Esprit Orchestra presents ICEFIRE, DO-RE-MI & CARING FOR THE EARTH

Thursday, March 27th / 2025 | Koerner Hall
8:00PM Concert | 7:15PM Musical Insights with Alexina Louie & guests
Alex Pauk, Music Director & conductor
Akiko Suwanai (Japan), violin
Guest Composers: Lisa Streich (Sweden) & Andrew Norman (USA)
 
Festival #2:   ICEFIRE, DO-RE-MI & CARING FOR THE EARTH

In Streich’s ISHJÄRTA layers of expressive chord characters, “warm” and “colder,” encompass a realm where expressions freely emerge amidst contrasting layers - a piece about heart and intensifying expression.
Eötvös’s concerto revolves around a deceptively simple source – the notes Do-Re-Mi that every child learns from nursery rhymes and childhood songs. These notes have inherent immense tensions and conflicts amongst them. Dramatic situations can evolve – and in this work they do!
 
A question for audiences of 2118 about how notions of time, space, sound, and history have shaped their world guided Norman in writing Sustain as a continuous spiral contemplating the rise and fall of species, the movement of tectonic plates, the birth and death of stars and about how the Earth will fare over long periods into the future.
 
 
Lisa Streich (SE): ISHJÄRTA* (2024)
Péter Eötvös (HU): Violin Concerto #2 “DoReMi”** (2011-12)
Andrew Norman (US): Sustain (2018)

*North American premiere
**Canadian premiere