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What Her Friend Said by Anna Hostman
What her Friend Said, by Anna Höstman, Cathy Fern Lewis, soprano, Rachel Iwaasa, piano....
read morePines of Emily Carr
Pines of Emily Carr by Jean Coulthard, short documentary/performance by John Bolton, CMC BC Legacy Series.
read moreLifting Stones
Lifting Stones – Covid Project – Film by Rory Mahony, voice artist Cathy Fern Lewis, sound design is by Lewis and Mahony. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada @canadacouncil #BringingTheArtsToLife Lifting Stones from Rory Mahony on Vimeo.
read moreGoing: A Place to Listen
…..her spoken work makes for such interesting music and working with CB, Laura and Daniel, c’est tres fun. Going A Place to Listen: Season 3, Concert 9/9! Wednesday, June 24 at 7:00pm A Place to Listen in Victoria, British Columbia
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Poetic License
Arrangements of Classical music are not uncommon and date back to the early history of the genre. Alexandra Pohran Dawkins, performance faculty at the UVic School of Music, has adapted many works for her instruments, the oboe and English horn. In her upcoming concert, Poetic License, the common model of transcription is taken one step further: selected poetry from the works on the program becomes the text in a final improvisation. While some pieces will be played in their intended instrumentation, including Robert Schumann’s gut-wrenching Romances (an oboe favourite) and the lesser-known Sonata No. 1 by Julius Röntgen, Pohran Dawkins has taken liberty with works by Robert and Clara Schumann and Dvořák. Lines are exchanged to accommodate her instruments, weaving seamlessly with soprano, Catherine Lewis, and Jane Hayes on piano, both of whom Pohran Dawkins has had long-time friendships and collaborated with extensively. This tapestry of poetry and melody is more deeply intertwined as actor Jan Wood spontaneously draws from these texts, (poetry by Rilke and Rückert, Moravian folk poetry, and German translations of Spanish verses dating to 1511), influencing the path for the improvisation with Pohran Dawkins and Lewis. The concert is not meant to be showy, but is rather one of dialogue and beauty (Pohran Dawkins describes Schumann’s In der Nacht, her muse for the program, as “one of the most beautiful things ever written”). “This really is a recital that is about communicating something,” describes Pohran Dawkins, whose strong connection with her colleagues will surely translate in the performance. “I can just look at Cathy or Jane and sense what either is going to do, ” she...
read moreOpen Space & A Place To Listen present Cathy Lewis, solo
Come join us for an evening of stunningly beautiful music that will create an atmosphere of calm in a society where we forget to stop and take time to listen. Open Space and Victoria’s listening series, A Place to Listen, have come together to present island songstress Cathy Lewis in a concert that brings together both the old and the new. Starting with the unaccompanied voice, Lewis will commune with the past singing chants by Hildegard von Bingen and Linda C. Smith’s sappho songs. Bringing us to the present will be Barbara Monk Feldman’s The Gentlest Chord. Also on this concert will be Linda C. Smith’s each petal and Anna Höstmann’s What her friend said, both written specifically for Lewis. An ambassador of new music in Canada since 1974, Catherine Fern Lewis is a versatile and experienced soprano/voice artist living just outside Victoria, BC. www.kerryview.ca Open Space is an artist-run contemporary arts centre in downtown Victoria that presents new work in the visual, sound and music, literary, and media arts. A Place to Listen is about exploring the relationships between sound and silence, audience and performer, performer and score. This monthly listening series occurs on the third Wednesday of every month....
read moreAriel – Trio Vorizo with Lori Freedman and Robert Holliston
This contemporary chamber music recital features the tour de force ouevre by Ned Rorem and Sylvia Plath, Ariel, for voice, clarinet and piano. Music set to poems that were among the last that the celebrated Sylvia Plath wrote before she committed suicide in 1963, Ariel explores dark and taboo subject matters. This major work finds Rorem at his best with dramatic free flowing lines. Subtle and not so subtle harmonic suspensions impact and embrace the mysterious imagery and psychic landscapes that Plath paints through this set of poems in such a way, that one feels close to another dimension. A haunting and powerful song cycle, a true work of chamber music , demanding virtuosity from each of the players. Written by one of the great song writers of this century, Ned Rorem, currently residing in New York, celebrates his 90th birthday on October 23rd. Lori Freedman is known internationally as one of the most provocative and creative performers in the field of contemporary music, and has been conspicuously described as “a musical revolutionary”. Currently living in Montreal, Freedman reunites with Cathy Fern Lewis and Robert Holliston, as the Trio Vorizo, to perform the provocative Ariel by Ned Rorem and Sylvia Plath that they performed to critical acclaim seventeen years ago at the Hornby Island Music Festival. Berio’s Sequenza III for solo voice, Pascal Dusapin’s Itou for bass clarinet and works by Linda Catlin Smith, Rod Sharman, Claude Vivier, Aaron Copland (selection from Emily Dickinson Songs) will also be featured in this program of contemporary music presented by Trio...
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