{"id":148588,"date":"2010-12-01T19:39:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T19:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/a-tripartite-musical-sensibility\/"},"modified":"2010-12-01T19:39:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T19:39:49","slug":"a-tripartite-musical-sensibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/a-tripartite-musical-sensibility\/","title":{"rendered":"A tripartite musical sensibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHere in Canada, I\u2019ve started to think differently about my origins,\u201d says Ana Sokolovic<\/strong>, over breakfast in a Toronto caf\u00e9. \u201cI think you have to be physically separated from your country to have this kind of reflection. You will find yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words of wisdom come from a Serbian-born composer who has called Montreal home since 1992. And they also say much about her approach to her music: on one hand, Sokolovic enjoys the cultural freedom that comes with living and working in Canada; on the other, she has a clear sense of who she is and where she\u2019s from.<\/p>\n

Why did she choose Canada? \u201cMy decision was mixed with a lot of elements. I wanted to go far away. And I have a friend of Yugoslav origins who was a filmmaker, but was born in Ontario.\u201d And why Montreal? \u201cI\u2019m a huge francophile, and I\u2019ve always been attracted by French culture and language. I still think it\u2019s the most beautiful language. Isn\u2019t it wonderful to live in a country with two languages: the most important and the most beautiful?\u201d<\/p>\n

While some immigrants have a hard time adapting to this country, Sokolovic took to Canada like a fish to water. She quickly mastered French as her third language (after Serbian and English). She wasted no time obtaining a master\u2019s degree from l\u2019Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, and soon started to make her presence felt artistically. In the 1990s she won three prizes in the SOCAN Awards for Young Composers (now the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers), took a first prize in the CBC\u2019s National Radio Competition for Young Composers and represented Canada at UNESCO\u2019s International Rostrum for Composers.<\/p>\n

Commissions and other awards followed, and today the list is impressive. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre baroque de Montr\u00e9al and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra have all engaged Sokolovic to write for them. Chamber ensembles that have commissioned her include the Molinari and Bozzini string quartets, and the Adaskin, Phoenix and Fibonacci trios. Contemporary-music societies have beat a path to her door, and she\u2019s created new works for the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de musique contemporaine du Qu\u00e9bec, the Esprit Orchestra, Soundstreams Canada and Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, among others. In 2005, she won the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for her work as a composer, and in 2007, the Conseil qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois de la musique named her Composer of the Year. And in 2008, she won the Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award at SOCAN\u2019s Montreal awards gala.<\/p>\n

However, the story of Sokolovic\u2019s development as an artist reaches back well before her arrival in Canada. While this country has done much to shape her professional career, her desire to become a composer is rooted in her childhood in Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia). \u201cMy mother is a dentist\u2019s assistant and my father is a historian,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut my father had a strong sense of art, he took us to concerts, the theatre and ballet. And I had an older sister who played the piano, so I wanted to play too.\u201d<\/p>\n

She began piano lessons at the age of eight. As well, there were classical-ballet lessons. She remembers the strictness of her Russian teachers \u2014 and also how she made her first attempts at composition. \u201cAt my dance classes,\u201d she says, \u201cI went to the grand piano during the break and played. I wrote little songs, little melodies, and I played them over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ballet gave way to acting lessons a few years later, when Sokolovic enrolled in theatre school. \u201cThe teacher didn\u2019t only teach us to act,\u201d she recalls, \u201cbut to stimulate our imaginations. Later on, I helped her as her assistant in staging theatre pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual for an artistically inclined child to pursue several art forms before settling on a favourite. But in Sokolovic\u2019s case, all three of her areas of study \u2014 ballet, theatre and music \u2014 have contributed to the artist she\u2019s become: a composer who thinks about music from a theatrical standpoint. This is something she brought with her to this country. \u201cWhen I came to Canada, at my first composition lesson my teacher asked, \u2018What would you like to do for your master\u2019s degree?\u2019 This surprised me, because I was not used to being asked what I wanted to do. I was used to being told something like \u2018This year you\u2019ll write a string quartet.\u2019 I chose to do ballet music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sokolovic\u2019s theatrical instincts soon came to the attention of Toronto\u2019s Queen of Puddings company, which specializes in contemporary music theatre. Co-director D\u00e1irine N\u00ed Mheadhra vividly recalls how she first heard about Sokolovic \u2014 through a phone call to V\u00e9ronique Lacroix, director of l\u2019Ensemble contemporain de Montr\u00e9al, in 1999. \u201cI asked her who she thought were the best composers in Montreal and she mentioned Ana Sokolovic. So I called Ana and asked her to send me something. She sent me a tape of her chamber piece Pesma<\/em>, and by bar seven, I was hooked. She clearly had something to say \u2014 her music connected emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queen of Puddings commissioned her to write Sirens\/Sir\u00e8nes<\/em>, a bilingual work for six women\u2019s voices, and staged it in 2000. That, in turn, led to Sokolovic\u2019s most extensive theatrical work so far: The<\/em> Midnight Court<\/em>, a chamber opera also written for Queen of Puddings. Premiered in 2005 and remounted in London\u2019s Covent Garden theatre the following year, it was based on an 18th-century Irish poem about sexual politics in Fairyland. The National Post<\/em> called it a cross between Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> and Monty Python.<\/p>\n

But even when her works aren\u2019t written for the theatre, Sokolovic finds ways to bring her theatrical sensibilities to composing. Last year, when she was asked to write the Banff International String Quartet Competition\u2019s \u201cimposed piece\u201d (which all competing quartets were required to play), she deliberately avoided writing the kind of abstract music-that\u2019s-just-music concert work. \u201cI thought about it,\u201d she told the CBC\u2019s Larry Lake in a radio interview, \u201cand I had an idea do something which I like very much, which is commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em>. So I decided to have a little bit of a writer\u2019s role \u2014 to write a play, and see how different actors will do the play. All the notes are written, but there is a place for different interpretation of the same notes, and the same story.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past September, Sokolovic\u2019s commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em> \u2014 a 10-minute romp demanding advanced contemporary-music skills \u2014 was performed by competing quartets from around the world. Canada\u2019s Cecilia String Quartet, which won first prize in the competition, also took the special award for best performance of Sokolovic\u2019s piece.<\/p>\n

While Sokolovic\u2019s reputation has spread nationally and internationally, there remains a strong Quebec focus to her career. It\u2019s in Montreal that her music has been most warmly received. And in the 2011\/12 concert season, Montreal will be the epicentre of a year-long celebration of her music, organized by the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de musique contemporaine du Qu\u00e9bec. The previous two composers honoured by the SMCQ with Homage concerts were Claude Vivier<\/strong> and Gilles Tremblay<\/strong>. They\u2019re obvious choices: Vivier passed away in 1983 and today has an international reputation, while Tremblay is an \u00e9minence grise<\/em> in Canadian new music. But a retrospective series on someone like Sokolovic \u2014 very much alive and only 42 \u2014 is a departure from the way things are usually done.<\/p>\n

SMCQ artistic director Walter Boudreau<\/strong> offers a simple and direct reason for his choice: \u201cShe\u2019s good \u2014 period.\u201d He goes on to say that specifics about the series are still in the works, but the SMCQ intends to present four concerts featuring Sokolovic\u2019s compositions, including Jeu de Portraits<\/em>, G\u00e9om\u00e9trie sentimentales<\/em>, Nonet<\/em>, Il divertimento barocco<\/em> and Ambient 5<\/em>, among others.<\/p>\n

However, the SMCQ\u2019s own concerts will be just the tip of the iceberg. Boudreau has been making plans for other ensembles in Quebec and across Canada to get involved. already, the Ensemble contemporain de Montr\u00e9al and Montreal\u2019s Nouvel ensemble moderne have programmed Sokolovic works, as have the Bozzini and Molinari string quartets and orchestras in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa. Boudreau hopes that about 60 performances of works by Sokolovic will take place in the 2011\/12 season.<\/p>\n

At present, Sokolovic has about 40 compositions in her catalogue, everything from large orchestral scores to solo works. \u201cI work on several pieces at the same time,\u201d she says, \u201cbut in different stages. One piece will be in the last phase, and another I\u2019m just beginning. Right now I\u2019m working on three pieces: a piece for violinist Ang\u00e8le Dubeau and La Piet\u00e0, another string quartet for the Bozzini Quartet and a dancer, Marc Boivin, and Svadba<\/em>, an opera about a Russian wedding for Queen of Puddings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sokolovic\u2019s life is entirely wrapped up in music: she\u2019s married to another composer, Jean Lesage<\/strong> (they have two children, Gustave and Eva), and when she\u2019s not composing, she\u2019s teaching music at l\u2019Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. That\u2019s the life she chose. But would things have turned out differently for her if she had stayed in her native Serbia? Her first reaction to the question is to point out that she has no way of knowing what direction her life would have taken if she had not left her homeland. But then she offers an idea. \u201cWhen I was in Europe, I was very connected to the European tradition. I tried to compose as a European composer \u2014 whatever that means. But here in Canada, I feel free to do what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Award-winning composer Ana Sokolovic\u2019s lifelong interest in music, theatre and ballet informs her work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}