Last week, we were honoured to jointly receive the John Lewis Paton Distinguished University Professorship from Memorial University. This award recognizes faculty who “embody the university’s mission by demonstrating exceptional teaching, undertaking world-class research and sharing their knowledge and expertise widely.” This is extremely meaningful to us. Our passions over the last two and a half decades have embraced playing, commissioning, teaching, Tuckamore, school programs, outreach, and extra-musical projects. This award reflects this multi-focus and we are so honored by this recognition. Incidentally, we think this new website reflects these sides of Duo Concertante well!
Ecology of Being recording coming soon
In July, with support from ArtsNL and Memorial University, we recorded a new CD at the Glenn Gould studio in Toronto with our long-standing, wonderful team of producer David Jaeger and recording engineer Dennis Patterson. To be released on Marquis Classics, we look forward to sharing the album with all new works by Dawn Avery, Carmen Braden, Ian Cusson, Melissa Hui, Randolph Peters, and Bekah Simms in early 2022.
Summer Time
We had a busy summer with performances at Sound Symposium, Ottawa Chamberfest, Festival of the Sound, Musique Royale, and, of course, teaching and playing at our own Tuckamore Festival which successfully pulled off a combination of live, online, and hybrid offerings this summer (a rewarding challenge!). We were really proud of the festival’s balanced/diverse program offerings this year and greatly enjoyed collaborating with guest artists James Campbell and Heather Tuach. Here we are before our performance of Galina Ustvolskaya’s fabulous but very intense and brooding Trio. Jim has just made a joke – the “hope you enjoy the performance” after introducing the piece as a challenging listen and musical commentary on Soviet-era repression.
SOLACE
We were thrilled to receive a Canada Council for the Arts Digital Now Grant to support our upcoming video project SOLACE. Working with director Nicola Hawkins we will be creating a unique film/music video hybrid with music exploring themes of reconciliation, peace, love and unity in counterpoint to the worldwide stress and sadness caused by the pandemic. Featuring new works by Dawn Avery, Jessie Montgomery and Alice Ping Yee Ho alongside César Franck’s Sonata, this will be filmed in early 2022 and premiered in spring 2022 at the Tuckamore festival.
Widening the Circle and school touring program
Finally, we are excited about two new projects with the Tuckamore Festival this fall and winter:
Widening the Circle is a new commissioning program which aims to broaden support frameworks to encourage creativity and skill development for composers from diverse backgrounds at various stages in their development. We are so grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting this initiative!
Ecology of Being will return to schools throughout Newfoundland and Labrador this year thanks to the support from ArtsNL!
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