SPECIAL OCASO
Alfredo Santa Ana’s Ocaso offers some rhythmic challenges for musical training ensemble
Rising Vancouver star composer Alfredo Santa Ana joins forces with the National Youth Orchestra to perform his expanded work.
National Youth Orchestra’s 2015 TD National Tour Tonight, 7:30 p.m. | The Chan Centre at UBC Tickets and info: Admission by donation, chancentre.com
When maestro Michael Francis gives the downbeat tonight for the National Youth Orchestra’s performance of Alfredo Santa Ana’s Ocaso, it will mark more than the introduction of a new piece of Canadian orchestral music.
Santa Ana is a local composer with an international background whose work for the NYO provides national exposure at a crucial time in his developing career.
Born in Mexico City, Santa Ana attended high school and university in the United States before fulfilling his goal of living and working in Canada. His school of choice for graduate studies in composition was University of B.C., where he completed his doctor of musical arts degree half a decade ago.
Since then, he has enjoyed a surprisingly rich career that included being the first Wall Composer in Residence at UBC’s Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and general director of Music on Main, a position he left last fall to devote himself full time to writing music.
Plotting the trajectory of a fulltime compositional career has its subtleties and its strategies; few Canadians are able to manage exclusively by writing music. Composer-in-residence positions are important options.
Santa Ana was a contender for the gig with the NYO, a coveted assignment that gives opportunities to learn about orchestra culture from the inside and work with excellent almost professional young musicians from all over the country. He wasn’t chosen, but the NYO brass were impressed, and a way was found to work together on a new work for this summer’s tour.
Going strong since 1960, the orchestra is a living national treasure.
It’s estimated that some 40 per cent of Canadian orchestral musicians are alumni. Each year advanced students from all across Canada audition for the ensemble; those selected participate free of charge and receive a minimum $1,000 scholarship.
Writing for the NYO has its own set of variables: It is made up of the creme de la creme of young instrumentalists, all playing at quite exceptional standards, but they all lack extended professional experience. However brilliant, the NYO is, after all, a training orchestra. Savvy
“I tried to write the piece in such away that it was an easy piece to put on and perfect, but with some rhythmic challenges that a regoing to be fun for the orchestra to do. ALFREDO SANTA ANA COMPOSER
composer Santa Ana had a good idea of what that might mean.
“I was very clear that my piece was going to be a smaller work, a piece that would fit into the program. I settled on a 6½-minute piece that was conservative, that didn’t have any outrageous percussion that couldn’t be performed in certain venues,” he said over coffee last week. “I tried to write the piece in such a way that it was an easy piece to put on and perfect, but with some rhythmic challenges that are going to be fun for the orchestra to do.”
The Spanish title Ocaso means twilight, an evocative image that should help audiences capture the essence of the music. Santa Ana explained that there is a bit more to the choice of title than pictorial imagery.
“In Spanish, ocaso often is used to discuss the final stages of life,” he said, pointing out how some recent family history has made his thoughts turn to considering life’s various stages and progressions.
But the piece is by no means all autumnal mists and melancholy.
“Knowing that the orchestra was going to be expanded — close to 100 people on stage — I knew I had a large subset of strings. There are lots of pizzicato sections. so there’s this massive plucking sound with intense 5/4 rhythms.”
The rest of conductor Francis’ Vancouver program for his first season with the orchestra includes Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote and Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.