Vivian's Spring 2021 Letter

Dear Friends,

I hope this newsletter finds you healthy and thriving. In exciting news, last week it was announced that Ensemble Made in Canada's album MOSAÏQUE, which features my piece Shifting Landscapes, has been nominated for a 2021 JUNO Award! Listen on Apple Music.

I'm thankful to be looking forward to two upcoming (virtual) world premieres: My new Flute Concerto "Storm Within" will be premiered by the Vancouver Symphony and VSO principal flutist Christie Reside via livestream the first week of June 2021. “Storm Within” is a work in one continuous movement written during the fall and winter of 2020, at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging and California (where I currently reside) was in full lockdown. As I sat in my studio, powerful images and stories filtered in from the daily news—protests, violence, death, resistance, and conflict from the many events happening around the world. It was all a bit overwhelming, and I frequently found it difficult to process all the emotions that emerged from witnessing these events unfolding on the screen.

In an effort to understand and come to terms with often unresolved sentiments swirling in my head, I decided to put them all into the concerto. I knew from the start that I did not want the flute concerto to focus on the many themes that have already been brilliantly portrayed by composers before me, subjects such as birdsong and pied piper tales. But although the concerto accordingly touches on an angrier—and perhaps a more emotive—side of my writing, it also has many moments of beauty and solace.

The work starts and ends with lyrical and placid moments for both flute and orchestra, bookending a journey that is at times percussive and harsh, at times playful, and at times soaring with expressive lines for both flute and orchestral instruments. The concerto displays a mighty and highly virtuosic flute part, with a cadenza right before the final moments of the piece. The flute solo is laced with fast runs, glissandi, large leaps, and rhythmically charged lines. At times, the flutist is asked to speak as well as play, giving the instrument an additional percussive dimension. The writing is meant to test the limits of the flute, and I could not have asked for a better performer than Christie Reside, the principal flutist of the Vancouver Symphony, who also commissioned this work.

I am also composing operatic short for Edmonton Opera's Wild Rose Opera Project with librettist Royce Vavrek. My short will be an exploration of a family’s history dealing with the PTSD inherited from a history of genocide, shown through a prism of a young woman who seeks context, but the pain (and truth) is concealed by the older members of her family. Royce and I have been wanting to work together for a few years now, but just hadn’t had the right opportunity to do so. This is like a dream come true – opera has been on my mind for a while now, and incorporating elements of my family history into the story is something I have been always wanting to do. I am hoping that is can turn into a bigger project for me and Royce. It is so wonderful that I get to realize this collaboration in my hometown Edmonton!

I can't wait to share these new works with you, and hope to see you (in person) at a concert very soon.

Best wishes,
Vivian