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BRIAN CURRENT (CA) Artist statement: Slanted time is how I describe my recent music that is always speeding up or always slowing down. Rather than write music for a steady metronome, I wondered if it were possible to make the change in tempo the normal state of the music. The indications accel (speed up) and rall (slow down) are therefore written over almost every line of music. This idea developed through many works. The orchestra pieces are a good example as they each play with tempo in different ways. This Isn’t Silence (1998, rev. 2001) has enormous gestures rushing forward in a way that is mostly about rawness and power. For the Time Being (2000) features a passage that speeds up for an entire minute and a half around a gasping trombone solo. It was the way the material around the solo renewed itself that became the seed for future pieces. Kazabazua (2003) features a slanted time section in very simple rhythms that continuously speeds up for several minutes. (The odd thing was that this music belonged in the slow, rather than fast, movement. It turns out that the more continuously something speeds up, the more it “sits”). The orchestra did so well at this piece that I felt it was time to try to do an entire work in slanted time and write ‘normally’ or as if the tempos weren’t constantly changing. This became Symphonies in Slanted Time (2005). Another test piece was The Star-Spangled Banner! (in slanted time) (2004), to see if I could write a familiar tune in tempos that are always speeding up and getting out of control. Continuous accelerando also informs the chamber opera Airline Icarus (2001-2005). I think of each – slanted time and the opera - as having caused the other. Airline Icarus takes place aboard a commercial airplane and is about hubris mixed with technology, forced intimacy of strangers and flying too close to the sun. I was looking for music to match one of the main ideas of the piece, which that when things are speeding up and getting out of control, the passengers are oblivious to it. Acceleration is taken for granted, calming even. Symphonies in Slanted Time and the other orchestra pieces are not calm by any means, but they have similar goals, and much like the opera’s themes of technology revving up, gears upon gears, and speeding forward almost unnoticed by most of the characters, the goal of slanted time is to make the acceleration feel regular, natural, as if the speeding up were the normal state of the music. This style has been evolving over many years and I believe it reached a culmination with Symphonies in Slanted Time (2005). While I believe in its potential, I feel that it has run its course for now, and I’m eager to try something new. BRIAN CURRENT BIO. A 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2003 Barlow Prize, Brian Current has established himself as one of North America's leading young composers. His music, lauded and performed internationally as well as broadcast in over 35 countries, is renowned for its energy, wit and daring bravado. Raised in Ottawa, Brian Current studied music at McGill University in Montreal with Bengt Hambreaus and John Rea. He later completed his Ph.D. in composition on full fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002, where he was also active as a conductor. He has since been featured conducting with New Music Concerts, Soundstreams, CBC’s In Performance and the Esprit Orchestra’s New Waves Festival. Recently, the Royal Conservatory of Music appointed Brian conductor and artistic director of its New Music Ensemble. Brian Current’s music has been performed across North America and abroad by the Esprit Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra (Carnegie Hall), the Oakland Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles) the VOX festival of the New York City Opera, the Havana Festival (Cuba) and others. Upcoming performances are scheduled by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Bit 20 Ensemble (Norway) and a Koussevitsky commission for Symphony Nova Scotia. In 2001, Brian won the Grand Prize in the CBC National Competition for Young Composers for his piece For the Time Being, which then went on to win Selected Work (under 30) at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. In 2002 it opened the inaugural concert of the Warsaw Autumn Festival, conducted by Antoni Wit. Brian Current has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell and Bogliasco and is a recipient of grants from numerous foundations and arts councils. He lives in Toronto and is on the board of directors of the Toronto Arts Council, the Canadian League of Composers and other organizations. Starting in March of 2008 he will spend a five month residency composing in Kyoto, Japan. www.briancurrent.com |
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