Canadian Art Song Project is thrilled to present the video premiere of Three Songs on Poems of Anne Michaels by Christos Hatzis. Commissioned to celebrate CASP’s 10th Anniversary in 2021, hopes of a live premiere were dashed with the arrival of Covid-19.
Written for tenor and piano, the work defies idiomatic convention, offering moments inspired by classical, jazz and other music traditions. The songs in the 30 minute set are titled: 1. Women on the Beach; 2. Not; 3. Somewhere Night is Falling. More information about the commission and score can be found here.
This filmed performance, featuring CASP directors Lawrence Wiliford and Steven Philcox, was made possible through the generous support of the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts. The film features audio engineering by Aaron Tsang
and cinematography by John Lauener.
CASP would also like to acknowledge the support of the Institute for Music in Canada.
Watch the video
Composer Christos Hatzis:
For more information about the composer please visit his website.
With two earlier Juno awards, two 2017 Juno nominations and a 2017 Juno award for his double CD Going Home Star: Truth and Reconciliation, several national and international awards and a slew of recent commissions by internationally recognized touring artists and orchestras, University of Toronto professor Christos Hatzis is constantly active on the international music scene. Hatzis’s music is continuously presented in performance and broadcast (approx. 100 performances worldwide each of the past three pre-Covid years,) an online audio playlist with over 1,700,000 hits, and a stream of CD recordings on Naxos, Deutsche Grammophon, Centrediscs, EMI, Analekta, Sony, CBC and other major and independent labels, several of them all-Hatzis albums. The Hilary Hahn’s Deutsche Grammophon recording In 27 Pieces, which includes Hatzis’s Coming To won a Grammy Award in 2015 and topped many international top 10 lists that year. Christos Hatzis is widely recognized as “one of the most important composers writing today” (CBC) and “a contemporary Canadian master” (New Yorker). He is pioneering a distinct breed of 21st Century music which combines intellectual complexity and clarity, emotional/psychological directness and technical mastery of various media and musical idioms. His recent work focuses on climate change, geopolitical diversity, indigenous issues, migration, environmental consciousness and human rights. Recent premieres include Vernal Equinox, a marimba concerto commissioned by marimbist Theodor Milkov on the theme of the of the Greek independence war and its recent Bicentennial. Hatzis often writes about contemporary music and its relationship to today’s society and has recently completed the writing of a book on Pythagorean harmonic and metaphysical philosophy titled Resonance: A Journey of Connections Made by Intuition and an esoteric memoir titled Searching for the Right Key: The First Forty Years.
Performers
Film and Audio Team
John Lauener, Video
Vancouver born, Toronto based photographer John Lauener has been a professional photographer for over thirty years. A graduate of Sheridan College’s Applied Photography programme, John’s work in fashion, dance , theatre and music has been published extensively throughout Canada as well as the U.S, Europe and Japan.
John worked for many years as a fashion photographer, living and working in Toronto, Madrid, Spain and Milan, Italy. His education as a dance photographer began in the studios of Toronto Dance Theatre where he was welcomed by the administration as he honed his dance photography skills. His work in theatre was a natural extension to his dance photography.
John’s journey to creatively capture movement has led him to work in film and video where he has created short dance films that have appeared in festivals in Canada, Europe and South America. He continues to work closely with dancers, choreographers and actors to help translate their works to this medium.
For more information or booking information please contact John here.
Aaron Tsang, Audio
Aaron Tsang is a Canadian composer for film and mixed media. In 2006, he created Lightmotif Scores, a music and audio post-production company in Toronto that has provided original music and audio services to over 60 films, television shows, commercials, and videogames.
Aaron’s music and sound design work can be found in games of many well known franchises such as, Shrek (DreamWorks Pictures), Ghostbusters (Sony Pictures), and The Smurfs through all the popular “Smurfs’ Village” mobile games. During the wave of celebrity themed games in 2014, Aaron provided music and audio services for Kim Kardashian’s “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” game, which has seen 67 million installs as of 2018, and “Kendall and Kylie”, a follow-up game featuring the Jenner sisters with Glu Mobile. In 2018, he provided music for Guava Juice (a YouTube celebrity with over 13 million subscribers) in his game “Guava Juice: Tub Tapper”.
More recently, Aaron’s work can be found in “Shuyan Saga”, a graphic novel style 3D action videogame starring Kristin Kreuk as Shuyan. The game features a full orchestral soundtrack, and was nominated by the Canadian Screen Awards in 2018 for “Best Original Interactive Production for Digital Media”
In 2017, working with Christos Hatzis and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Aaron was the mastering engineer for the album “Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation”, which won a Juno award for “Classical Album of the Year”. Aaron was also awarded “Best Original Score” for his orchestral score to the first season of “Pete Winning and the Pirates” in 2014 at the 5th Annual Indie Series Awards (ISA) held in Los Angeles and was awarded “Best Original Score” again the following year for the second season of the same show at the 6th Annual Indie Series Awards. In 2012, Aaron was awarded “Best Score” at the Underdogs Film Festival in Texas for his orchestral score to the feature film “The Blue Seal”, which was previously also awarded a nomination for “Best Original Score” in 2010 from Action on Film Festival (AOF) in Los Angeles.
Some other past highlights include Aaron’s music for a Tim Hortons television commercial featuring Sidney Crosby in 2011, recorded with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), and the “Boundless” fanfare (commissioned by UofT in 2012), an anthem celebrating the university and its $2-billion fundraising campaign. The fanfare has since been performed live at all University of Toronto faculties and campuses both as part of the “Boundless Campaign” and at various university functions.
Aaron is a graduate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Music with a B.Mus and M.Mus in musical composition, both under the tutelage of Christos Hatzis.
For more information about Aaron please visit his website.