Programme Notes

Abalone is the name given to the west coast mollusk, sometimes also called "the ears of the sea." The abalone is a symbol of water, offering solace during difficult times.

Arctic Blooms was composed in Iceland while I had the privilege of being in residence at ArsIceland in the Westfjords. What is it about? WRITE MORE

After the Rain

Blended Airs was composed for Stephanie Bell and premiered by Mark McGregor. It is inspired by the Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint (1862-1944),whose vsiual art was deeply influenced by natural forms. Klint was part of a group called "The Five" who were led by spiritualist ideas and sought the guidance of "High Masters" in their painting, often through conducting séances. Klint’s paintings are considered among the first known abstract works in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the purely abstract compositions of Malevich, Mondrian and Kandinsky.

Blind

Cells of Wind

Des vu

Entangle is a short work for piano composed for Wesley Shen with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. “[Entangle] seemed like a fruit of an esoteric hybridization, rife with awkward rhythms bent on fracturing a luminous harmonic landscape, a thoroughly fascinating concoction, which I need to rehear.” Marc Couroux

Eternity’s Sunrise - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

Fern

La Fôret

Forest II

Icefolding is a reflection on our changing and melting North: the fragility and volatility of ice folding into sea, folding over land.

Infinity - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

Invisible Forest

Late Winter

Lattice

Leaf

Linen

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds. Scientists have recently revealed that a species of moth in the Kirindy forest of Madagascar drinks tears from the eyes of birds. Birds can usually fly away from these predators, but not while sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly. Sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis “shaped like an ancient harpoon,” with hooks and barbs. It is inserted under the eyelid where the barbs are used to anchor it in place. (D. MacKenzie)

My words are in your tea is based on the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, the idea that there is beauty in the things imperfect and impermanent. I was thinking of how this can also extend to communication and close relationships... how we reach out to others and they reach out to us, and sometimes it feels incomplete, and unfocused, and how we still try to knit things together in our own humble way; how language is so imperfect, and yet still so beautiful, how we hang in the balance together on these tender utterances. My words are in your tea is kind of an allusion to that... our words sometimes fall into other places... not quite finding the person.... but in the spaces around them. And maybe they drink them in in ways we can not understand.

Paisley

Paradise - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

Peregrine felt was composed in 2021 and is dedicated to Morgan Zentner and Katelin Coleman. I love the adjective peregrine: " having a tendency to wander."  This piece is written in a manner which allows the musicians to sit with tones in a gentle and expansive way, feeling their way forward as sounds unfold, mingle and suggest direction. 

Pine Trees and Blue Sky takes its title from a 1935 oil painting by Emily Carr. The 1930s were a period during which Emily Carr desired to strike out in new directions in her artistic work, directions that explored her own unique experience of the West Coast region of Canada: the rainforests, mountains, and ocean-swept skies. These subjects expressed her spiritual connection to nature and also helped her to devise painting approaches that were some of the most progressive in Canada at that time. This composition can also be performed as a septet, using as the seventh instrument the Chinese pipa. It was premiered with this configuration at the Beijing International Composition Workshop, Beijing, China, in July 2011.

Saltwater is a meditation on being back home on the west coast with family and community after a decade away. The piece is shaped by a deep love for these coastal landscapes which are resilient, yet fragile, powerful, yet delicate. For me, composing is very much about expressing a feeling or confluence of feelings. These, in turn, are suggestive of colour, vibration, texture, density. Through this work, I was interested in exploring warm immersive harmonies, where resonances could accumulate through passages of shifting and blending colour. Some sections of the piece contain more movement, with swells of sound, and the sense one is sinking beneath the water. At other times, I was working with the lulling quality of rocking back and forth. Quieter moments trace delicate textures, as though one is peering into a tidal pool, or observing a wispy gauze of light through seafoam. The players end with white noise— evoking a nearly inaudible memory of sea sound.

As salt enters water, it breaks apart into ions. Ions carry electrical charge in the ocean, as well as in our physical bodies. The saltwater within us is what enables the little electric impulses to travel to our hearts and brains, telling us to live and breathe. As I was composing this piece, it was as though I was in communication with this object coming into being that was every day reminding me to keep breathing. So the piece also symbolizes a lived experience for me that was, at the time, very reassuring. This piece was composed for the Victoria Symphony and made possible through the Hugh Davidson Fund.

Singing the Earth

Small, like the Wren was composed for Cheryl Duvall’s set of extended piano commissions with the generous support of a Canada Council grant. The title comes from…. The piece is about… Something about the small sounds like the bird, but also Emily Dickinson, and also the ecstasy of the opening section…

Small Meadows in Spring. The harpsichord solo Small Meadows in Spring is based on an 1881 painting of the same title by Alfred Sisely, created after the painter moved his family from Paris to Veneux-Nadon, on the outskirts of Moret-sur-Loing. The painting depicts a pathway winding along the river. This work was commissioned by Wesley Shen with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, and premiered in May 2019.

Small Stone Figure opens with a fragment of a hymn written by Saint Kassiani, a ninth-century Byzantine abbess in Constantinople. She is one of the earliest known female composers whose music survives to the present day. Kassiani's fragment is subjected to continual twists and turns as it sinks ever downwards through the ensemble like a small stone figure cast into the sea. Like the hymn, this piece is written as a single melody which is performed in mass unison.

Snow - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

Snow variations….

Toy (revised 2021) - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

Tributary was composed for the UVic miniatures concert. What is it about? WRITE MORE

Varied Thrush was composed in the summer of 2021. It is a reverie on the tangles of forest undergrowth. My warmest thanks to Wesley Shen for his beautiful performances, and to Ryan Scott and Continuum Ensemble for the generous support in recording and presenting all three harpsichord pieces.

Vines and Shadows is the first of three works that I have composed for Toronto keyboardist, Wesley Shen. When first composing for harpsichord, I was really taken by how visceral and percussive the release mechanism of the harpsichord could sound. I became interested in how letting go of pitches in an emphasized way sounded like tearing little holes in a sonority, leaving behind traces and patterns like ghosts and shadows. The last passage of the composition reverses this process, attending to the accumulation of pitches, rather than their release.

Voix (revised 2021) - I've written a few melodies for female voice on texts that I love; and with piano but only to double the melody line in a very gentle, understated way (piano can be played by singer or a pianist). These are quiet pieces. They are quite special to me; I feel they are like speaking the poems aloud in sound, and thus set very simply. Because the piano pedal is depressed, the voice is gathered in a pool of soft resonances, or little bleeds of harmony. So these new version of Blodgett’s Voix, Toy and Snow are the ones I've been circulating recently, and I have withdrawn my original versions that have an independent piano part. More recent compositions Infinity (Leopardi), Eternity's Sunrise (Blake), and Paradise (Blodgett) are also to be played/sung in the same way.

What Time is it Now?

Woolgathering was composed for pianist Wesley Shen with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. Wool gathering once referred to the task of wandering through the countryside, collecting stray tufts of wool from fences and branches. Over time, the word transitioned to its modern meaning which replaces the physical wandering to more of an idle or absentminded daydreaming. As a composer, I love relating plucking little bits of wool to continual bumps of short detached tones on the piano, and the length of this particular work allowed me to playfully tangle and jumble these tufts into tone-clouds where variation becomes like the twists of light through fibres. “[Woolgathering] kept me going for its full duration, twisting and wending its way through feints and bifurcations, expressing adumbrations of a material that refuses to fully reveal itself.” (Marc Couroux)

Yet, the Rain falls