Bridges 2017 Formal Music Night
Saturday, July 29th, 8:00pm–9:30pm
Humanities Theatre, University of Waterloo
Free, open to the public (ticket reservation required, see below)
The Dazzled Eye Lost its Speech
A program of music for vocal ensemble spanning seven centuries.
Join us for an evening of choral pieces that explore relationships between mathematics and music. The chosen repertoire explores these relationships through architecture, form, symmetry, and process-driven composition. The concert includes Guillaume DuFay's (1397-1474) motet Nuper rosarum flores, composed for the consecration of the newly completed Florence Cathedral in March, 1436. DuFay was among the earliest composers to make an explicit link between music and math by composing this dedicatory motet to have the same mathematical proportions as the biblical Temple of King Solomon. In addition to DuFay's proportionally balanced isometric motet, the program includes music by the 15th century Belgian composer Johannes Ockeghem, Americans William Billings, John Cage, Phillip Glass and David Lang, as well as Baltic composers Rytis Myžulis, Ēriks Ešenvalds and Arvo Pärt and Canadian R. Murray Schafer. Conducted by University of Waterloo/Conrad Grebel University College music professor Mark Vuorinen, the program features a specially-formed ensemble of choristers and professional soloists.
About the conductor
Mark Vuorinen is Artistic Director of the Grand Philharmonic Choir and Assistant Professor of Music at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where he is responsible for the choral music program. He holds a master’s degree in music from Yale University School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. And earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from University of Toronto. He is President-elect of Choirs Ontario.
He is past director of the Toronto Chamber Choir, a leading early-music ensemble and has given first performances and Canadian premieres of works by many composers, including John Burge, Timothy Corlis, Robinson McClellan, Tawnie Olson and Jonathon Dove and James Whitbourn.
Recent concert highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Arvo Pärt’s Credo and Passio, John Estacio’s The Houses Stand not Far Apart (co-commissioned by the choir) and Richard Einhorn’s moving soundtrack, Voices of Light, as an accompaniment to the silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.
A recipient of many awards, Mark was named the E. Stanley Sedar Scholar at Yale University and is a recipient of the Elmer Iseler National Graduate Fellowship in Choral Conducting from the University of Toronto. Mark is a past recipient of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Centennial Foundation Graduate Fellowship. He received the David and Marcia Beach Summer Study Award from the University of Toronto for studies in Germany with leading Bach scholar and conductor Helmuth Rilling. In 2016, Mark received the Leslie Bell Prize for Choral Conducting from the Ontario Arts Council and a National Choral Award (Outstanding Dissertation) from Choral Canada.
Mark’s research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic states, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis. Mark was an invited lecturer at the Arvo Pärt Project’s Sounding the Sacred conference in New York City in May 2017. He is published in Circuit Musiques Contemporaines and the Research Memorandum Series of Chorus America.
Mark is a frequent guest conductor, choral adjudicator and clinician.
Public access to the concert
All Bridges participants are already invited to the concert, and can simply show their badges at the door. We are offering additional seats for free to the general public, with advance ticket reservation. If you would like to attend the concert, please reserve a ticket by visiting our ticketfi page.
Thanks
This concert was made possible through the generous support of our sponsor:
The Musagetes Fund