Finding inspiration amid the headstones
Personal loss, a famous sinking and the price of war all illuminated
The Little Chamber Music Series That Could presents three events this fall at Mountain View Cemetery. To say that the organization has really taken to being the series in residence at the cemetery is an understatement.
They’ve found inspiration for some of the more fascinating public art presentations in the city in the excellent acoustics of the Celebration Hall and surrounding grounds and the ready-made research potential of the plots.
From a haunting work for seven voices, marimba and double bass exploring the death of a parent to one of the worst nautical disasters in the history of our Pacific Northwest region and, naturally, the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, this season’s program sounds incredibly interesting. It all begins Oct. 30 with the 14th annual All Souls At Mountain View Cemetery event, a night for honouring the dead.
This is when composer Joelysa Pankanea will premiere her new operatic work, the 1st Stage.
“My mother passed away in May 2017, and Mark Haney (artistic director of Little Chamber Music Series That Could) commissioned me to write a piece about it a few months later, which was not an easy thing to do,” said Pankanea. “It was really, really intense and the process was really slow. I started going through her journals and learning about her life and discovered many things I didn’t know, which made it eventually be a piece about my experience of her more than about her.”
Pankanea says that the piece for voice, marimba and double bass winds up being more about her mother’s essence and their experiences together. Obviously, the composer couldn’t write from her late mother’s perspective, and the more she learned about her life, the less she could write from her perspective either. It kept on changing.
“To see her as a normal woman, not just my mom, with the same struggles and dreams to realize in life was hard to write for,” she said. “I’ve been composing for voices for 25 years, but usually that comes with a beautiful script and lyrics to write songs to. This time, it was my own script, which I’ve never done before, and everything came out in vowel sounds rather than words.”
Aside from a pieces of a Rumi poem given to her by one of her mother’s dearest friends at the funeral, The 1st Stage is more about emotional release than narrative. Fittingly, the poem in question is titled When I Die. Not exactly the pre-prepared script to set to music she expected, but good to work with. Pankanea had been hired by the chamber before.
“Mark had hired me earlier in 2016 to do a piece on the death of my dad, who died when I was 14, so it was long dealt with,” she said. “It was for all instruments and based on five stages of grief and called the Fifth Stage. This time, it felt like it needed to be all voices, with only two instrumentalists.”
The suggestion that she is becoming a specialist in requiems gets Pankanea laughing loudly. But she admits that the experience of the performances of the work about her father seemed to register with audience members as some kind of healing catharsis. The First Stage will have multiple performances and runs about 20 minutes.
Haney says that where there used to be some reticence among people to come out to events at Mountain View Cemetery, things have changed as the series residency has continued. The Little Chamber Music Series That Could has found its groove.
“A big part of what we do is being barrier-free, producing high quality arts and music events for everyone — period — and I can’t believe there aren’t more organizations doing that,” said Haney. “Another thing, is we don’t follow the old notion of having to present a program of an hour-plus length. Why can’t people just enjoy Joelysa’s 20 minute piece and make it beautiful and moving and let go of it?”
Dismantling those constructs means opening up the possibility of doing more interesting projects that are affordable. Case in point, Sounding the Sophia (Nov. 9, 10, 7 p.m.).
“This is a creation of our two artistic associates Molly McKinnon and Heather Beatty about the sinking of the SS Sophia steamship which cost the lives of all 353 passengers, 70-plus of whom are buried in Mountain View,” said Haney. “It includes a concert and a special event with an exhibit on the SS Princess Sophia from the Maritime Museum of B.C. and a installing of a headstone for the O’Brien family who were all lost and have been resting anonymously.”
The final fall series show is Centum Corpora (Nov. 11, 11 a.m.), presented in association with the Homegoing Brass Band. This marking of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day will bring 100 professional, student and community musicians together in the Commonwealth Field of Honour. In the spirit of the First World War, this will be held rain or shine.
“It’s really more about remembering the individuals because the big anniversary can become about the event and not the specific people,” he said. “So each of the 100 musicians will stand behind a specific headstone and then play a phrase that is about six bars long and repeat it 100 times. It’s going to meditative, interesting and the hope is people will walk around and read the names and the messages and learn something.”
If the Little Chamber Music Series That Could can make people remember the true price of war, then the most certainly have done something brilliant. Haney remains hopeful.
As you would expect, events ranging from the fall series to the Summer Solstice event in June and educational outreach programs by the LCMSTC are largely financed from donations. Dedication to presenting world-class new music events that are barrier-free is pretty classy, all right.