Breathe: Music for Voices & Early Instruments

Brian Current: Faster Still

Canadian Works for Oboe and Piano is a sweeping compilation of fine Canadian repertoire for oboe and piano from the past 70 years. A celebration in honor of Canada's sesquicentennial, the collection highlights the oboe's personal, singing quality and is unified by the lyrical essence of all the works. This recording includes several Canadian oboe classics, three new works created especially for this project, three new arrangements of existing pieces, and a few interesting discoveries, including the world premiere of a work written some 40 years ago by a major composer but never performed live. The album features an even mix of sonatas, shorter stand-alone works, and what could be considered suites. With one exception, all the works on these discs are receiving their first recorded performances here. Charles "Chip" Hamann is principal oboe of Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra and adjunct professor of oboe at the University of Ottawa School of Music. He is a frequent guest principal oboe of some of the world's finest ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Qu�bec's Les Violons du Roy. Mr. Hamann's 2010 recording of the Saint-Sa�ns Oboe Sonata with pianist St�phane Lemelin on Naxos received the Critic's Choice award by Gramophone Magazine. He is also heard as soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and violinist Pinchas Zukerman in the Bach Concerto for oboe and violin, BWV 1060 on the 2016 Baroque Treasury album for Analekta. Pianist Fr�d�ric Lacroix is a member of the University of Ottawa School of Music piano and composition faculty and has been heard as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborative pianist throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is a specialist in the study and performance of keyboard music on period instruments, particularly the fortepiano.

Vincent Ho’s music is wild and fanciful, and takes us to the limits of sonic energy, but it is also intimate and tender, for he is not afraid to reveal his truly lyrical soul. THE SHAMAN is a work that sets an atmosphere of magical stillness, with the soloist evoking unearthly sounds - wolf calls, shimmering colours, and the lightest of orchestral textures. It is powerful work that merges the spiritual indigenous world with the modern classical world to create a compelling musical journey. ARCTIC SYMPHONY was inspired by the composer’s first-hand experience of the Arctic Ocean with a scientific research team aboard a Canadian Coast Guard ship. Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest conductors, orchestras, and artists. She fondly recalls having played the first percussion concerto in the history of The Proms at the Albert Hall in 1992, which paved the way for orchestras round the world to feature percussion concerti. Vincent Ho is a multi-award winning composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and theatre music. His many awards have included Harvard University’s Fromm Music Commission, The Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, four SOCAN Young Composers Awards, and CBC Radio’s Audience Choice Award (2009 Young Composers Competition).

Rolfe: Chamber Music

5x3

MacDonald, A.: Winds of Thera

Pinnacles - Music of Diana McIntosh

JUNO Award-nominated composer Jocelyn Morlock’s music is hailed as being “airy but rhythmic, tuneful but complex” and having “uncanny yet toothsome beauty” (Alex Varty, Georgia Straight.) In her second full-length album release, she presents a diverse selection of songs, chamber music, and a concerto, performed by a bevy of phenomenal musicians. Ariel Barnes and Joseph Elworthy sparkle as solo cellists in Aeromancy; Barnes is intensely emotional as protagonist of Halcyon and Shade; and Tyler Duncan and Robyn Driedger-Klassen effervesce in Perruqueries’ hair-raising tales. Morlock’s music has received numerous accolades including Top 10 at the 2002 International Rostrum of Composers, winner of the 2003 CMC Prairie Region Emerging Composers competition, five nominations (2006, 2010, 2014, 2015) and one win (2015) for Classical Composition/Recording of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards, and a Juno Nomination for Classical Composition of the Year (2011.) She won the Mayor’s Arts Award for Music in Vancouver (2016), and is currently the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Composer in Residence. Much of her music has been inspired by birds, insomnia, or a peculiar combination thereof.

Beckwith, J.: Keyboard Practice / Upper Canadian Hymn Prelud

Wild Bird

In Sonorous Falling Tones

Somers: Chura-Churum - The Merman of Orford

Neue Bilder: The Music of James Harley

Elektra Women's Choir: Legacy