Human Shadow Etched in Stone
Videos
“Human Shadow Etched In Stone” marked the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing with a performance of Penderecki’s landmark “Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima” and 3 new commissions, from Robyn Jacob, Jordan Nobles and Rita Ueda, that reflect on this event. The performance, with 42 distanced and masked string players, began at 8:15am on August 6, 2020 with an audience of 2: Hiroshima survivor Sachi Komura Rummel and her husband Charles.
Rita Ueda: Let Us Not Be The Reason Someone Out There Is Praying For Peace (2020)
Rita Ueda is a composer, sound designer, and music teacher in Vancouver, Canada. Her recent works include “Forty Years Of Snowfall Will Not Heal An Ancient Forest” for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Escape from the Evil Alien Surfblasters for 8 hand piano ensemble, and Still Shaking from the Latte, a piano solo for Misuzu Kitazumi-Burns, a member of the LA Piano Unit.
Rita was born in Hakodate, Japan, to a family of musicians, poets, dancers and engineers. She moved to Vancouver, Canada with her family in 1971. Rita studied composition and sound design at Simon Fraser University and the California Institute of the Arts. Her teachers include Rudolf Komoros, Rodney Sharman, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick and Stephen L. Mosko.
Jordan Nobles: Black Rain (2020)
Black Rain (2020)
JUNO award-winning composer Jordan Nobles is known for creating music filled with an “unearthly beauty” (Mondomagazine) that makes listeners want to “close (their) eyes and transcend into a cloud of music” (Discorder Magazine).
“Technically, there was no other word for it than that much overused modifier awesome.” Georgia Straight – Vancouver, BC
Jordan has won numerous awards for his work including a JUNO Award for ‘Classical Composition of the Year’, a Western Canadian Music Award, the International Composition Competition of the Unbound Flute Festival (Brisbane, Australia July 2016); the Sacra/Profana (San Diego 2013) , Vancouver Bach Choir (Vancouver 2008), and Polyphonos (Seattle 2011) International Composition Competitions. He placed 2nd in the International Soli fan tutti Kompositionswettbewerbs in Darmstadt, Germany and was a finalist in the C4 Choir Composition Competition in New York., as well as has been chosen to be performed in Wrocław, Poland at the International Society for Contemporary Music’s 2014 World Music Days.
Robyn Jacob: A World In Each (2020)
Robyn Jacob is a pianist, singer, composer and educator who lives and works on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She has toured Canada and internationally with her avant-pop project Only A Visitor, who have released three albums to date, and have collaborated with sound designer Nancy Tam on a multi-media production called Double Happiness: Detour This Way. Her recent composition projects explore writing for unusual ensembles, as well as collaborations with visual artists and instrument makers.
In 2019 she was commissioned to write a piece for percussion quartet by Grammy winning Third Coast Percussion as part of their Emerging Composer Project. In early 2020 she celebrated the release of Earth Leaps Up on the label elsewhere music with her duo The Giving Shapes in collaboration with harpist Elisa Thorn. Also in 2020, she was commissioned by Little Chamber Music to write A World In Each for 42 strings.
Since 2012 she has been part of the multi-disciplinary arts collective Publik Secrets, currently artists in residence at the Hadden Park Field House with the City of Vancouver. In 2013 she toured Bali with Gamelan Gita Asmara, and has since been co-leading Gamelan Bike Bike. Robyn has received a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of British Columbia, and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Joya AiR in Spain. She has been teaching music and piano privately for over 10 years.
Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima (1960)
Born on November 23, 1933, in Debica, Poland, Krzysztof Penderecki received violin and piano lessons as a child and studied art and literary history and philosophy at the local university while also attending the Kraków Conservatory. In 1959, three of his compositions, each submitted under pseudonyms, won first prizes in a competition sponsored by the Polish Composer’s Union.
One of the best known, most listened to, and most popular composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Penderecki underwent a marked evolution in compositional style. After achieving fame with such astringent, often anguished, scores as his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) and Passion According to St. Luke (1965), both of which stretched traditional harmonic language and orchestral techniques, beginning in the mid-1970s, Penderecki followed a personal imperative in moving toward more conventional tonal music. He was also known for his film scores for Polish films, and for his music that was adapted for the soundtracks of films such as The Exorcist (1973), The Shining (1980), and Wild at Heart (1990).
