Guelph Spring Festival Premières

To celebrate the new Millennium, Guelph Spring Festival is presenting an unprecedented four world premières this year. Three of these have been commissioned especially for the 2000 season, while the fourth will be performed for the first time
at the 2000 Festival. Special Millennium funding has made these offerings possible.

One of the commissioned works, And the Children Shall Lead, will be featured at the Opening Night Gala on May 26. Created as part of the Edward Johnson Music Foundation’s Performing Arts in Education program, this work is the
brainchild of Jeffrey Ryan, a Canadian composer originally from Fergus. He has been assisted\by 300 Grade 8 students from five area schools who recently participated in a series of com!osition workshops. Percussionist Carol Bauman from the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has also been involved in the workshops. Elements created in these workshops will be selected by Ryan and integrated into the new composition. The work consists of five movements, two reflecting upon the past century, the third exploring the chaos created by 20th Century “progress”, and the fourth and fifth movements looking towards the future. And the Children Shall Lead will be performed on Opening Night by the Kitchener-zaterloo Symphony, joined by thirty of the composition students as well as senior students from the Suzuki String School.

The second new work is titled All Night I Travel You. It has been commissioned from Omar Daniel with the assistance of MusicCanadaMusique 2000, an organization founded to ensure that new musical works by Canadian composers are performed across Canada during the Millennium year. Created for voice, piano, saxophone, string quartet, trumpet, bass clarinet, percussion and B3 Hammond organ, with text by Canadian poet Anne Michaels, Daniel’s work will be performed on May 29, and will feature Chamber Music Unlimited, “an eclectic group of jazz and classical musicians.”

Another well-known Canadian composer, Glen Buhr, is creating the third commissioned work for the 2000 Festival. Renowned as one of the founders of the Winnipeg New Music Festival, Buhr is currently associate professor of music composition at Wilfrid Laurier University. His work will “herald” the dawning of the new Millennium, reflecting on “the potential challenges, breakthroughs and the sense of the unknown” which the year seems to imply. It will be performed by the Festival Strings of Canada as part of their concert on June 3.

Four Piano Inventions is the fourth new work to be performed at this year’s Guelph Spring Festival. Written by Canadian composer Marc Sabat for pianist Richard Raymond, this new composition will be a feature offering of Raymond’s solo “Grand Piano” performance on May 31. Sabat is both a composer and a violinist who performs with several chamber ensembles, a piano/violin duo and at many major festivals in Canada and beyond. Raymond has been described as a “young Glenn Gould in love.”

For the three works commissioned especially for the 2000 Guelph Spring Festival, the composers will discuss their compositions for interested audience members. Jeffrey Ryan will introduce his work from the stage of the Opening Night Gala performance on May 26, while Omar Daniel and Glen Buhr will each engage in dialogue with the Festival’s Artistic Director Simon Wynberg at 7 p.m. (on the “Bridge” of the River Run Centre) prior to their concerts on May 29 and June 3. All performances are at 8 p.m. in the River Run’s duMaurier Theatre.

For tickets to these and other 2000 Guelph Spring Festival performances, contact River Run Centre Box Office at (519) 763-3000.

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