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If the students of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra were their age 100 years ago, their lives as teens and young adults would have been drastically different.
Instead of practicing harmonies on the flute or perfecting the sounds emitted from the strings of the violin, they’d be learning how to shoot a rifle, how to treat potentially catastrophic wounds and leaving friends and family at home; for many of whom, it would have been the last goodbye.
To mark the centennial of the beginning of the First World War, the orchestra’s directorial team has selected a young composer from Toronto, Kevin Lau, to create an original composition in honour of Canada’s sacrifice.
The eight-minute piece “Keeping Faith” will premiere at the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Competition in Vienna, Austria in July.
The CEO and president of the orchestra said it’s incredible to be commemorating the start of the Great War’s 100th anniversary in this way but to be performing in the country which sparked the start of the war is pretty astounding.
“This is a chance to represent Canada at a very important time and performing something in remembrance of events that led to the shaping of our country today,” Ken MacLeod said. “And we thought it was cool for the orchestra to be doing a Canadian composition marking the role of New Brunswick and Canada in this most historic event in one of the very cities and countries which stood at the heart of events leading up to the war.”
This will be the second time the orchestra performs at the prestigious competition and will, again, be the only Canadian orchestra invited to participate. The NBYO first travelled to Vienna for the event in the summer of 2011 and took home first place in the symphony orchestra category.
The requirement for the 2014 competition was that the piece of music must be a composition from the orchestra’s home country. MacLeod and the orchestra’s conductor and musical director, Tony Delgado, thought it would be fitting to commission an original composition to fit the war’s centennial year.
MacLeod said it just made sense to introduce such a piece which honours the role Canada played in the war, but that also looks towards the future with a sense of hope, tolerance and peace, at an international event where more than 20 countries are represented by about 2,000 young people in 40 or so ensembles.
“We thought about how our youth orchestra could keep faith with those who served and sacrificed 100 years ago, especially when you consider there’s no one currently alive today from that war,” he said. “It’s not a celebration, it’s not about the battles and victories, and it’s not about triumphalism. It’s the idea of keeping faith with those who sacrificed and looking ahead.
“We tested the idea with our Austrian host and they were very pleased with both the idea of the commission and our approach.”
Lau, a composer, musical arranger and accomplished pianist, was honoured to take on the original piece for the NBYO and began working on the composition last month.
Lau, who has composed 50 concert works, 15 film scores, as well as scores for live theatre, video games and documentaries, said he’s drawing upon his own reflections of human conflict, as well as his sense of gratitude to those who sacrificed for the ideal of peace.
“The commemoration of the war can be about so many things,” he said. “The initial optimism, the savagery and death of the battlefield, the grief of a nation and the world, remembering the service and sacrifice. My challenge will be to discover an identity for the music that will ring true in an elegant way.”
With the help of the Canadian Music Center with the composer selection process, Delgado says he is pleased they’ve hired Lau and is looking forward to hearing the first snippets of the piece early next month.
“He really embraced this challenge,” he said. “He is working very hard and is enthusiastic about it. I am excited because he has offered to come here, and work in collaboration with me on setting it. That is so wonderful and his enthusiasm tells us we made a great choice.”
After the 2014 competition, and the composition’s premiere July 5, New Brunswick’s musicians will play at two other sites in Vienna, as well as famous music venues in Munich, Germany and Prague, Czech Republic.
The orchestra will return home to perform its new work as a part of concerts at five locations in New Brunswick and one performance in Ottawa during the 2014-2015 season. The tour’s music will also be recorded for a CD to be released in the fall of 2014.
