IMMIGRANT’S SONG
Ana Sokolović’s latest piece is dedicated to Canada’s diversity
For anyone who is concerned about this country as a place of tolerance and hope, a half-hour chat with Ana Sokolović will be a balm for your patriotic soul.
The Serbian expat has lived in Montreal since leaving her homeland in the troubled 1990s. And she has found the freedom and the multicultural makeup of her adopted country a blessing for her art and her life.
Sokolović is a composer of contemporary music and a teacher at the Université de Montréal. One of her latest compositions will be performed at the National Arts Centre on Thursday.
The work is called Golden slumbers kiss your eyes... and it is the result of the NAC Award for composers that she received in 2009, which included commissions, residencies and teaching positions over a fiveyear period.
“There are several movements (in the piece). In the beginning I wanted to make it about the lullaby from several different countries, but I changed that because I thought that I would need something more dramatic. Everything is centred around stories which could be presented as a lullaby or as a dream.
“Everything is in a fantastic world.”
The piece is dedicated to Mario Bernardi, the music director who led the National Arts Centre Orchestra in its early years and who died in 2013. Both Bernardi and Sokolović share the immigrant experience.
“I wanted to dedicate the piece to him as an Italian and to myself as a Serbian and to many others who have come to Canada from different countries, who have contributed to making the culture of this country. This was my guide.”
She also wanted to present songs that immigrants might have brought with them to Canada. That meant looking into folk traditions for inspiration. There are songs in Italian, French, German, Ladino, which is an old Spanish language connected to the Sephardic Jews, Serbian and English.
The search for the right texts for each song was hard work. Not only did the words have to fit her theme, she “had to fall in love with them as well.”
In fact, her search drilled deeper into the languages. The two Italian songs are actually in dialects from different regions of the country.
One is from the area around Venice, where Bernardi’s family is from, and the second is from Puglia, which is essentially the heel of the Italian boot.
The piece is a journey through time and space, she says, connected by the songs. As well, the piece is inspired by music from the imaginary childhood of an immigrant, she says.
Her own interest in her roots has come since she arrived in Canada in the mid-1990s.
“I think it happens to many people who leave their countries. Canadians are much more Canadian when they are not in Canada. When you are in your country, it’s normal to hear the folk stories and to not really care about it.
“When I left Serbia I started to think about it in a different way. I grew up with up with rock and pop music, but certainly not anything which was related to the country.”
When you are far away from your home, Sokolović says, “you think about yourself and all this stuff and you realize there are many things about this culture which you can be conscious of.”
“It’s extremely important for all nations in the world to have this cultural distinction. Culture should inspire us and we should take care of it.
“It’s very interesting for all of us to think about language and culture. Music comes from geography, or perhaps better put, place. There are many elements inspired by our way of life.”
She is, she agrees, a musical explorer.
“I am inspired by Balkan music, but not only that.”
There are so many possibilities to be explored in the regions of the world.
She left Serbia to find a bigger world.
“It was a destiny. I had to leave. It was important for me to leave a place which was too little for me. And I had a strong feeling that I had to come here (to Canada).”
She was attracted by the bilingual nature of the country. But she found much more.
“You can be yourself here. It was more than I expected, this level of respect for our roots. This mosaic culture works. It’s probably the only place in the world where it does work.
“I felt it when I had my two children.” Her Canadian friends encouraged her to speak Serbian at home to share her language with her children.
“Can you imagine? I have cousins living in Europe and it would be absolutely impossible to think about it.”
The piece is 25 minutes long. The seven songs will be sung by a counter-tenor soloist and the Cantata Singers of Ottawa. Learning the words is one of the puzzles. The hardest to master have been the two Italian dialects.
Beyond the NAC project, Sokolović is just beginning work on a major commission for the Canadian Opera Company.
She will compose the music for an opera called La Reine- Garçon with a libretto in French, by the Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, based on his play.
With this project Sokolović is in composer’s heaven.
“Opera is the most beautiful art. It’s just complicated to make so you don’t have many commissions. I hope we will have more; after all, quantity makes quality.”
She has been trained in theatre and ballet and the appeal of opera allows her to employ all her skills in one big project.
“I am working with (Bouchard) on the libretto right now. It is a complicated thing to write.”
In a year, she says, she’ll be doing the music.
“I have lots to think about. This is a mainstage opera. It’s enormous. It’s really long and involves orchestra, soloists, chorus and ballet. We are talking about a lot of notes,” she said with a big laugh.