A Really Big Score!

Alex with Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason’s Emergence – a really big score!

Physically, it’s one of the largest scores that Alex Pauk, conductor and founder of Esprit Orchestra, has ever conducted (16” x 24”, 40 cm x 60 cm) – so big that it won’t fit on one music stand. It also requires a music stand extension to accommodate its length.

When you experience Emergence at Esprit’s second concert of its 35th season, you’ll know why the score needs to be so physically imposing.

With movement titles such as I. Silence, II. Black Breathing III. Emergence, the composer gives you an idea of what you are to experience. Good friends of ours just returned from a trip to Iceland and they described the landscape as primordial and vast – built on black lava. In the first movement of Emergence, with its huge blocks of shifting static chords, Bjarnason creates an expansive universe of sound into which you can almost disappear. Then the piece moves on to Black Breathing with its propulsive chords shattering the stillness. Finally, ending the piece, the movement titled Emergence, seeming to begin in a pinpoint of light, transforms itself into a gigantic, immersive, expanding universe with pulsing waves of sound that take you into a state of spiritual catharsis.

Bjarnason has an international following for his concert work, but equally impressive is his well-known work with the post-rock band Sigur Ros. You might have been with us for cellist Bryan Cheng’s exciting 2016 performance of Bjarnason’s cello concerto, Bow To String which received an immediate standing ovation.

Emergence will be a revelation.

- Alexina Louie

ESPRIT ORCHESTRA PRESENTS: EMERGENCE
Sunday November 19, 2017 | 8pm
Koerner Hall
TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning
273 Bloor St. West

Click here for more information and to reserve your tickets.