Orion Series presents Jude Brereton

by | Nov 10, 2024 | Alumni, Events, Orion Series in Fine Arts, School of Music

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

“Singing in space(s): Past, present and future“

Featuring


Jude Brereton, Professor of Audio & Music Technologies 

1:30-2:30pm Monday, November 25 

Free & open to all

Presented by UVic’s School of Music

For more information on this lecture please email: music@uvic.ca

About the event 

Music happens in acoustic space: for centuries, composers and musicians have exploited the relationship between music and acoustics to great effect. Acoustic science has moved in huge strides from the days of using canons to capture the acoustic characteristics of a concert hall for further analysis. Audio digital technology allows us to capture data on room acoustics in great detail and use this to “auralise” virtual sound environments allowing us to place a performer — virtually — in any acoustic space we choose.

This presentation will report on learnings from the ongoing interdisciplinary project Architexture, which explores the connections and interplay between architectural acoustics, musical performance, and audience engagement through the use of interactive auralisation, composition and live events. The wealth of opportunities for interdisciplinary work on virtual acoustic reconstruction will also be discussed with a focus on engagement and access to the historical, present, and future of heritage spaces.

About the artist

 Jude Brereton is Professor of Audio and Music Technologies in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York (UK) and currently Orion Visiting Scholar at UVic’s School of Music. Her research centers on the analysis and perception of music performance in real, virtual and augmented acoustic environments; she is particularly interested in the role of spatial sound to enhance performer and listener experience and interaction.

For over 20 years she has been active in seeking to improve inclusion and diversity in audio engineering and creative technologies education, and is currently co-investigator of an AHRC funded project to develop and evaluate co-created EDI interventions in virtual production.  As a musician, linguist and audio/acoustics specialist, her research and teaching is inherently interdisciplinary; she finds the greatest inspiration in collaborating with  musicians, scientists and engineers and seeks to work across and beyond disciplinary boundaries to gain a deeper understanding of our human relationship with sound and audio.

Photo credit: Kippa Matthews

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Visit our online events calendar at www.events.uvic.ca

Jeannette Armstrong and Lina de Guevara awarded Honorary Doctorates

by | Nov 10, 2024 | Alumni, Award, indigenous, News, Theatre, Writing

The Faculty of Fine Arts is thrilled to announce that Jeannette Armstrong will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) and Lina de Guevara will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts (DFA) at the Fall 2024 Fine Arts convocation ceremony.

You can watch as part of the UVic convocation livestream starting at 10am Tuesday, Nov 12 (Armstrong) and 2:30pm Wednesday, Nov 13 (de Guevara). 

Armstrong

About Jeanette Armstrong 

Jeannette Armstrong is an associate professor in Indigenous Studies and the coordinator of Interior Salishan Studies Centre at UBC Okanagan. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Born on the Penticton Indian Reserve in the Okanagan, Armstrong is a multi-faceted writer, visual artist, researcher, educator, leader and activist.

She received a Diploma in Fine Arts from Okanagan College, then earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria in 1978. In 2009, she received her doctorate in Indigenous Environmental Ethics from the University of Greifswald in Germany.

Armstrong is one of the founders of the En’owkin Centre (originally named the Okanagan Indian Curriculum Project) to provide students with strong cultural and academic foundations for success. The Centre includes Theytus Publications, the first Indigenous-owned publishing house in Canada.

The En’owkin International School of Writing, founded by Armstrong in a partnership with UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts, has served Indigenous artists and writers for over 40 years. Armstrong was a co-founder of En’owkin’s Certificate in Aboriginal Language Revitalization which operates in partnership with UVic’s Department of Linguistics serving Indigenous communities throughout Canada.

As an influential advocate for Indigenous peoples’ rights, Armstrong has been a force of change and widescale community impact through her artistic, research and educational vision.

de Guevara

About Lina de Guevara 

Lina de Guevara’s career as a director, writer, actor, and teacher has left an indelible impact on Canada’s theatre community. As the founder and former artistic director of Puente Theatre, she dedicated 25 years to sharing the stories of immigrant and refugee communities.

Having fled a military coup in her native country of Chile before settling in Victoria in 1976, de Guevara drew upon her own lived experiences to produce dozens of critically acclaimed plays and collaborations that have toured nationally and internationally.

Visionary productions such as I Wasn’t Born Here, Crossing Borders and Familya shed light on issues such as discrimination, social justice, and employment barriers. By exploring these themes, de Guevara’s work has both entertained and educated audiences for decades.

Trained at the Instituto del Teatro (University of Chile), she has used her skills to teach, mentor, and create space for emerging Indigenous artists and artists of colour across Vancouver Island. As a workshop facilitator at the University of Victoria and instructor at institutions like Royal Roads University, Camosun College, and the Canadian College of Performing Arts, de Guevara has left an enduring legacy on the national theatre landscape through her active support of the next generation of artists.

Orion Series presents Virtuosic Technologies

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Alumni, Events, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, School of Music

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

“Virtuosic Technologies:

Indigenous and European

musical storytelling in the

17th century”

Featuring
Jonathon Adams, baritone
Chloe Kim, violin
Tom Foster, harpsichord/organ

7–9pm Monday, October 21 

Free & open to all

Presented by UVic’s Department of Art History & Visual Studies

For more information on this lecture please email: arthistory@uvic.ca

About the event 

 

Part conversation, part listening circle and open rehearsal, this session will approach works from this virtuosic European oeuvre, sharing specific technical challenges, comparing resources, and revealing moments of personal joy. They will also share early recordings of florid Cree singing, and examples of other highly ornamented traditional storytelling mediums, illuminating similarities between Indigenous modes of storytelling and the “geistliches Konzert” form.

As an ensemble, they consider the following questions: What technologies do we rely on to learn and share stories of deep spiritual resonance in a good way? What curatorial accountability do we accept when programming ancient European repertoires today, on stolen land? As we share these 350 year old sonic gems of world-bending grief, world-making ecstasy, world-affirming faith with you, can we do so in a musically curious and generative way? Inviting any voice, any body, any way of knowing into the circle?

About the artists

 

Jonathon Adams is a Cree-Métis two-spirit baritone from amiskwaciwâskahikan  (Edmonton, AB). They have appeared as a soloist under Masaaki Suzuki, Philippe Herreweghe, Laurence Equilbey, and Alexander Weimann, among others, with the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, the Washington Bach Consort, Tafelmusik, Ricercar Consort, B’Rock, Vox Luminis, the Netherlands Bach Society, and il Gardellino. In 2021 they were named the first artist-in-residence at Early Music Vancouver. They have lectured and led workshops at the Universities of Toronto, Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta (Augustana), Bard College, Festival Montréal Baroque, and the Juilliard School. Jonathon was featured in Against the Grain Theatre’s 2020 film MESSIAH/COMPLEX, in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s MEA CULPA with Ballet Vlaanderen, and on Jessica McMann’s most recent album ‘Prairie Dusk’. They attended the Victoria Conservatory of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, studying with Nancy Argenta, Emma Kirkby and Rosemary Joshua.

Praised as a “rising superstar” (The Georgia Straight) who performs with “passion and intensity to electrifying effect” (The Vancouver Sun), CBC’s 30 under 30 violinist Chloe Kim (UVic BMus ’18) has performed internationally with leading ensembles such as Voices of Music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and The English Concert. Chloe has shared the stage with celebrated figures including Rachel Podger, Masaaki Suzuki, and Pablo Heras-Casado. She is the recipient of several awards, most recently including the 2021 American Bach Society Grant, 2020/21 Mercury-Juilliard Fellowship, as well as nominations for Canada’s prestigious Sylva Gelber Award and the 2024 WMCT Career Development Award. Chloe has served on the panel for the BC Arts Council and is also a Fellow of The English Concert in America, elected in 2021. Collaborations with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants have brought her to concert venues across France. In the summer of 2019, Chloe performed across Scandinavia with Yale’s Schola Cantorum and served as concertmaster of Juilliard415 for multiple productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in London’s Holland Park and the Opéra Royal de Versailles. Chloe is indebted to her dear friends and mentors Elizabeth Blumenstock, Jeanne Lamon, Christina Mahler, and Heilwig von Königslöw.

Praised for his “dazzling virtuosity” (The Spectator), Tom Foster has a busy career as a continuo player on organ and harpsichord and as a harpsichord soloist. Respected for his sensitive and inventive continuo playing, Tom is the principal keyboard player of the English Concert and is a regular guest with The Academy of Ancient Music, Arcangelo, The Dunedin Consort, Early Opera Company, The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Scottish Ensemble and The Sixteen. These collaborations have taken him to concert halls throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, Russia and South Korea. He has performed concertos at the Edinburgh International Festival and made his US solo-debut at Carnegie Hall in 2020. Tom began his musical education as a choirboy at Manchester Cathedral, then as a pianist and harpsichordist at Chetham’s School of Music. He holds a first-class degree in Music (BA) from St. Catherine’s College, Oxford and gained a Distinction in Performance (MA) from the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Trevor Pinnock.

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Visit our online events calendar at www.events.uvic.ca

Orion Series presents Carleigh Baker

by | Oct 7, 2024 | Alumni, Events, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Theatre, Writing

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Carleigh Baker 

Writer

“Writing Fiction in our Complicated Contemporary World”

2:30-3:50pm, Monday, October 21
Room A240 UVic’s HSD Building 

 Free & open to all

Presented by UVic’s Department of Writing

For more information on this lecture please email: writing@uvic.ca

About Carleigh Baker 

Carleigh Baker is a Métis-Cree/Icelandic writer and UVic Fine Arts alumna who lives on the unceded territories of the peoples. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings, won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award, the Indigenous Voices Awards and the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice Award at the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Her short stories and essays have been translated into several languages and anthologized in Canada, the United States and Europe.

Baker’s new story collection, Last Woman, was released this year by McClelland & Stewart. Floods and wildfires, toxic culture, billionaires in outer space, or a purse-related disaster while on mushrooms—in today’s hellscape world, there’s no shortage of things to worry about—and Last Woman wants you to know that you’re not alone. Her novel-in-progress, Platformer, is about chosen family, storytelling and honeybees.

As a teacher and researcher, she is particularly interested in how contemporary fiction can be used to address the climate crisis.

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Visit our online events calendar at www.events.uvic.ca

World premiere of climate disaster play at Phoenix Theatre

by | Sep 9, 2024 | Alumni, climate, donor, Faculty, Research, Theatre, Writing

People across Canada came together to help one another during recent climate disasters, and now Neworld Theatre and the Climate Disaster Project are bringing those true-life stories to the stage. Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories is the first full-length documentary theatre production based upon on-the-ground climate disaster reporting and will have its world premiere at the Phoenix Theatre from September 16-21.

“British Columbians have experienced so much loss because of the heat, fire, smoke and floods that have afflicted us,” says Alen Dominguez, Neworld managing director.

“But what stood out to our playwrights was how people supported one another through those disasters—and the need for more support from people in power.”

“Climate change is happening in the here and now,” says Climate Disaster Project founder Sean Holman, also the Wayne Crookes Professor in Environmental & Climate Journalism with the Department of Writing.

“People know that, regardless of what they think is the cause — and they want to talk about the impacts it’s having on their day-to-day lives, and what can be done about them. This is an opportunity to bring those conversations into the community.” 

 

Lytton residents Patsy Gessey & Owen survey the townsite, which was devastated during the 2021 Lytton Creek Fire. Gessey’s testimony, co-created by Climate Disaster Project co-founder Francesca Fionda, is one of more than 30 featured in Eyes of the Beast. (CDP Photo/Jen Osborne)

Audience reflections & leadership solidarity

Every performance is followed by a facilitated talkback, giving audiences a chance to reflect on the stories they’ve heard and share their own experiences of climate disaster. A Vancouver Island political leader will also be present to listen to the performance, as well as the audience, and reflect on how we can help communities impacted by those disasters. Those voices are:

  • former BC Liberal cabinet minister George Abbott (Sept. 16)
  • Minister of Tourism Arts, Culture Lana Popham (Sept. 17)
  • BC Conservative Nanaimo-Lantzville candidate and former NDP MLA Gwen O’Mahony (Sept. 18)
  • BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau (Sept. 20)
  • BC Conservative Oak Bay-Gordon Head candidate and former Victoria city councillor Stephen Andrew (Sept. 21, matinee)
  • Mayor Saanich Dean Murdock (Sept. 21)
 Alumni created, student inspired, media engaged

Working with interview transcripts from hundreds of British Columbians on the frontlines of climate change, Vancouver’s internationally renowned Neworld Theatre has painted a portrait of 30 ordinary people living in extraordinary times — and a province under pressure from the impacts of climate change.

 

Featuring survivor testimonies taken by over a dozen UVic Writing students, the show’s creative team also features the talents of UVic Theatre alumni, including director Chelsea Haberlin and co-writer Sebastien Archibald. 

Listen to this Sept 10 interview with Holman and director Chelsea Haberlin with CBC Radio’s On The Island host Gregor Craigie, who will be one of the media facilitators during the show.

Read this Sept 13 interview from The Tyee with Neworld Theatre’s Haberlin and Alen Dominguez.  

Read this Sept 15 article from Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper. 

A fishing guide who took his boat into flooded farmland to rescue an alligator. An actor rushed to the hospital for heat stroke after performing in front of the legislature. A mother figuring out how to prepare her child for the future after fire flattened their town.

Climate disaster is not far away, not happening to someone else. It is here now, happening to us. Eyes of the Beast shows how we still have each other during those disasters, creating community amidst catastrophe.

 

About the Climate Disaster Project

Founded in 2021, the Climate Disaster Project has trained hundreds of students at 13 post-secondary institutions to work on the frontlines of this ongoing humanitarian crisis by creating an extensive archive of eyewitness accounts. Nearly 300 testimonies have been collected from disaster survivors and shared in local, national and international publications, as well as national radio and television broadcasts.

Tickets range from $18-$34 and are available now via the Phoenix Theatre box office at 250-721-8000 for 7:30pm Monday-Saturday performances running September 16-21, plus a 2pm matinee on Saturday, September 21.  

 

Professional fishing guide Jordi Williams shows one of the photos he took while rescuing animals trapped on the Sumas Prairie during the 2021 Southern British Columbia floods. Williams’s testimony, co-created by UVic writing student Paul Voll, was included in Eyes of the Beast by Neworld Theatre’s playwrights. (CDP Photo/Phil McLachlan)

The cast of Eyes of the Beast: (from left) Jessica Wong, Danica Charlie, Sarah Conway, Vuk Prodanovic

SALT celebrates 10th festival

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Alumni, climate, Events, Faculty, indigenous, School of Music

SALT co-founder & School of Music professor Ajtony Csaba

The tenth SALT New Music Festival, founded in 2011 and organized by the Tsilumos Ensemble in collaboration with UVic’s School of Music, returns to Victoria for the first time live since 2019 with a compelling program featuring diverse and thought-provoking music from the 20th and 21st centuries—including concerts drawing attention to pressing global challenges, including social inequality and climate change.

“Like salt is essential to your food, the SALT Festival brings musical excitement to the Victoria audience,” says Ajtony Csaba, managing co-director of the SALT Festival and a School of Music professor of conducting. “This is a celebration of diverse new music performed by outstanding Canadian musicians, including premieres by contemporary composers and works by seminal ones.”

Beyond the traditional concert venue of UVic’s Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, SALT also offers the local premiere of the unique, immersive, under-the-stars performance of Stockhausen’s “Sternklang” in the serene setting of Finnerty Gardens.

The festival is thrilled to present fantastic performers with an array of exciting instrumental music by living Canadian composers and the seminal composer Stockhausen (called the “Beethoven of the 20th century”). In collaboration with UVic, the events take place in the breathtaking Finnerty Gardens and the exquisitely sounding Philip T. Young Recital Hall.

All concerts are free, with donations appreciated, but online booking is required at www.tsilumos.org/salt2024.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 I 7:30pm
Earth Sounds
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall

The first night features the premiere of David A. Jaffe’s “Northwest Passages”, a mesmerizing musical soundscape reflecting the grandeur and fragility of our ecosystem, with the SALT Festival Orchestra.  A champion for music of our time, the Emily Carr String Quartet will present commissioned compositions by Canadian composers Jocelyn Morlock and Tobin Stokes, also a School of Music alumnus, including a vocal performance by soprano and UVic Music professor Marion Newman.

Emily Carr String Quartet

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 I 7:30pm
Diverse Sounds
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall

Tsilumos Ensemble and guests showcase diversity through remarkable contemporary solo and chamber works, featuring the premieres of two pieces by Canadian composers. School of Music alumna Aliayta Foon-Dancoes returns with a commissioned composition for instruments and digital media.

Canadian composers Peter Hatch and artist Matthew Talbot-Kelly present an audiovisual collaborative composition reflecting on our environment through a novel lens, and School of Music professor emeritus Andrew Schloss and clarinetist François Houle bring an improvisational electroacoustic duo for electronics and clarinet to stage.

Aliayta Foon-Dancoes

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 I 5:30pm
Star Sound
UVic Finnerty Gardens

In a nighttime park, groups of musicians perform under the open sky, each at a distance from the others, drawing their music from the varying positions of the stars. This concept was envisioned by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in his seminal work, “Sternklang” and the SALT Festival Orchestra introduces this immersive experience to Victoria for the first time.

Music flows throughout the entire garden as “sound couriers” and “light bearers” carry the sounds from one location to another. The nature- and stargazing-audience is invited to inhabit this multidimensional space, whether by walking among the groups or sitting down to the lawn.

Karlheinz Stockenhausen

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 I 7:30pm
Sounds of the Zodiac
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Tierkreis: 12 Melodien der Sternzeichen” meets four young Canadian composers who re-envision the seasons, climate change, astrology, and even Stockhausen himself through a uniquely 21st-century lens. Performed by British Columbian Duo Inquietum (Liam Hockley, clarinets, Mark Takeshi McGregor, flutes).

Duo Inquietum

The SALT New Music Festival closes with a unique workshop focused on narratives in music inspired by indigenous knowledge. Active composer and musician participants will engage in dialogue with invited storytellers and artistic knowledge keepers, initiating concepts for new works. Please join us for this at 5pm Friday, Sept 20 at the UVic School of Music. 

More info and free tickets: www.tsilumos.org/salt2024