Hello again! I’m back in your inbox to tell you about a concert I’m playing next weekend.

It’s with the Civic Orchestra of Victoria, and it’s our first one with our new music director, Grant Harville, in full official capacity. Here’s what we’re playing. I’d like to call attention to the fact that we have two Canadian composers on this program!

Benjamin Johnston-Urey — Beringia

To my knowledge, this piece has only been performed once before, ever, in 2023, and this will be the Canadian premiere. I also believe that the composer, who lives in Whitehorse, will be attending this concert. I love performing new music - bringing this stuff to life is one of the coolest feelings in the world.

This piece evokes big landscapes, epic journeys, and maybe a little bit of a prog rock feel, put together in a mix that I have been enjoying.

Nathaniel Dett (arr. G. Harville) — Magnolia Suite

I hadn’t heard of Nathaniel Dett until Grant programmed his arrangement of a Dett suite, originally written for solo piano. In case you missed it - yes, he’s conducting the arrangement that he did himself, which is pretty cool. Dett was a African-Canadian composer who moved to the US as a child in 1893, and lived there for the rest of his life. He wrote this suite in 1912, at the age of 30, and you can hear the influence of the music of the time in it.

I enjoy the little pictures that the different movements bring to mind, and the way a full orchestra can evoke different colors and textures. It has this in common with Pictures at an Exhibition, which was also written originally as a piano suite and orchestrated later, with the orchestral version growing more popular than the original.

Georges Bizet — L'Arlésienne Suites 1 and 2

This one is kind of a wild story because Bizet (who is also famous for his opera Carmen), wrote this as incidental music for a play, but everyone hated the play, so then he took it and made some of it into a suite, and everyone liked the suite so much that a friend of Bizet’s rearranged more of it and published a second suite after he died. Also, it has a great saxophone solo.

The first suite has a beautiful, intimate strings-only movement, the Adagietto, that we are dedicating to the memory of our late principal violist, Gary Hayes. Gary was one of the first people who I got to know after moving here to Victoria; I would see him by chance at musical performances that we were both attending or playing in. He and his wife Florence were always lovely, welcoming, and interested in having a chat. A friendly face means a lot when you’re new somewhere and just finding your feet. I’ll always remember him fondly for that.

This concert is in the Dave Dunnet Theatre at Oak Bay High School, at 2pm on November 15th. Grant will give a pre-concert talk at 1pm - so an hour before the show - and if you have the time, these are interesting and even though I’ve been getting to know this repertoire for the past couple months, I still learn things from the portions of these talks that I’m able to sit in on. Learn more and get your tickets in advance here, or at the door.

If you’re interested in volunteering for a front-of-house role at this or any other Civic Orchestra of Victoria concert, reply to this message and let me know. I’ll put you in touch with the organizer for that. You get in free if you volunteer (but you have to show up kind of early).

And as always, come say hi if you attend, and thanks for listening!