Seeing Sound: A Showcase of music by Canadian female composers

Earlier this year I was contacted by Clarisse Tonigussi of the Canadian Women Composers Project. She had heard of me through a friend of a friend and was interested in performing some of my music at a concert she had coming up in the fall in Toronto.

Fast-forward a few months later and that concert is fast approaching. Seeing Sound: Where Music and Visual Art Meet is promising to be a great night of art and music. Ms. Tonigussi, a soprano, will be performing over an hour of music by Canadian female composers, accompanied by pianist Narmina Efendiyeva. While she sings, artist Alexandria Harding-Costa will use the music as inspiration to paint a masterpiece that will be auctioned off at the end of the night, proceeds going to Sistering, a Toronto charity supporting at-risk women.

Two of my pieces will be on the program: There Will Come Soft Rains, which I wrote in university but has never been performed by a soprano (for which it was originally intended); and Night, a more jazz-influenced piece that is getting a brand-new classical spin. I’m very excited to see my music included in such a great event and it’s very unfortunate that family obligations will have me across the country while the concert is going on.

The concert will take place at Grace Church on the Hill in Etobicoke, 300 Lonsdale Rd., at 7pm on Saturday October 6th. Tickets can be purchased by clicking the event link above. I hope you will consider supporting such a great cause at what promises to be a highly enjoyable evening!

Marla

There Will Come Soft Rains

Back in university, probably around 2007, I wrote an art song with the text of Sara Teasdale's poem There Will Come Soft Rains for a student composer's concert. Due to various complications it never ended up being performed.

Flash forward to this year, when my dear friend Katy Harmer performed it in a recital. It was up in Yellowknife so I was unable to catch it, but she sent along this recording - so I finally have a copy of the piece, eight years later! Thanks, Katy!

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Marla

New Piano Solo!

Back in the fall, I wrote a piece called Subtlety Is Not Your Specialty, for Soup Can Theatre's production of Circle Jerk. The line was given to me as inspiration, so I wrote a lovely piece for piano, flute and cello - and then the clarinet comes in an stomps all over it.

I was kind of sad that the piece ends up ruined by the clarinet, so I adapted it for piano solo, in which the original pleasant piece doesn't get interrupted - and decided to just name it Subtlety, since the spirit of the original title was no longer there.

It was an interesting experience, trying to condense a piece for four instruments into a solo. I find a lot of my piano writing tends to be simple, because I write what I can play immediately while sitting in front of the piano. This was different - since I was trying to conserve as many of the original instrumental lines as possible, it ended up being much more difficult than the piano music I usually write. A fair bit of practice went into being able to play it properly!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

Marla