Contemplating Clouds on a Prairie Sky

Contemplating Clouds on a Prairie Sky

When you look at the cover of Contemplating Clouds on a Prairie Sky by composer Wayne Toews there is a note that says

Dedicated to Ellen Remai, who has enriched Saskatoon through support of the Arts community.

Not only did Toews dedicate the piece to Ms Remai, but he also donated the work to the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra as a part of our Share in the Future fundraising campaign. His contribution was matched thanks to the generosity of Ms Remai through the Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation.

The donation of Toews’ piece helped us reach our goal of raising $500,000! It is incredibly special to have someone as gifted of a composer as Wayne Toews share his art with us. We are honoured to be giving the premiere of the piece at Controlled Burn. As a past member of the orchestra, it means a lot to us that he continues to support the SSO.

As a lifelong musician, educator, conductor, and part of the local music community, Toews understands the importance of live music in the heart of the prairies. He has also been a part of building local music organizations from the ground up.

There is something incredibly resilient about the prairie music community. It takes grassroots to heart with the number of organizations, large and small, creating incredible music on shoestring budgets and all is made possible through the hands of generous volunteers. There is a wealth of talent here in, and from, the prairies that is heard all over the world.

Wayne Toews is huge part of that legacy. 

On top of his work in the Saskatoon school system, Toews has been teaching students of all ages since his career began in 1969. He created the band program at City Park Collegiate and neighbourhood schools, expanded the music program at Aden Bowman Collegiate, founded the Saskatchewan Orchestral Association, founded the modern iteration of the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra and led it for 25 years alongside his colleague George Charpentier.

He organized the Jack Johnson Memorial Music Fund through the Saskatoon Community Foundation to provide annual grants in support of young Saskatoon orchestral musicians. Toews has given workshops around the world, on the Saito Conducting Method and is the principal instructor of the International Saito Conducting Workshop in Saskatoon each summer. In the fall of 2004, he became founding director of the University of Saskatchewan Chamber Orchestra.

Toews has created a number of resources for his fellow educators including an elementary music theory booklet, a clarinet resource book, a bass guitar book and several curriculum guides. He has also created several computer programs including Subjective Tones and An Introduction to the Saito Conducting Method.

On top of all his incredible work in the music community, numerous awards, and dedication to continued music education, Toews has made time to compose several works. He’s written music for soloists, small ensembles, and full orchestra. It is clear to all who know him that Toews does things with his full heart, and composing is no different.

When we sit back and listen to Contemplating Clouds on a Prairie Sky we can all close our eyes and picture the beautiful views that come to life in the music. What colours and shapes will open up in our mind’s eyes? From the shimmering opening created by the percussion section, until the very last note fills the air, we hope you join us in our gratitude to the man behind the music – Wayne Toews.

Michael Bridge, Digital Accordion

Michael Bridge

Michael Bridge is a 21st-century musical maverick—toppling popular expectations of what it is to be a professional accordionist.

He’s a virtuoso performer—a superstar on both acoustic accordion, and its 21st-century cousin, the digital accordion. He’s won a slew of competitions in Canada and abroad and offers lectures and masterclasses around the world.

He embraces a musical esthetic that is alternatively irreverent, deadly serious, meticulously prepared and completely in-the-moment. He’s at home with jazz, folk and classical music. He’s premiered 53 new works. If pushed, he’ll say he likes Baroque music best because of its unforgiving demand for clarity of intent and execution.

He began playing when he was 5 and growing up in Calgary. His mom bought an accordion at a garage sale for $5. A family friend started teaching him to play by ear. Formal lessons began at 7.

He spent weekends at prairie accordion competitions, playing polkas and learning to dance.

At 15 he attended the World Accordion Championships as a spectator. For the first time he heard classical accordion and fell in love with it. He started all over again, mastering a completely different kind of accordion and a whole new technique.

He was soon offering a hundred community concerts a year. As a soloist with orchestra or string quartet, with his two ensembles, he continues that pace, playing in concert halls all over the world. He received his doctorate in accordion performance from the University of Toronto with Joseph Macerollo (the first Canadian to do so) and is a Rebanks Fellow at the Glenn Gould School.

Bridge (along with his clarinet partner Kornel Wolak) performs on a digital accordion—essentially a computer housed in a conventional accordion case. This extraordinary piece of technological wizardry imitates the sound of just about any instrument you can imagine. He can single-handedly shake the rafters with a convincing “1812 Overture”, canons and bells included. Bridge & Wolak concerts capture the energy and panache of stadium rock with the discipline and finesse of chamber music. Think Bach on steroids.

He’s also mastered the more familiar acoustic accordion, a soulful, highly expressive instrument, essential to the music of Toronto-based Ladom Ensemble. Along with cello, piano and percussion, the Ladom quartet creates a sophisticated blend of everything from traditional Persian melodies, to Bach and Piazzolla, to Radiohead.

Bridge also gives back through an online Music Mentorship Program. After performing hundreds of concerts in schools—usually in the less-than-ideal setting of a packed gymnasium with a tight time limit—Bridge & Wolak determined to build more meaningful relationships with musically inclined teens. With help from composers, tech people and producers, they introduce emerging artists to the wide world of professional music.

When he’s not being a musical renaissance man, you’ll find Bridge salsa dancing, cooking vegan dishes and talking to smart people. He loves to travel and he’s trying to live a more minimal life—abandoning anything that isn’t essential to his life and work.

But what really matters for Michael Bridge is making your world more bearable, beautiful and human—even if only for the length of a concert.

He is grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Sylva Gelber Foundation, and the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto.

www.MichaelBridge.ca
IG: @michael_accordionist
FB: www.facebook.com/MichaelBridgeMusic
YT: www.youtube.com/@MichaelBridge

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel of the same name, directed by Rupert Julian and starring Lon Chaney. The plot centers on a mysterious, disfigured man who lives beneath the Paris Opera House, known as the Phantom. He falls in love with Christine Daaé, a beautiful young soprano, and developed an obsession. 

It is worth to note that the film is known for Chaney’s self-applied dramatic make-up, altering his appearance for the setting’s eerie atmosphere. 

In 1925, the president of Universal Pictures Carl Laemmle went on vacation in Paris and met the author Gaston Leroux. Leroux gave Laemmle his 1910 novel, and Laemmle read it all in one night and decided to buy the film rights as a vehicle for actor Lon Chaney. Soon later, the production was scheduled for late 1924 at Universal Studios.

The production began and it did not go smoothly. The ending of the film was revised for multiple times, and the star and crew did not have a great time with director Rupert Julian. A score was prepared by Joseph Carl Breil, “”Presented with augmented concert orchestra” according to Universal’s release, but not much more information were to be found. After the third and final version, the film was premiered in New York. It received a mix of reviews, and the public demanded for an improved version. 

Therefore, instead of making a sequel, Universal opted to reissue The Phantom of the Opera with a new synchronized score and sound effects track, with a few new dialog sequences on top. The sound version of Phantom opened on 15 December 1929 and achieved a financial success despite the controversial reviews. 

Brenda Moats, Flute & piccolo

Brenda Moats

Flute, Piccolo

Brenda Moats

Brenda received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Regina in 1975. She received a Master’s degree in flute performance from the University of Arizona in 1980, where she was a student of Jean-Louis Kashy. She has played flute and piccolo in the Regina Symphony and the Edmonton Wind Sinfonia, and performed as principal flutist with the Arizona Opera Orchestra and Young Audiences of Southern Arizona (YASA) woodwind quartet. As a soloist, Brenda has performed in numerous concerts and recitals and was featured soloist with the Regina Symphony Orchestra under the baton of guest conductor Arthur Fiedler in 1972.

Brenda Moats has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships in Saskatchewan Music Festivals. A highlight of this was receiving first prize at the Canadian National Competitive Festival of Music in 1974.

Mrs. Moats has had extensive teaching experience as a teaching assistant at the University of Arizona, as a faculty member of the Regina Conservatory, and as an instructor at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts, the Saskatoon Summer Band workshop and the Saskatchewan Band Association Workshop in Saskatoon.

Brenda has regularly instructed at many flute clinics in the province including those conducted by the Saskatoon Board of Education and the Saskatoon Catholic School Division. She has also served as an examiner for the Western Board of Music (now called Conservatory Canada) and as an adjudicator for the Saskatchewan Festival of Music and Unifest at the University of Saskatchewan.

Currently Brenda lives in Saskatoon and is married with two grown children. In addition to performing in the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, she teaches many flute and piccolo students.

 

Up Next at the SSO

Paris on the Prairies
8:00PM Wed, Jul 09, 2025
Murdoch Mysteries: Live in Concert
7:30PM Wed, Aug 27, 2025
Four Seasons
7:30PM Sat, Sep 13, 2025
Tosca
7:30PM Sat, Sep 27, 2025
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban™ in Concert
1:30PM Sat, Oct 11, 2025
7:30PM Sat, Oct 11, 2025
The Space Between
7:30PM Sat, Oct 25, 2025
True North
7:30PM Sat, Nov 08, 2025
Secrets of the Whales
7:30PM Sat, Nov 22, 2025

 

Find a Music Teacher

Michael Swan, Concertmaster

Michael Swan

Concertmaster

Supported by The Nasser Family.

Michael Swan was born in 1963 in Saskatoon. He began violin studies at age 5 with Dorothy Overholt, and also studied with Norma Lee Bisha, Mark Reedman and Robert Klose as he was growing up. In 1979, he was awarded the Gold Medal for the highest standing in Canada for Royal Conservatory of Toronto ARCT violin examinations.

Michael studied with Yuri Mazurkevich in the Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario, receiving the Hideo Saito Award for academic achievement in 1981 and 1982. Afterwards, he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Aaron Rosand, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in 1984.

Since September 1984, Michael has been concertmaster of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Saskatoon Symphony Chamber Players. He has been a soloist with the orchestra a number of times in the Master Series and with the Chamber Orchestra. He performs solo recitals regularly, and has several compositions to his credit. He has been featured on CBC radio as a solo violinist and as a composer.

Michael Swan premiered ‘Exultation,’ a work for the full orchestra, as part of the SSO’s Masters Series in October 2010.

Up Next at the SSO

Paris on the Prairies
8:00PM Wed, Jul 09, 2025
Murdoch Mysteries: Live in Concert
7:30PM Wed, Aug 27, 2025
Four Seasons
7:30PM Sat, Sep 13, 2025
Tosca
7:30PM Sat, Sep 27, 2025
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban™ in Concert
1:30PM Sat, Oct 11, 2025
7:30PM Sat, Oct 11, 2025
The Space Between
7:30PM Sat, Oct 25, 2025
True North
7:30PM Sat, Nov 08, 2025
Secrets of the Whales
7:30PM Sat, Nov 22, 2025

 

Find a Music Teacher

Frenergy

The bulk of the musical material found in this piece comes from sketches for my Triple Concerto. These sketches were to be part of the proposed final movement for the concerto, a fast-paced scherzo to bring the piece to a wild close. However, for various reasons, this ending did not make it to the final draft. Not one to waste, I decided to mount this music on its own for orchestra.

The title comes from an amalgamation of the words “frenetic” and “energy” which were the two qualities I desired for the ending of the concerto. The tempo for this short concert opener is brisk and the pacing of melodic ideas is often a bit frantic as befitting the title.

It begins with a thunderous introduction by the percussion who establish the infectious 6/8 pulse. After an orchestral tutti, the winds introduce a chromatic melody that is quickly tossed back and forth from pairings of instruments. This quirky little melody often complements an ostentatious tune frequently performed by the brass. The third melody, introduced by a solo flute, is perhaps the most substantial tune of the piece and is strongly characterized by the 6/8 lilt of the piece.

A harmonically restless string passage leads into a return of the opening material and the piece concludes with a full force orchestral tutti along with the pounding drums of the opening.

John Estacio

Controlled Burn

While raging forest fires made headlines all summer and will likely increase in the coming years due to climate change, Cree composer Cris Derksen’s work is about controlled burns, a traditional Indigenous practice used to manage wildfires.  This practice involves burning certain parts of the forest in the spring, before temperatures rise and while the ground is still wet, to keep flames from burning out of control. Indigenous peoples determine where to intervene based on centuries of observation. By clearing out the twigs, dead trees and pine needles covering the forest floor, they protect their land and help preserve the ecosystem.  As a result, flames are transformed from threat to tool—two aspects of fire that Cris Derksen explores in her work.

Edward Elgar, composer

Edward William Elgar was an English composer for orchestral and choral works. Born in Lower Broadheath near Worcester on June 2, 1857. His father was a piano turner, and his mother  was supportive in his musical development. Elgar began composing at an early age, and one his musical draft written from ten years old was rearranged and orchestrated by himself forty years later, becoming the suites titled The Wand of Youth

When Elgar was 29, he met Caroline Alice Roberts (known as Alice) who was an accomplished English author of verse and process fiction. They got married three years later, and since then Alice acted as Elgar’s business manager and social secretary and tried to bring supported Elgar with much encouragement. She gave up some of her personal aspirations f]to further his career. In her diary, Alice wrote “The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman.” When they got engaged, Elgar wrote a short violin and piano piece Salut d’Amour to her, and she gave him one of her poems The Wind at Dawn

Through ups and downs, by 1890s Elgar was finally catching attentions from prominent critics and built up his reputation as a composer. In 1899, the Enigma Variation finally took off and received general acclaim for its originality, charm and craftsmanship. The year after Enigma’s premiere, Elgar was awarded an honorary doctorate by Cambridge University, and was subsequently knighted in 1904. Elgar’s Variations were his first major success and his first truly successful full-scale orchestral work.

Enigma Variations

English composer Edward William Elgar (1857-1934) had a habit to improvise on the piano in the evening. After a long day of teaching violin lessons, he began noodling away at the keyboard when he happened upon a particularly pleasing melody. “Whom does that remind you of?” he asked his wife, and Alice replied, “Billy Baker [a good friend of the couple] going out of a room.” And so were born Elgar’s Enigma Variations in 1898.

Elgar dedicated the work “to my friends pictured within”. The theme is followed by 14 variations, each variation being a musical sketch of one of his circle of close acquaintances. Some variations represent characteristics of the individuals:

Enigma no. 10, “Dorabella,” includes a staccato woodwind section intended to imitate his friend’s laugh.

Elgar wrote the program note below for a performance of the Enigma Variations in 1911: 

“This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The sketches are not ‘portraits’ but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the composition, but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.”

Here are all the variations and who they represent.

Enigma: Andante
Theme

Variation I. “C.A.E.”: L’istesso tempo
Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife. They were happy together, and he relied on her. when she died in 1920, he mostly stopped composing.

Variation II. “H.D.S-P”: Allegro
Hew David Steuart-Powell was a pianist Elgar often played chamber music with. His variation is perky and excited.

Variation III. “R.B.T.”: Allegretto
Richard Baxter Townshend was an Oxford classicist who also performed in amateur theater productions and rode a bicycle around town.

Variation IV. “W.M.B.”: Allegro di molto
William Meath Baker, a country squire, in a brief, bombastic variation.

Variation V. “R.P.A.”: Moderato
Richard Penrose Arnold was the son of the poet Matthew Arnold and also a pianist.

Variation VI. “Ysobel”: Andantino
A respelling instead of initials for Isabel Fitton, an amateur violist he played chamber music with.

Variation VII. “Troyte”: Presto
Arthur Troyte Griffith, a Malvern architect and one of Elgar’s firmest friends.

Variation VIII. “W.N.”: Allegretto
Winifred Norbury, one of the secretaries of the Worcester Philharmonic Society who was more connected to music than others in the family.

Variation IX. “Nimrod”: Moderato
Augustus J. Jaeger is a music editor and close friend with Elgar.

Variation X. “Dorabella”: Intermezzo: Allegretto
Dora Penny, a friend whose stutter is gently parodied by the woodwinds.

Variation XI. “G.R.S.”: Allegro di molto
George Robertson Sinclair is an energetic organist of Hereford Cathedral.

Variation XII. “B.G.N.”: Andante
Basil George Nevinson, an accomplished amateur cellist who played chamber music with Elgar.

Variation XIII. “***” Romanza: Moderato
The asterisks possibly represents Lady Mary Lygon, a sponsor of a local music festival and was on a sea voyage at the time.

Variation XIV. “E.D.U.” Finale: Allegro
Elgar himself. The themes from two variations are echoed: “Nimrod” and “C.A.E.”, referring to Jaeger and Elgar’s wife Alice, “two great influences on the life and art of the composer”, as Elgar wrote in 1927.