memory of Mario Lavista, TZAM means “dialogue” in Ayapaneco, one of more than 60 indigenous languages found in Mexico today although, with fewer than ten speakers, it is lamentably on the verge of extinction. I chose TZAM as a title not only for its attractive sound, but also because implicit in its meaning is our ability to converse and dialogue, not only with all that surrounds us and nourishes us as human beings within this secret, timeless space, but also and above all with what it means to be a human being on this Earth.
Parting from the action of dialogue as a primal concept, I decided to position the brass section differently, dividing it into two instrumental groups situated across from one another in a circular fashion, so that a stereophonic exchange of ideas could arise among them. Parting from this unusual instrumental placement of the brass, I thought it would be congruent to start out with a fanfare. This material acts as a leitmotiv or recurring idée fixe. Immediately afterwards, I carefully chose the main axes of harmony and textured timbre for each of the sections. I then tried to emulate the idea of representing an ocean of sounds —its rising and ebbing tides, acting time and again as a colorful harmonic and instrumental surprise. The central portion of TZAM includes the introduction of new musical material as a personal tribute to remind us of the intimate, delicate realm of Lavista’s music. Its development features a surprising and contrasting adagio for strings that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, originated in a genuine attempt to dialogue with Carmen, with Mario and with my father, perhaps for the last time. Finally, a brief epilogue appears in which I revisit the beginning of the work, thus reviving the primal concept that sparked its development.
—Gabriela Ortiz
Taking a timely thematic turn, WNMF follows guest percussionist Lisa Pegher to the StudioLab xR, where she presents a program that explores the relationship between music, creativity, and technology.
Crafted in collaboration with New York City-based composer collective ICEBERG New Music, A.I.RE integrates instrumental performance, electronics, multimedia elements, and generative artificial intelligence into a musical narrative that is at once conceptually fascinating and viscerally impactful.
This is a concert add-on. You can add it to your WNMF Pass at checkout.
PROGRAM NOTES
Jessica Mays – B A O B A B
This composition evolved to be improvisational and atmospheric. It evokes the origins of percussion and the relationship it holds to human expression in different cultures. A baobab is a type of tree and, in this context, it represents the roots of percussion.
Max Grafe – The Roots of Rhythm Remain
His piece evokes early percussion compositions. The roots of rhythm ethnic drumming and percussion remain in place, but are becoming more distant and synthesizing with other types of percussion. It’s performed on a standard multi-percussion setup with moments of improvisational drumming.
Drake Andersen – Exchange
Exchange i s an interactive electronic work that serves as a transition throughout the program. It is generated from a bank of resonating filters that gradually takes on the musical qualities of whatever lisa is playing. After collecting enough material, a machine learning algorithm leads the piece beyond what has been played, suggesting new paths and confluences between human and machine.
Lisa Pegher – Fate Amenable to Grace
The title of this introspective piece is a play on words inspired by elon musk’s use of author iain bank’s ship names from his culture series novels. Most notably, “of course | still love you” in naming some of his spacex rocket landing sites.
This particular ship’s name was “fate amenable to change” and i renamed i t “fate amenable to grace.” while both are fitting creatively, I like to think that the higher power’s grace is a constant, always there to support me through the uncharted change and growth that ultimately leads to our fate. The work is dedicated to someone with whom i crossed paths for only a brief time, but whose presence resulted in my overcoming of a major creative block i had been experiencing. This piece is the result of that overcoming.
Stephanie Ann Boyd – Sloane
Stephanie wrote this piece during the beginning of lockdown in 2020, and with it i got a soundtrack for a summer spent in a very empty Manhattan. It’s a piece meant to be enjoyed and grooved to. A piece to throw all cares away to. (this work sits in a space of pop music where drums are beginning to become integrated with backing tracks, and is a fun part of the evolution that we still live in).
Magenta-Z – Out of Time
Time is a concept i often contemplate, and have a different stance on than our modern-day society. We’ve created a world where everyone feels like they’re constantly running out of time. But in reality, time is unlimited, and nothing can be created nor destroyed. Yet we seek adhere to a confined structure that humans have essentially made up.
Magenta-z is an alter ego, meant to portray the creative world where there are no set names, rules or concepts. Many artists have different stage names, and I’ve often struggled with the idea of being confined to a single name or mission in life. Einstein once said “imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” this piece represents a reinvention and evolution in the program, from acoustic drums to electronic drums, and an evolution in myself as well.
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis – Therein Lies the Enemy
This piece, for drum set and electronics, utilizes an excerpt from Stephen fry’s 7 deadly sins podcast (season 2, episode 1, 1:19-7:50). The work explores political elements online, and how social media, computers, and the internet have influenced our daily lives. By excerpting a controversial podcast and setting it to a ballistic prog rock electronic backtrack. Stafylakis forces the listener to contemplate some of the ways computers have helped – and hurt – our society, and how that has been projected onto our governmental systems as well.
Victor Baez – Kýklos Zoís [Life Cycles]
This piece is for a percussion soloist and electronics. The entire content of the piece is generated live by the performers). The electronics component consists of a patch comprising a two-tape delay and a harmonizer. The percussionist starts without electronics, and the piece is built as the execution of the score unfolds, with the electronics operator reacting and adjusting to their partner’s actions.
Alex Burtzos – Re-//Signed
His work utilizes sound excerpts from the commentary which accompanied Garry Kasparov’s chess match against the IBM supercomputer deep blue in 1996. The score is prefaced by a quote: “the real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do” – b.f. skinner (1904-90)
During the work I represent the human portion of the match, improvising based on a graphic score and “battling” the electronics. The groovy, trap-inspired music changes based on my choices during the performance.
Derek Cooper – IAM/AI
IAM/AI is a call and response between the performer and computer, where my choices as the human are listened to by the computer and the output varies based on what the computer hears. My choices also determine, to some extent, how the computer responds. This piece has complex MAX MXP mappings and is one of the more interactive computer to human compositions in the program.
Yu-Chun Chien – Through the Night
His work explores computers’ ability to detect movements and is largely driven by expressive motions from the performer. The audience and see and feel the music becoming more hybrid and mostly captured within the computer in the live visuals.
The WSO is proud to present this year’s WNMF distinguished guest composer, Christopher Theofanidis. The festival opens with his celebrated orchestral work Rainbow Body, which draws inspiration from medieval lyricism and mysticism to trace a colorful and dramatic sonic journey.
Celebrated percussionist Lisa Pegher joins us for her WSO debut in a performance of the fiery Percussion Concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, a work that seeks to flaunt the rich tonal and technical possibilities of the world of orchestral percussion. Polina Nazaykinskaya’s Reading the Wind follows, taking inspiration from Stravinsky’s legendary Rite of Spring in its celebration of music, dance, nature, and ritual.
The evening culminates in James MacMillan’s symphonic tour de force Concerto for Orchestra, a work that channels haunting memories of music from the past to showcase each section of the symphony orchestra, both in focused isolation and in flavorful combinations with each other.
PROGRAM NOTES
Christopher Theofanidis – Rainbow Body (2000) for orchestra
In the past few years I have been listening to the music of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen a great deal, and as simple and direct as this music is, I am constantly amazed by its staying power. Hildegard’s melodies have very memorable contours which set them apart from other chants of the period. They are wonderfully sensual and set up a very intimate communication with the divine. This work is based on one of her chants, ‘Ave Maria, o auctrix vite’ (Hail Mary, source of life).
Rainbow Body begins in an understated, mysterious manner, calling attention to some of the key intervals and motives of the piece. When the primary melody enters for the first time about a minute into the work, I present it very directly in the strings without accompaniment. In the orchestration, I try to capture a halo around this melody, creating a wet acoustic by emphasizing the lingering reverberations one might hear in an old cathedral.
Although the piece is built essentially around fragments of the melody, I also return to the tune in its entirety several times throughout the work, as a kind of plateau of stability and peace within an otherwise turbulent environment. Rainbow Body has a very different sensibility from the Hildegard chant, with a structure that is dramatic and developmental, but I hope that it conveys at least a little of my love for the beauty and grace of her work.
Rainbow Body is dedicated to Glen Rosenbaum, without whose support and encouragement I would not be composing.
—Christopher Theofanidis
Jennifer Higdon – Percussion Concerto (2005)
Lisa Pegher, percussion
The 20th century saw the development of the percussion section grow as no other section in the orchestra. Both the music and the performers grew in visibility as well as in capability. And while the form of the concerto wasn’t the least bit new in the century, the appearance and growth of the percussion concerto as a genre exploded during the later half of the century.
My “Percussion Concerto” follows the normal relationship of a dialogue between soloist and orchestra. In this work, however, there is an additional relationship with the soloist interacting extensively with the percussion section. The ability of performers has grown to such an extent that it has become possible to have sections within the orchestra interact at the same level as the soloist.
When writing a concerto I think of two things: the particular soloist for whom I am writing and the nature of the solo instrument. In the case of percussion, this means a large battery of instruments, from vibraphone and marimba (the favorite instrument of soloist Colin Currie), to non-pitched smaller instruments (brake drum, wood blocks, Peking Opera gong), and to the drums themselves. Not only does a percussionist have to perfect playing all of these instruments, but he must make hundreds of decisions regarding the use of sticks and mallets, as there is an infinite variety of possibilities from which to choose. Not to mention the choreography of the movement of the player; where most performers do not have to concern themselves with movement across the stage during a performance, a percussion soloist must have every move memorized. No other instrumentalist has such a large number of variables to challenge and master.
This work begins with the sound of the marimba, as Colin early on informed me that he has a fondness for this instrument. I wanted the opening to be exquisitely quiet and serene, with the focus on the soloist. Then the percussion section enters, mimicking the gestures of the soloist. Only after this dialogue is established does the orchestra enter. There is significant interplay between the soloist and the orchestra with a fairly beefy accompaniment in the orchestral part, but at various times the music comes back down to the sound of the
soloist and the percussion section playing together, without orchestra.
Eventually, the music moves through a slow lyrical section, which requires simultaneous bowing and mallet playing by the soloist, and then a return to the fast section, where a cadenza ensues with both the soloist and the percussion section. A dramatic close to the cadenza leads back to the orchestra’s opening material and the eventual conclusion of the work.
Written for Colin Currie, this work is dedicated to him.
“Percussion Concerto” was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and The Dallas Symphony Orchestra. This commission was made possible with support from The Philadelphia Music Project (an artistic initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts), and by a generous gift from LDI, Ltd. and the Lacy Foundation.
–Jennifer Higdon
Polina Nazaykinskaya – Reading the Wind (2013) [Canadian premiere]
I composed Reading the Wind in 2013 as part of a program honoring the centenary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Reflecting on Stravinsky’s masterpiece, I was struck by the profound connections between music, dance, nature, and ancient ritual—forces that, when intertwined, can awaken a mystical experience.
Rhythm and sound can unveil the power of the invisible world. In turning the pages of nature’s unwritten book, we rediscover mystery as an essential part of our existence. Learning to interpret the symbols that lie beyond language sharpens our perception of light and shadow, allowing us to sense the shifting Winds of Change.
In this way, the artist does not so much invent as reveal—like a sculptor who releases form from stone by clearing away what is superfluous. By seeking truth through communion with nature, even the wind itself can become a guide, dissolving boundaries between past and future and uncovering hidden patterns that bind them together.
—Polina Nazaykinskaya
James MacMillan – Concerto for Orchestra: Ghosts (2023/2024) [Canadian premiere]
My Concerto for Orchestra was written in 2023/24 and is in one continuous, through-composed movement, lasting about 25 minutes. It has a subtitle – Ghosts – as the music seems to be haunted by other, earlier musical spirits and memories. Right from the start of the opening section we can hear allusions to folk-dance forms, an eastern European hymn and Scottish traditional music.
Various chamber groups emerge from within the orchestral fabric and there is much deliberate focus on soloistic playing throughout. Duets and trios are important – the work opens with an eleven-note theme being thrown between two trombones, and later there are other duos for clarinets, piccolo and tuba, and two violas.
Trios are also prominent – three bassoons at one point, as well as a quotation from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio (which gives this work its subtitle), and allusions to the famous Debussy trio of flute, viola and harp. Also in the spotlight at various points is a string quartet, a wind quintet and a brass sextet.
The work has four main interlocking sections. The first is fast and presents most of the initially important materials. The second section is slow and elegiac, and operates like a two-part canon, presenting many different combinations of the two lines, sometimes fully orchestral, other times soloistic and in chamber dimensions.
The third section, a scherzo, is marked presto. Its main “refrain” is an energetic, rhythmic theme based on my memories of the dance forms my children used to listen to when they were teenagers… The episodes between these focus on some of the chamber groups mentioned above. Eventually we hear a brief moment from the Beethoven Ghost Trio, but the piano is replaced by a celeste. This is then smudged into the Debussy memory and finally a new trio (cor anglais, bass clarinet and vibraphone) joins, all forming a trio of trios.
The Concerto culminates in an Allegro finale, based on an unsettled and compulsive compound rhythm, containing nasal fanfares on horns and counter-rhythmic interjections on trumpets, piccolo and xylophone. The music eventually subsides to a more serene conclusion, where the hymnic theme (which has haunted the music throughout) is given its final statement.
Programme note © James MacMillan 2024
This concert is FREE, but tickets must be reserved.
Throughout its history, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra has played a leading role in supporting the creation of new music in Canada, most notably through its now 35-years-young Winnipeg New Music Festival. Building on this tradition of fostering the voices of the future, the (newly renamed) Michael Nesbitt Composers Institute now enters its seventh year, gathering emerging talents from across the nation to work with the WSO in bringing to life an exciting program of fresh ink orchestral music.
WSO’s Music Director Daniel Raiskin and RBC Assistant Conductor Monica Chen lead your WSO through a set of world premieres of new works by six gifted composers, including the winner of the Canadian Music Centre (Prairie Region)’s annual Emerging Composer Competition. Mentor composers Christopher Theodanidis and Kelly-Marie Murphy join WSO composer-in-residence Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis in introducing this year’s featured young artists as the 2026 Winnipeg New Music Festival lifts off in this free symphonic concert celebrating Winnipeg’s musical community.
PROGRAM NOTES
Chris Byman – Scherzo Oscuro (2025) [World premiere]
Winner of the 2026 CMC Prairie Region Emerging Composer Competition
“Scherzo Oscuro takes the idea of a scherzo – traditionally light and witty – and twists it into something darker. The work draws inspiration from Charles Ives provocative orchestral experiments and Bernard Hermann’s vivid cinematic language, but also from Carl Jung’s concept of “shadow-work”: the integration of subconscious darkness into conscious thought.
The music is built on dualities: left brain versus right brain, hero versus anti-hero, sobriety versus intoxication, order versus chaos. These tensions appear most clearly in the use of bitonality and in a rhythmic motive derived from the mantra “one day at a time” (or more bluntly, “one day at a f****** time”). Introduced by the strings in the opening, this obsessive figure re-emerges throughout the piece in various guises, often hammered out as a stubborn, recurring thought.
Formally, the scherzo tipsily bends the rules of Sonata and Rondo, never settling neatly into either. The result is a humorous and layered musical joke: a piece that laughs at the dark while grappling with serious undercurrents of addiction, duality, struggle, and persistence.”
Liam Berry – O My Heart, the Wind (2025) – World Premiere [World premiere]
It’s close to the end of winter and you’re standing on the back porch of your new house in the West End. The inescapable road dust that coats everything has tinged the yard grey-brown. A siren wails along Portage. Your wife is getting the baby to bed upstairs and you really don’t have the energy to carry the bag of garbage in your hand out into the alley.
Weighing down your mind is an anger and a disappointment so deep it seeps into everything. The sea levels you were told were rising when you were six years old have only gotten higher. The wildfires have become seasonal. Systemic change does not seem as inevitable as structural failure. All any of your friends want is an inkling that they might one day live in a home they own.
Upstairs, your baby is still crying and the wind starts blowing and your heart is wrenched out of your mouth because when the future bends towards certain catastrophe of one kind or another, what hope can there be?
And yet, the wind is blowing, and the trees off your back porch are beautiful even before their leaves have come in, and what a wondrous thing it will be when your baby first sees leaves. So hope is really the only possible thing to do.
O My Heart, the Wind asks and answers a question:
“Where does hope lead us?”
“It is on the wind.
Gabriella Canzani – Ode to Mourning Doves (2025) – [World premiere]
When I was in the initial stages of writing Ode to Mourning Doves, it became clear that the melodic lines I was creating evoked birdcall. Once this idea of birds had gotten into my head, it began to overtake the project; I couldn’t help but conceptualize this piece as a plethora of birds, singing and flying around together. Throughout the piece, you might catch the moments when the birds emerge at sunrise, sing from the treetops, fly by the oceanside, and engage in several other escapades until the sunset quiets them.
All of the birdcalls in Ode to Mourning Doves are fictional, with the exception of one: the mourning dove’s. This bird’s beautiful song, which I used to imitate with my sister when we were kids, first appears in its entirety after the first complete silence of the piece (mm. 24-25). The flutter-tongue and pitch-bending used on the flute to imitate the mourning dove’s call create a beautiful, but lonely sound. As the piece progresses, certain aspects of this call, such as the subtle downward slide (pitch-bending) at the end of notes, are transferred from the flute to the strings, who eventually play the full melody at the climax of the piece (mm. 64-65).
With this work, I hope to have captured the beauty of a spring morning, and the tranquility that washes over us as we let nature become our escape.
Madeleine Ertel – Dance in Fragments (2025) – [World premiere]
“If we’re not supposed to dance, why all this music?” – Gregory Orr
Dance in Fragments is the journey of one theme through the prisms of rhythm, counterpoint, and melodic variation to create an uneasy, disjointed dance – a dance for a clumsy, self-conscious dancer. As a composer, Ertel is concerned with preserving music’s relationship to dance/movement through rhythm as a way to strengthen the performer-audience relationship. The constant referencing and reshaping of musical material in this piece creates a feeling of indecision, like the dancer cannot stop going back and rehashing past decisions. In this piece, listeners may experience moments of vulnerability, reactivity, and longing, and are encouraged to think about how these themes come up in their own lives.
Kevin Hayward – Fractured (2025) – [World premiere]
Fractured speaks about broken things and broken people. Its broad textures are partially inspired by the view of the St. Lawrence from Domaine Forget, in Saint-Irénée, Québec.
Ashton Latimer – Overflow (2025) – [World premiere]
When starting this orchestral piece, I had many ideas in mind. I composed sketch after sketch, trying to shape a sense of story in what I was writing. One thing I noticed across all these sketches was their strong connection to texture, timbre, and the coloristic properties of the orchestra. With that in mind, I wove together material from each to create Overflow.
In my mind, Overflow doesn’t follow a set story or programmatic narrative. Instead, its title serves as a literal reflection of how I envisioned the piece. The opening section features flourishes from various instruments alongside a melodic line in the violoncello and bassoon. As the layering develops, the music grows increasingly unstable, leading into the second section—where the overflow begins.
This section is driven by a rising and descending line in the strings and woodwinds, which continuously expands in length and speed, creating the effect of the orchestra spilling over itself in a chaotic surge. The final section revisits and reflects on the textures explored earlier, incorporating an altered version of the opening melody.
