Irish composer sets tragedy to music
Air India disaster subject of Turning Point opera
air india (redacted)
Nov. 6 to 11 | SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Tickets and info: $19 to $39, turningpointensemble.ca
Contemporary opera matters in Vancouver. Both Vancouver Opera and the Turning Point Ensemble are producing new (or new to Vancouver) works this fall. And both demonstrate an important trend: Operas about serious social issues that perplex the contemporary mind.
For their new opera, the Turning Point Ensemble took the Air India disaster of three decades ago and the words of poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar as its starting point. For music, they turned to Irish composer Jürgen Simpson.
Born in Dublin in 1975, Simpson teaches at the University of Limerick. He composes in a number of contemporary contexts, including electro acoustic works, music for dance, film, and opera. The Sun spoke to him last week by phone a few days before he returns to Vancouver. Q Do you have any personal remembrances of the disaster?
A My wife and I were both 10 (years old) at the time. Coincidentally, she lived quite near the crash site, so she has vivid memories. I was in Dublin, quite far removed. It’s still something that for Irish people remains very murky in its details. The Lockerbie disaster is much more familiar.
Q How does a contemporary composer blend opera with the notion of contemporary socially relevant stories?
A For me, the question surrounding this project is: How does one embrace contemporary thought, anthropological or philosophical or scientific, in opera, or any other form of artwork? It took so long to come to fruition because a musical work that moved in linear progression did not seem to be appropriate or practical. Building a narrative around a central figure in the usual sense brought up all the clichés of a single person somehow dragging issues through history. We ended up finding the solution in Saklikar’s poetry, which does hang the story on a timeline, but is so multi-faceted that it very appropriately embraces all the complex, deeply troubling, deeply human responses.
Q In the past, so much was focused on the composer’s musical style and vision. Is this approach still valid?
A I’ve written a number of operatic- type works, as well as music for different types of films. In my own musical practice, I have very specific approaches, but in a work like this they tend to very much define how the music needs to be for certain things. There is not a Jürgen Simpson stylistic dictate from which nothing must veer — there is a consistent stylistic, but there is also an embrace of multi-faceted approaches that allow a response to emerge.
The subject is extremely complex, therefore the approach cannot simplify it. For this reason the music is sometimes very difficult. Yet the very core of these things is a deep wish to embrace issues and untangle themes. The tone of the music and the poetry is very much about communication. Otherwise, you lose the ability to engage meaningfully with these ideas. There are moments when I use white noise, the only electronic element in the work. At other times there are, for example, descriptions of a young child running into its mother’s arms. Very strong juxtapositions, and the music reflects these.
Q What’s the reason for using the fairly exotic countertenor voice type in the opera?
A There were two reasons for using a counter-tenor. We needed to pick out identities from the poetry, which is not always fixed on any particular character. One identity that repeatedly came to the fore was the voice that speaks rationally or has a legal dimension — because, in part, of the redaction in public documents. The idea of having one voice doing this gradually revealed itself — but I didn’t want that voice to be patriarchal, or specifically male. I wanted it to come from a dimension that was neither male nor female, to give the commentary in a sort of otherworldly way. There’s something extraordinary about that voice, a really contemporary voice, and an extraordinary instrument.