The Evolution of music

by Jill Sawyer

It’s late afternoon and the Rolston Recital Hall is filled with a buzz that doesn’t just come from the orchestra warming up. Seats fill quickly, and people stand along the aisles in the dimmed room. At the front, hanging above the musicians of the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, a wide video screen shows a mountain scene. In front of them, two podium-style music stands are set up with video cameras, microphones, and dozens of wires snaking back, past the orchestra, out the door and across the hall into the Bentley Chamber Music Studio, which is itself literally filled with recording and broadcast equipment.

This is the March 26 finale of Evolution, the month-long CBC / Radio-Canada National Composition Competition. A few rows from the front of the Hall, five clean-cut young men wait for the music to begin. Vincent Ho, David Adamcyk, Geof Holbrook, Andrew Staniland, and Gordon Williamson are the competition finalists, and they’ve spent almost four weeks at The Banff Centre, creating new works of contemporary music on the theme of evolution (celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin). Now each of their works will be played for the first time by the Ensemble, under the baton of director Veronique Lacroix.

But thoroughly modernizing this music competition, the live audience in the Rolston Recital Hall has been joined by listeners across Canada (and internationally), tuning in to the premiere on CBC Radio Two, Radio-Canada’s Espace Musique, and CBC Radio online, a simultaneous broadcast that brings contemporary composition firmly into the 21st century.

“The CBC’s mandate with Evolution was not simply about getting music written,” says Barry Shiffman, director of Music programs at the Centre, and non-voting chair of the competition’s first and second juries. “The idea was also about disseminating it across multiple platforms. There was a desire to bring the whole Evolution event to life online.”

A small, mobile team of multimedia experts was dispatched to Banff from the CBC, headed up by host and blogger Philippe Santerre. They recorded the whole month in Banff, tracking the finalists as they began composing, capturing off-the-cuff excursions (an impromptu floor hockey tournament, a trip to Welch’s candy store), following the collaboration between the composers and copyists, and the composers and Ensemble musicians.

On March 26, the audience in the Recital Hall heard each piece, introduced by CBC host Laurie Brown and Radio-Canada host Sylvie L’Ecuyer, and saw a simultaneous video presentation that combined live footage of the musicians with interview footage captured during the month-long competition process. Each composer was given a few minutes to introduce his piece on camera, and the result was a concert experience that blended formal and casual, and allowed the audience to peer directly into each composer’s thought process.

Although he was initially unsure of the effect the video elements would have on the musicians and the composers, Shiffman was impressed by the multimedia enhancement of the concert. “I believe that composers should have complete control over the impact their music has on listeners,” he says. “But I thought the video worked beautifully in this setting, because the composers worked directly with the videographer.”

Going into the Evolution competition, each of the finalists knew that video, still photography, and blog posting would be part of the process. Before they arrived in Banff, a few of them had visions of it turning into a reality-TV experience, with cameras following them through every step of the competition. In fact, the process was more reserved, and each of the finalists says now that none of the multimedia efforts got in the way of their creativity. Everyone involved was invested in creating an engaging archive of an intense creative experience, and opening a door into contemporary composition for a wider audience.

“This whole format helped to give the public an idea of how composing works,” says finalist Vincent Ho, whose piece Nature Whispers… won in the People’s Choice category, voted on in real time by the audience. “New music has often seemed elitist. This shows the audience that we’re real people.”

Toward the end of the March 26 concert, as audience members milled in and out of the Recital Hall waiting for the jury to choose a winner, Santerre did live online and broadcast interviews with composers and audience members in the lobby. It let some of the pressure off the proceedings, and gave the evening a festive feel.

When Andrew Staniland was announced as the winner for his piece, Devolution, the real-time event ended, but the experience lives on through a multimedia online chronicle. The Evolution website, layered with interviews and imagery, beautiful music and quirky video scenes, continues to tell the story of that intense March in Banff.

Evolution composers Geof Holbrook and Vincent Ho were supported by Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Scholarships.

Photo credit left to right:

Composer and Evolution Grand Prize winner Andrew Staniland is interviewed by CBC radio’s Sandy Thacker and Philippe Santerre. Photo: Yasuko Tadokoro, courtesy CBC Radio.

Vincent Ho learns his Evolution composition will feature the double bass.

Gordon Williamson’s Banff Centre studio is littered with the tools of the composer’s trade. Photo: Yasuko Tadokoro, courtesy CBC Radio.