Unsettled Scores
Spy Dénommé-Welch (with Catherine Magowan)
Transpositions

Out: November 22, 2024 from Unsettled Scores (LP/CD/DL)
Genre: Modern Composition, Chamber

UNSETTLED SCORES — WEB | BANDCAMP

Transpositions is the first recorded outing to emerge from Unsettled Scores, a unique collective endeavour that, since 2006, has been generating and mobilizing solo, chamber, orchestral and opera compositions, as well as productions that straddle music, theatre and other artforms. Co-founded by Spy Dénommé-Welch, an Algonquin-Anishinaabe composer, storyteller and researcher from Temiskaming First Nation and Catherine Magowan, a Jewish-Hungarian wind musician, composer, and conductor, the duo’s co-creations (a welcome detour from the more prevalent model in the contemporary composition world) have delved into difficult histories, and contemporary issues from both a Canadian and global perspective. The pair’s unique work has helped them forge partnerships with numerous important artistic institutions across Canada including the Nota Bene Baroque Players, Native Earth Performing Arts, Theatre Passe-Muraille, Tarragon Theatre, and the The Toronto Consort.

Transpositions presents an entirely instrumental work bearing the same name, but it also arises from a conceptual source, much like the pair’s other output. In this case, it’s the intersection between chronic illness and environmental health and in the words of Dénommé-Welch, who led the creative charge on this particular project, the music traces the “delicate and symbiotic rapport between the land, human life and all other living beings.” Given the events of recent years, such subject matter has assumed great relevance, however as Dénommé-Welch reveals in the disc’s liner notes, his inspiration actually forecasted the COVID-19 pandemic rather than arising from it. “I could never have anticipated the timeliness of this work by suddenly having to navigate a way to record and produce an album about a health crisis during what became a sudden global pandemic.”

Unsettled ScoresSpy Dénommé-Welch (with Catherine Magowan)Transpositions

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Unsettled Scores
Spy Dénommé-Welch (with Catherine Magowan)
Transpositions