I went to hear the Hamilton Philharmonic on Saturday night and the composer Jeffrey Ryan was in the house, as one of his pieces was being done that evening.
Equilateral was performed by the Gryphon Trio and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by artistic director James Sommerville at Hamilton Place in Hamilton, Ontario
Ryan told a story on Saturday night that amazed and comforted me. I don’t run into composers (in the classical sense) very often, I can only think of once or twice in my lifetime, and his story resounded in my conscience.
As a young boy from Fergus, Ontario, he led a fairly sheltered life. He played in the school band and sang in the choir, but he had thoughts about his higher education which would have led him on a scientific journey. Then one day, when he was in the 11th grade, a school trip to Hamilton to hear the Hamilton Philharmonic. He had never heard a live professional orchestra before, and his mind and his direction were changed that day! This one musical experience made all the difference!
This is a story for the ages! This is what I want to hear! Where a concert, a museum or gallery visit, a play or ballet can change a life, which is the amazing adventure.
Equilateral was performed by the Gryphon Trio and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by artistic director James Sommerville at Hamilton Place in Hamilton, Ontario
Ryan told a story on Saturday night that amazed and comforted me. I don’t run into composers (in the classical sense) very often, I can only think of once or twice in my lifetime, and his story resounded in my conscience.
As a young boy from Fergus, Ontario, he led a fairly sheltered life. He played in the school band and sang in the choir, but he had thoughts about his higher education which would have led him on a scientific journey. Then one day, when he was in the 11th grade, a school trip to Hamilton to hear the Hamilton Philharmonic. He had never heard a live professional orchestra before, and his mind and his direction were changed that day! This one musical experience made all the difference!
This is a story for the ages! This is what I want to hear! Where a concert, a museum or gallery visit, a play or ballet can change a life, which is the amazing adventure.
I have no dramatic “ah-ha” experiences that made my life decision. I wish there were a defining moment, but it’s comforting for me to believe one is possible!
Jeffrey Ryan returns to the radio for inspiration
By Alexander Varty
One Tree, Many Branches, the concert program that the Standing Wave chamber quintet presents Thursday (May 15), is all about making connections—between artists, between disciplines, and between the past and the present. Curated by former Vancouver Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence Jeffrey Ryan, the Roundhouse Community Centre presentation encompasses live performance, recorded music, poetry, and dance. Multimedia undertakings are nothing new to Standing Wave; still, you’d need a family tree to chart the complex ties that bind the group’s musicians to Ryan, and that link him to featured composers Rob Smith, Alexina Louie, Ian Wilson, and Kelly-Marie Murphy.
Some of its tendrils might surprise even those aware of Ryan’s penchant for pulling inspiration from nonclassical sources. What, for instance, is the music of ’70s pop chanteuse Toni Tennille doing in a program dedicated to cutting-edge new music?
On the line from his Vancouver home, Ryan gives an oblique but informative answer.
“For a long time—and I still do this occasionally—I would bury quotations from pop music in my pieces, just as a fun thing for myself. No one else would ever notice them,” he explains. “It was kind of an acknowledgement, for me, of where I came from….My growing up started with Petula Clark and ‘Downtown’. I learned it off the radio when I was three, and it kind of went from there.”
The composer notes that, as a child, he was enthralled by the smooth sounds of the 5th Dimension and the Partridge Family; later on, he developed a fondness for Kate Bush.
So when Standing Wave commissioned Ryan to add a work to One Tree, Many Branches, he opted to go back to another of his early favourites, the Captain & Tennille’s “Keeping Our Love Warm”. In its newly transfigured form as Burn, however, only the ghost of Tennille’s romantic ballad remains.
“I was interested in looking at the chords she used, some of the interesting things she does with rhythm, and the pentatonic scale that opens it,” says Ryan. “My piece doesn’t sound anything like her song, but it starts with the same material. In a way, they’re connected by starting with the same source.”
In keeping with the theme of transfiguration, One Tree, Many Branches will also feature two very different versions of Ryan’s composition Bellatrix. One, for solo violin, will feature Holly Holt performing Kokoro Dance mainstay Barbara Bourget’s choreography. The other, arranged for cello, will find choreographer-performer Rob Kitsos on the floor.
“Jeffrey had this notion of doing the piece twice,” Bourget says, in a separate telephone interview. “He wanted a sort of male-female take on that piece, and I thought it was a really interesting idea—and to perform with live music is something we all desire, but not something that can happen every day.”
Ryan, too, is deeply interested in the interplay between music and dance, albeit in a somewhat self-deprecating way. “I’m fascinated with dance,” he says, “because I don’t have very much grace.”
Praised for his “strong and unique voice” (Winnipeg Free Press), “masterful command of instrumental colour” (Georgia Straight), and “superb attention to rhythm” (Audio Ideas Guide), Jeffrey Ryan has emerged as one of Canada's leading composers. His varied catalogue ranges from opera, art song, and choral music to chamber ensemble and orchestral works, including commissions for the Cleveland, Vancouver and Toronto Symphonies, Esprit Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Tapestry New Opera Works, Standing Wave, Tiresias, the Arditti Quartet, and Elektra Women's Choir.
Ryan's works have enjoyed performances and broadcasts around the world, have inspired new works by choreographers Barbara Bourget and Rob Kitsos, and served as the soundtrack to the dance film Fata Morgana. Recent highlights include performances of The Linearity of Light in China, Korea and Macau, and the New York City première of Two-by-Four.
Twice nominated for Classical Composition of the Year Juno awards (Quantum Mechanics in 2008 and Pangaea in 2005, the latter recorded by the Thunder Bay Symphony), his works have also been recorded by the Bowling Green Philharmonia (Ophélie), the Hannaford Street Silver Band (She Threw It Down, Anathema), and the Penderecki Quartet (String Quartet #3). Upcoming recordings include a CD of Ryan's orchestral music with the Vancouver Symphony, On Monsieur's Departure with musica intima, and Saturn (study in white) with pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.
Based in Vancouver, Ryan was the Vancouver Symphony's Composer Laureate for the 2008/09 season, after serving as Composer-in-Residence from 2002 to 2007. Since 1997, he has been Composer Advisor for Music Toronto. Ryan was an Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony from 2000 to 2002, and has been a featured composer with various festivals in Canada and the United States, including the Winnipeg Symphony New Music Festival, and Bowling Green State University’s New Music and Art Festival.
Born in Toronto and raised in Fergus, Ontario, Jeffrey Ryan fled the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University to join the Faculty of Music, from which he graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Music degree and the gold medal in music. After earning a Master’s degree in composition from the University of Toronto, he went on to receive his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Donald Erb. Previous teachers include Alexina Louie, Lothar Klein, Mariano Etkin, Boyd McDonald, and Owen Underhill.
Jeffrey Ryan returns to the radio for inspiration
By Alexander Varty
One Tree, Many Branches, the concert program that the Standing Wave chamber quintet presents Thursday (May 15), is all about making connections—between artists, between disciplines, and between the past and the present. Curated by former Vancouver Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence Jeffrey Ryan, the Roundhouse Community Centre presentation encompasses live performance, recorded music, poetry, and dance. Multimedia undertakings are nothing new to Standing Wave; still, you’d need a family tree to chart the complex ties that bind the group’s musicians to Ryan, and that link him to featured composers Rob Smith, Alexina Louie, Ian Wilson, and Kelly-Marie Murphy.
Some of its tendrils might surprise even those aware of Ryan’s penchant for pulling inspiration from nonclassical sources. What, for instance, is the music of ’70s pop chanteuse Toni Tennille doing in a program dedicated to cutting-edge new music?
On the line from his Vancouver home, Ryan gives an oblique but informative answer.
“For a long time—and I still do this occasionally—I would bury quotations from pop music in my pieces, just as a fun thing for myself. No one else would ever notice them,” he explains. “It was kind of an acknowledgement, for me, of where I came from….My growing up started with Petula Clark and ‘Downtown’. I learned it off the radio when I was three, and it kind of went from there.”
The composer notes that, as a child, he was enthralled by the smooth sounds of the 5th Dimension and the Partridge Family; later on, he developed a fondness for Kate Bush.
So when Standing Wave commissioned Ryan to add a work to One Tree, Many Branches, he opted to go back to another of his early favourites, the Captain & Tennille’s “Keeping Our Love Warm”. In its newly transfigured form as Burn, however, only the ghost of Tennille’s romantic ballad remains.
“I was interested in looking at the chords she used, some of the interesting things she does with rhythm, and the pentatonic scale that opens it,” says Ryan. “My piece doesn’t sound anything like her song, but it starts with the same material. In a way, they’re connected by starting with the same source.”
In keeping with the theme of transfiguration, One Tree, Many Branches will also feature two very different versions of Ryan’s composition Bellatrix. One, for solo violin, will feature Holly Holt performing Kokoro Dance mainstay Barbara Bourget’s choreography. The other, arranged for cello, will find choreographer-performer Rob Kitsos on the floor.
“Jeffrey had this notion of doing the piece twice,” Bourget says, in a separate telephone interview. “He wanted a sort of male-female take on that piece, and I thought it was a really interesting idea—and to perform with live music is something we all desire, but not something that can happen every day.”
Ryan, too, is deeply interested in the interplay between music and dance, albeit in a somewhat self-deprecating way. “I’m fascinated with dance,” he says, “because I don’t have very much grace.”
Praised for his “strong and unique voice” (Winnipeg Free Press), “masterful command of instrumental colour” (Georgia Straight), and “superb attention to rhythm” (Audio Ideas Guide), Jeffrey Ryan has emerged as one of Canada's leading composers. His varied catalogue ranges from opera, art song, and choral music to chamber ensemble and orchestral works, including commissions for the Cleveland, Vancouver and Toronto Symphonies, Esprit Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Tapestry New Opera Works, Standing Wave, Tiresias, the Arditti Quartet, and Elektra Women's Choir.
Ryan's works have enjoyed performances and broadcasts around the world, have inspired new works by choreographers Barbara Bourget and Rob Kitsos, and served as the soundtrack to the dance film Fata Morgana. Recent highlights include performances of The Linearity of Light in China, Korea and Macau, and the New York City première of Two-by-Four.
Twice nominated for Classical Composition of the Year Juno awards (Quantum Mechanics in 2008 and Pangaea in 2005, the latter recorded by the Thunder Bay Symphony), his works have also been recorded by the Bowling Green Philharmonia (Ophélie), the Hannaford Street Silver Band (She Threw It Down, Anathema), and the Penderecki Quartet (String Quartet #3). Upcoming recordings include a CD of Ryan's orchestral music with the Vancouver Symphony, On Monsieur's Departure with musica intima, and Saturn (study in white) with pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.
Based in Vancouver, Ryan was the Vancouver Symphony's Composer Laureate for the 2008/09 season, after serving as Composer-in-Residence from 2002 to 2007. Since 1997, he has been Composer Advisor for Music Toronto. Ryan was an Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony from 2000 to 2002, and has been a featured composer with various festivals in Canada and the United States, including the Winnipeg Symphony New Music Festival, and Bowling Green State University’s New Music and Art Festival.
Born in Toronto and raised in Fergus, Ontario, Jeffrey Ryan fled the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University to join the Faculty of Music, from which he graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Music degree and the gold medal in music. After earning a Master’s degree in composition from the University of Toronto, he went on to receive his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Donald Erb. Previous teachers include Alexina Louie, Lothar Klein, Mariano Etkin, Boyd McDonald, and Owen Underhill.
Nice story. I was probably destined for music from the womb, but I plunged into photography after a single show in the student gallery at UC Berkeley, where I had gone at a friend's suggestion to try throwing pots. But I skipped the pottery that night--it was a show of female nudes! I talked the photographer, and he was so casual about it! Using up some old 4x5 film, he said. I'm into music now, of course, but I still think a lot about photography and have grand plans for retirement.
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