Dual-continent performance live-streaming today

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This article was published 30/01/2021 (2085 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Healing and reconciliation are the loose themes behind two musical performances hosted by the Brandon University School of Music in the next few days.

The first performance, featuring the Brandon University New Music Ensemble and Any Enemy (North East Music Ensemble), begins today at 11 a.m.

The second performance, featuring flutist Jessica McMann under the Brandon University Indigenous New Music Festival banner, will take place Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

As with most musical performances hosted in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shows will both be live-streamed and there will be no in-person audience.

The online venue has brought with it a whole whack of challenges, but also some good things, said Brandon University School of Music professor Megumi Masaki, who is also the conductor for the New Music Ensemble.

“We decided we would embrace the online platform — it is what it is,” she said, adding that while it’s in many ways less ideal than performing together in person, it has also opened up new, previously unheard-of possibilities.

“This has been a lifeline for musicians to be able to connect, to be able to still collaborate and perform,” she said, adding that she hopes virtual audience members experience some semblance of the healing performers have felt while putting it together.

The local ensemble connecting with the northeast Scotland-based Any Enemy group is a prime example of previously unfathomable collaborations.

“In a normal year, there’s no way we could work with Scottish performers,” Masaki said, adding the idea of flying performers out for extended rehearsals would have been cost-prohibitively expensive.

Instead, the two groups have been able to rehearse together online, via Zoom, during which they’ve pieced together today’s show.

The performance will include both groups, intertwined live through the internet, despite residing thousands of kilometres apart across the Atlantic Ocean.

“All live, which is the crazy thing,” Masaki said.

Through rehearsals, performers discovered a number of things about the Zoom platform, including its limitations.

With performers all separate in front of their own computers, they found only four or five instruments could successfully stream together, in synch, at any given time.

Give or take.

So, they wrote pieces wherein only a few instruments were playing at any given time, with some exceptions made to open up the doors for more spontaneous moments in which it’s a surprise as to which instruments’ audio shows up.

“It’s keeping us on our toes,” Masaki said. “We’re learning to listen differently — we’re learning to perform differently.”

Coupled with this is the need to improvise. When the audio from one performer’s instrument doesn’t show up, another performer must in the blank.

“It’s creating a team,” Masaki said, adding that although the performers are very much apart — even those in Brandon are recording themselves separately — “we really are a team.”

The rehearsals have also brought out some environmental sounds, such as fog horns in Scotland and the banging of pots and pants to thank front-line workers.

“We’re not in a closed conference hall, protected — this is not an enclosed performance space,” she said. “We’re really a part of our environment outside.”

The two ensembles combined include 18 performers for today’s show, and all pieces being performed were specially co-commissioned by the two groups for the joint performance, which is part of the Sound Scotland Fesitlval’s Lockdown Composing project.

The show will include a live question and answer period, during which listeners will be urged to chime in with their inquiries.

Local members of the joint performance include Azaria Neuschwander (soprano), Léa Liu (flute), Jichen Wang (clarinet), Naomi Cord (bass clarinet), Sheva Schwartz (cello), Ren Wang (percussion), Reanne Vanden Brink (piano), William Neufeld (piano) and Masaki (conductor/piano).

Tuesday’s concert by Jessica McMann of Cowessess, Sask., is the second edition of the Brandon Indigenous New Music Festival, which was founded during an in-person event last year as a means of addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action.

“We really want to be part of the process of decolonizing classical music and focusing on Indigenous classical musicians,” Masaki said, adding that in addition to performing, McMann plans on “talking about her music and the inspirations behind her music and identity and focusing on the strengths of Indigenous women.”

Today’s show can be streamed at YouTube.com/watch?v=q27a5yuJddo&feature=youtu.be.

Tuesday’s show can be streamed at YouTube.com/watch?v=aKZBws6SGbc

Both concerts will also be seen on the School of Music’s Facebook page at Facebook.com/BrandonUMusic/Live.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB