Uncertain Four Seasons

Experiencing the Music Together & Safely

We have an incredible track record here at the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. There has not been a single Covid-19 related incident at the SSO since the start of the pandemic. We are also one of the only orchestras who were able to perform all of our planned concerts in the last year. (Minus the one canceled due to a snowstorm!) That is no accident. It is thanks to careful planning and precautions agreed to by all of our people that we have been able to continue our artistry and livelihood safely.

Now that we have an audience in the room it’s more important to us than ever that we keep our events covid free. Since Opening Night we’ve required that everyone, and we mean everyone, interacting with your orchestra is fully vaccinated. All our musicians, guest artists, staff, and volunteers have proven their vaccination status. Before your ticket is scanned there is a wonderful volunteer checking your vaccine status. Everyone in the room is wearing masks and we’ve encouraged you to spread out in our concert spaces to your comfort level.

As much as possible we have eliminated intermissions from our concerts to minimize mingling so most shows run just over an hour. All of our venues have great air circulation and we improve that on stage with fans as several studies have shown increased air circulation is important to stop the potential spread of the virus. These are just some of the steps we take every time we are gathered in a performance space to create a safe and Covid-19 free environment.

Not every concert is able to be live-streamed this season for various reasons, but we are planning to have our audience present for every single performance. Having you in the room with us is a magical experience. The energy improves performances and there’s nothing quite like the thunderous applause we’ve been fortunate to receive after our first few events. It really is quite something to be in the room as the music happens.

Keeping you safe, keeping all of us safe, is the only way we can continue. We mainly rely on ticket sales and donations to keep this organization going and in return, we offer innovative and moving performances, meaningful connections, and countless unforgettable moments.

We laugh, we cry, we experience the music together. Most of all we continue to keep everyone safe so we can make it to 100 years of the SSO, and many years beyond that, all the while enjoying the incredible performances along the way.

[Uncertain] Four Seasons

by Damon Gameau, January 2021

When audiences first heard Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the early 18th century, it was a sensation. It gave audiences something they’d never experienced before. It communicated more than music. It painted a scene. It told a story. It was an attempted translation of the language of nature.

But the natural world that Vivaldi drew his inspiration from was about to dramatically change. The Industrial Revolution was still 150 years away but already enclosures were taking place across Europe. Forests, rivers and rich pastures were being fenced off and privatized, orchards and crops that allowed subsistence lifestyles were being torched to force people into labour, and colonisation in all its forms was plundering distant lands to build the new decadence at home.

Europe was also in the midst of a scientific revolution. And amongst the exciting discoveries, a new ontology was being ushered in and solidified. Humans were increasingly seeing themselves as separate and superior to nature and nature itself was being stripped of any remaining soul or sentience that the animist cultures had long espoused. This view suited both the Church and the emerging capitalists at the time.. because without meaning or value, nature was a lot easier to commodify.

“We must hound nature and put her in constraints” said Francis Bacon, the ‘father of modern science’. “We must enter and penetrate her every hole and corner.” Bacon’s aim was to transform nature from nurturing mother to what he called ‘a common harlot’.

As we know too well, this mindset was soon to arrive on our own shores decimating a 60,000 year ontology of custodianship and reverence for the land.

Vivaldi was creatively spoilt with the abundance of nature that surrounded him. Since his writing our pursuit of endless growth and expansion has destroyed half the planet’s rainforests, 68% of all animal life and has seen a 40% increase of carbon and a 150% increase of methane in our atmosphere, rising our global temperature by 1.3 degrees.

But Vivaldi’s work contains a stunning lesson for our predicaments today. He articulates the HUMAN experience of the four seasons. The farmer who shakes his fists at the heavens as a wild storm ravishes his crops.

In recent decades, the reality of our ecological threats has been approached largely through a rational, scientific lens. An endless barrage of graphs, data and lifeless statistics have been used as frontline soldiers in the climate wars. But our species has evolved to tell stories, to be stirred into action by music, by art and by the liminal. Our scientists desperately need the help of artists because art disseminate the complexity, the lingo, the jargon and translates it into a language of the soul. A language that is disappearing as quickly as our forests and precious animals.

What you can expect to hear is a Four Seasons written for a new ecological possibility. It’s a collaboration between musicians, computer developers and climate scientists, to take the themes and ideas from Vivaldi’s original score, and recompose them as if he’d written them in the year 2050.

In this new variation, our now warmer air holds more moisture increasing the intensity of our storms, our degraded lands and denuded forests have stolen the dwellings of our cohabitors and rising seas have altered the lifestyles and festivities of all communities.

The Uncertain Four Seasons project has rescored Vivaldi’s work for every city in the world. Every variation is different. Each one jarringly altered from the harmony of Vivaldi’s original. Orchestras everywhere are being encouraged to perform their version in the lead up to the next pivotal meeting of nations to discuss climate change in November of this year.

But as you listen, know that all is not lost. Let the music help you to ponder or mourn what has gone but also allow it to free up the space required to join the billions of people who are not accepting our current trajectory and are actively pursuing the restoration of so many of our interconnected systems.

These are the humans who are rewilding landscapes, returning microbial life to the soils, deacidifying our oceans, re-introducing native species and embracing indigenous wisdom.

Climate Change and all of our ecological dilemmas are not scientific problems, they are human problems. It’s easy to forget that we humans are a keystone species and keystone species are capable of regenerating and defining entire ecosystems. If you listen carefully, there is a new song emerging. A new concerto is being written by a growing community that believes we can once again inhabit a world that Vivaldi so beautifully articulated 300 years ago.

But we all have a note to play.

Composer Beth Denisch

Beth Denisch’s music has been performed at Moscow’s Concert Studio of Radio “Kultura,” in Russia, at Jordan Hall in Boston, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, across the U.S., and in Canada, China, Ecuador, Finland, Greece, Japan, and Scotland. Her music receives radio play and tracks are available online; CDs from Albany, Juxtab, Odyssey, and Interval record labels. Scores are published/distributed by Juxtab Music, ClearNote Publications, and TrevCo Music.

“…fierce rhythmic patterns,”  Bernard Holland, New York Times

“… brimmed with personality and drive …” Anthony Tommasini, The Boston Globe

“… wonderfully evocative … simply splendid,”  David Cleary, New Music Connoisseur

Originally from Baltimore, MD, Beth Denisch earned her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in Composition from Boston University and Bachelor of Music degree from North Texas State University.

Denisch’s orchestral pieces include Fire Mountain Intermezzo, which was premiered in Moscow, Russia by Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Misha Rachlevsky, Music Director.  FMI was selected as a finalist in the orchestra’s International Blitz-Competition for Composers Homage to Mozart. The orchestra has performed it multiple times, including at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.  Another piece, Golden Fanfare, Julius Williams, conductor, was recorded with the Dvorak Symphony Orchestra in Prague (Albany Records, The New American Romanticism).

Chamber commissions include Women: the Power and the Journey for the Equinox Chamber Players with multiple performances in St. Louis and Boston. The CD Jordan and the Dog Woman (Juxtab Records) includes this and other chamber works by Denisch.

Choral commissions include “The Tree House,” commissioned by The Concord Women’s Chorus, Jane Ring Frank, conductor. The chorus selected poems by the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie who writes about nature and Denisch set these poems for chorus, oboe, cello, and piano. The world premiere is this May by the Concord Women’s Chorus in the US and they will tour the piece with multiple performances in Scotland this summer.

Denisch frequently draws inspiration from nature and art works in other mediums. Her instrumental suite Jordan and the Dog Woman is based on the Jeanette Winterson novel Sexing the Cherry; and the Forth Project, for solo piano, was inspired by the paintings of Mark Forth.  The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Philadelphia Classical Symphony awarded Denisch for The Singing Tree, inspired by Maxfield Parrish’s painting Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree as part of PAFA’s Parrish retrospective and was followed by a commission from PCS for Goblins Night Out! for orchestra and narrator.

Additional awards and grants include ASCAP, Meet The Composer, American Composers Forum, Composers Guild, and the American Music Center.  Other commissions include the Handel & Haydn Society for Sorrow & Tenderness for period orchestra and chorus, the PianOVo Trio (Weimar, Germany) for Suite for Israel, the Boston Composers String Quartet for Phantasmagoria, and the Cambridge Madrigal Singers for Constantly Risking Absurdity.

Denisch is Professor at Berklee College of Music and has taught at Boston University, Northeastern University, and the University of Massachusetts.  She is a member of the International Alliance of Women in Music; an ASCAP composer and publisher member; and was the founding director of the American Composers Forum New England.

Read more about Beth Denisch on Wikipedia

bethdenisch.com

Composer Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

Jessie was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s during a time when the neighborhood was at a major turning point in its history. Artists gravitated to the hotbed of artistic experimentation and community development. Her parents – her father a musician, her mother a theater artist and storyteller – were engaged in the activities of the neighborhood and regularly brought Jessie to rallies, performances, and parties where neighbors, activists, and artists gathered to celebrate and support the movements of the time. It is from this unique experience that Jessie has created a life that merges composing, performance, education, and advocacy.

Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She currently serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. She was a two-time laureate of the annual Sphinx Competition and was awarded a generous MPower grant to assist in the development of her debut album, Strum: Music for Strings (Azica Records). She has received additional grants and awards from the ASCAP Foundation, Chamber Music America, American Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sorel Organization.

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Five Slave Songs (2018) commissioned for soprano Julia Bullock by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Records from a Vanishing City (2016) for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Caught by the Wind (2016) for the Albany Symphony and the American Music Festival, and Banner (2014) – written to mark the

200th anniversary of The Star-Spangled Banner – for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation.

In the 2019-20 season, new commissioned works will be premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the National Choral Society, and ASCAP Foundation. Jessie is also teaming up with composer-violinist Jannina Norpoth to reimagine Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha; it is being produced by Volcano Theatre and co-commissioned by Washington Performing Arts, Stanford University, Southbank Centre (London), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Additionally, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony will all perform Montgomery’s works this season.

The New York Philharmonic has selected Jessie as one of the featured composers for their Project 19, which marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting equal voting rights in the United States to women. Other forthcoming works include a nonet inspired by the Great Migration, told from the perspective of Montgomery’s great-grandfather William McCauley and to be performed by Imani Winds and the Catalyst Quartet; a cello concerto for Thomas Mesa jointly commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and The Sphinx Organization; and a new orchestral work for the National Symphony.

Jessie began her violin studies, at the Third Street Music School Settlement, one of the oldest community organizations in the country. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and currently a member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist appearing regularly with her own ensembles, as well as with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi.

Jessie’s teachers and mentors include Sally Thomas, Ann Setzer, Alice Kanack, Joan Tower, Derek Bermel, Mark Suozzo, Ira Newborn, and Laura Kaminsky. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a Graduate Fellow in Music Composition at Princeton University.

https://www.jessiemontgomery.com/

Dr. Ingrid Pickering

Dr. Ingrid Pickering is introducing our concert, The [Uncertain] Four Seasons. She is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Molecular Environmental Science.

Dr. Pickering’s area of research includes the use and development of synchrotron light techniques to investigate the roles of metals and other elements in living systems, cross-disciplinary research that encompasses both environmental and biomedical interests. Her work includes synchrotron studies of metals and other elements of concern to determine chemical speciation and microscopic distribution; including both environmental studies and vertebrate and human toxicology. So who better to help us understand how climate change will affect our environment but also our personal health.

Dr. Pickering is also helping foster the next generation of scientists in her role as the program director of the  NSERC CREATE to INSPIRE program — INSPIRE is short for Interdisciplinary Network for the Synchrotron: Promoting Innovation, Research, and Enrichment. Not only is she training students on how to work with Canada’s only synchrotron at USask’s Canadian Light Source, but Dr. Pickering is also teaching essential interpersonal and professional skills to thrive in a fast-paced, high-tech, team environment.

While we know that our hometown is home to Canada’s Synchrotron what happens inside is often a mystery. Dr. Pickering gave us all a sneak peek of the inner workings of the Synchrotron when she chatted with the Saskatchewanderer back in 2014.

All things Eekwol

We knew we wanted to give the Four Seasons poetry the same [Uncertain] update that the music received, and we knew that we were not the ones to do so. This poetry needed a storyteller, an activist, someone who would take the message where it needed to go and deliver it in a fashion that would make audiences stop and truly listen to the words and their meaning.

Enter Eekwol. Eekwol (Lindsay Knight) is an award-winning hip hop artist in Saskatoon, Treaty Six Territory, originally from Muskoday First Nation. Eekwol has been making music for many years. Her 5th full-length album titled “Good Kill” was released in 2017, and the single “Pitiful feat. 2oolman” made it to the #1 spot on the National Aboriginal Music Countdown and charted in Sirius Radio and numerous college and community stations and streaming site playlists. For 2019, she successfully received a Canada Council grant and completed a concept project with fellow lyricist, T-Rhyme titled “For Women By Women.”

Eekwol uses her music and words to spread messages of resistance, revolution and keeping the language, land and culture alive for the next generations. Through her original sound she displays her activist roots by living and creating as a supporter of both hip hop and Indigenous culture and rights. She is currently working towards her PhD Degree at University of Saskatchewan, which she has taken along with her many years of dedication to hip hop and created something unique and astounding to give back to the community.
Along with motherhood, music, and academic work, Eekwol frequently works with young people across the country as a mentor and helper. She achieves this through performances, workshops, speaking events, conferences and programs.
Earlier this year Eekwol was chosen as the inaugural Indigenous Storyteller-in-Residence at the University of Saskatchewan. She spent six weeks presenting and talking about her work, held virtual “coffee shops” and shared stories with others that are to be incorporated into a final project.
We can’t wait to hear what she has to tell us next.

Our Part to Play

We all have a part to play when it comes to the future of climate change. As individuals, we can make changes around our homes and workplaces. Changes like, washing our laundry in cold water and hanging to dry, walking instead of driving, and replacing our appliances to be energy efficient.

The Saskatchewan Environmental has a great list of things you can do to make a difference.

Here are some examples they give:

Add insulation to roof, walls, and basement

The more insulation a building has, the less heat it loses in the winter, and the less heat it gains in the summer.  Insulation reduces both your heating bill in the winter and your air conditioning bill in the summer.  Plus, a well-insulated building is more comfortable.

Switch light bulbs from incandescent to LED

Incandescent lighting is very inefficient, plus LED lighting lasts much longer, so you don’t have to replace bulbs nearly as often.

LED lights use approximately 1/6 the energy of incandescent lights and last 15-40 times as long as incandescent. Lighting accounts for nearly 20% of home electricity use. If an incandescent light is on only 3 hours/day, you can save $9/year for each bulb you upgrade to LED.

Switch off electrical devices when not in use (i.e. computers, printers, monitors, TVs, etc.)

Home electronics account for 14% of home electricity use.  On average, that means $14 of your monthly electricity bill ($170 per year) is for home electronics.  If you want to get control of your electricity bill, start by turning off televisions, computers, video games etc. when you are not using them.

Select native plants for landscaping

Native plants can provide a beautiful variety of colors and textures that bloom at various times of the year.  And, once established, the plants should not need mowing, fertilizing or watering.

Check out the Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan website for more information on how to plant a native garden.

 

While there are steps that we can take as individuals, there’s also a lot we can do collectively. Groups like the Saskatchewan Environmental society advocate for policy changes that will help reduce greenhouse gas emitions, lowering the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable energy, among other efforts.

The [Uncetain] Four Seasons was written as a call for world leaders to sign the Leaders Pledge for Nature and commit to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030.

Who is doing the work in your community? How can you help out? Do a search! Find out how you can support local groups that are making waves about climate change.

All about Kerry DuWors

Hailed for her “soaring cantilena” (Gramophone Magazine), violinist Kerry DuWors has performed across Canada, the United States, Europe, Mexico, Japan and New Zealand. In demand as a versatile chamber musician, Kerry champions collaboration across an array of ensembles from her duo work to leading chamber orchestras. Highlights include performances with duo526, James Ehnes, Yo-Yo Ma, Dame Evelyn Glennie and NYC-based The Knights. Praised for “always finding the music behind the notes” and her “fearless competence” (Winnipeg Free Press), she has been soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, and Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. In 2014, Kerry released her debut duo526 CD Ballade for PARMA Recordings with pianist Futaba Niekawa.  Her sophomore album DUO FANTASY was released May 2019 featuring works by Villa-Lobos, Arnold Bax, and William Bolcom. “DuWors and Niekawa are a beautifully balanced duo, with exceptional intonation and a tangible empathy” (Gramophone Magazine).

Kerry has won prestigious awards including Grand Prize at the 26th Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, Felix Galimir Award for Chamber Music Excellence, and two Canada Council Career Development Grants. She is a four-time laureate of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Musical Instrument Bank and played on Gagliano, Pressenda and Rocca violins between 2003-2015. She currently plays on a modern instrument by Felix Krafft modeled after the 1735 “Plowden” Guarneri.

Curiosity drives Kerry’s dedicated academic and musical study through creative projects, artist residencies (Banff Centre, Avaloch Farm, Indiana University), commissions, premières, masterclasses, and community outreach. Her mentors include Lorand Fenyves, Charles Castleman, Scott St. John, Jean Barr, and the Lafayette String Quartet. Committed to pedagogy and mentorship, Kerry has been Associate Professor at Canada’s Brandon University since 2003. She created the annual duo526 Sonata Seminar in 2018 to mentor the next generation of collaborative duo players.

TEACHING

Prof. Kerry DuWors was appointed to Brandon University’s School of Music in 2003 as the youngest tenure-track music professor in Canada.  She is currently Associate Professor of Violin & Chamber Music. Prof. DuWors has recruited students to Brandon University from across Canada, the United States, Mexico, China, South Korea, Belize, and Brazil at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Students from Prof. DuWors’ studio have gone to graduate programs at Berklee College of Music (MA), Aaron Copland School of Music – CUNY Queen’s College (NY), University of Limerick (Ireland), University of British Columbia, Ottawa University, Memorial University, University of Victoria, University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Sydney (Australia), Queen’s University, University of North Texas, University of Oklahoma, and the Fellowship Program at Community MusicWorks (Providence, RI).

Many are also employed as professional orchestral players and educators: Vancouver Opera Orchestra, Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, Symphony New Brunswick, National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Saint John String Quartet, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, Kingston Symphony Orchestra, Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, Regina Symphony Orchestra, KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra (South Africa), Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (Palestine), Education and Outreach – Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Academy of Music, St. James Academy of Music – Sistema Vancouver, Sistema New Brunswick, Sistema Newfoundland and Labrador, Suzuki Charter School (Edmonton), Suzuki Music Winnipeg, Prince George Conservatory of Music), Wentworth Music Education Centre (Kelowna).

Prof. DuWors’ students have been accepted into internationally respected programs: National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Aspen Music Festival, Domaine Forget International Festival, the Orford Summer Academy, Pacific Region International Summer Music Academy, the String Program at the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy, Rosamunde Summer Music Academy, and Burton Kaplan’s Magic Mountain Music Farm (NY). Her students have competed and won prizes at the National Music Festival as representatives from Manitoba in the String and Chamber Music categories, Saskatchewan Shurniak Concerto Competition, as well as the finals for the Shumiatcher Scholarship Competition (Regina) and Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg McClellan Competition.

Prof. DuWors is also in demand as an adjudicator and competition juror across Canada: the 2018 National Music Festival (NB), festivals in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw), Alberta (Edmonton, Calgary, Provincial Finals), British Columbia (Vancouver Kiwanis, Provincial Finals), Ontario (Provincial Finals), and Manitoba (WMC McLellan Competition, RMTA Scholarship Competition, Eckhardt-Gramatté Conservatory Scholarship Competition, Saskatchewan Orchestral Association.

She regularly gives studio classes at Brandon University and has been invited to give masterclasses internationally: University of Victoria, University of Calgary, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Wilfrid Laurier University, Schulich School of Music – McGill University, Mount Allison University, Regina Conservatory of Music, Ohio State University, University of Dayton  (OH), University of Tennessee (Knoxville), University of Northern Colorado (Greeley), University of Oklahoma, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand).

Introducing Geneviève Leclair

Geneviève Leclair is Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music where she has been teaching since 2016 and an active guest conductor with organizations across Canada, the United States and the U.K.

Highlights of the 2021-22 season include guest appearances with Oakville Symphony, Guelph Symphony and Concord Orchestra.

Equally at home in symphony, ballet and opera, she was a recurring guest conductor with The National Ballet of Canada and Northern Ballet (UK), Music Director of Parkway Concert Orchestra from 2013 to 2019, as well as Assistant Conductor and Guest Conductor of the Boston Ballet Orchestra from 2010 to 2017, and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Conductors Guild from 2017 to 2020.

In recent years, she has had the opportunity to work with orchestras, such as  Winnipeg  Symphony, Symphony New Hampshire, Symphony New Brunswick, Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Guelph Symphony, Boston University Chamber Orchestra, Syracuse University Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory Chamber and Youth Philharmonic Orchestras. In 2020, she conducted the Québec premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s opera As One in a live stream that has since been broadcast on OuTV to rave reviews.

Geneviève was awarded the 2017 American Prize in orchestral conducting, college/university division and took 2nd place in the professional orchestra division. In 2010, she was honored to receive the Sir Ernest MacMillan Memorial Foundation Award in orchestral conducting. Her performances have been hailed as «impeccable» (Boston Phoenix), «ravishing» and of «exemplary pacing and reading» (Hugh Fraser) while her conducting style has been praised for its «verve and precision», «confident dynamics and tempos, crisp rhythms, and crystalline phrasing creat[ing] powerful forward momentum» (Carla DeFord).

Geneviève holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting from Boston University under the tutelage of Maestro David Hoose. She had previously obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in flute performance at Université de Montréal, the latter under the supervision of Mr. Denis Bluteau, former associate principal flutist of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. She also studied choral conducting with Dr. Ann Howard Jones and perfected her art through public and private master classes led by Boris Brott, Kenneth Kiesler, Carl Topilow, Susan Hoeppner, Camille Churchfield, André Papillon, Lise Daoust and Jeanne Baxtresser. In November 2010, she was invited by the National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa) to attend the first edition of their Canadian Conductors Workshop.

In addition to her career as a performer and teacher, Ms. Leclair is also a published author of music literature and theory exercise books, Les Devoirs du Prof. Rémi / Prof. Solfa’s Workbooks through Les Éditions École de musique Vincent-d’Indy.

How the [Uncertain] Four Seasons was written

In 2019 the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra performed a work called The For Seasons.  It was a concept developed by Jung von Matt that used an algorithm that took climate data gathered from 1725 until 2019 to rewrite Vivaldi’s well-known Four Seasons. 

Building on that concept by using data from The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) RCP 8.5 scenario, the [Uncertain] Four Seasons project was born. Using localized data and projections from the present to 2050 orchestras from across the globe have received rewritten versions of Vivaldi’s work.

The aim of this project is to get more countries and organizations to sign the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature and commit to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. While our performance is on October 9th, we are submitting a recording that will be a part of a 24 hour performance of [Uncertain] Four Season variations from around the globe.

Read more about the project on the [Uncertain] Four Seasons website: https://the-uncertain-four-seasons.info/