What's On Past Events: 2024 / 2025

Letters to God is a spiritual exploration of the musical threads connecting Canadian and Japanese culture. It features Japan’s legendary Fujii Percussion (mother Mutsuko Fujii, and daughters Haruka Fujii and Rika Fujii), Soundstreams Choir 21, The Canadian Children’s Opera Company, Gregory Oh (piano), and Ryan Scott (percussion). Akira Miyoshi’s Letters to God brings to life a collection of letters written by children, notable for their refreshing directness, unexpected humour, and startling clarity of thought; R. Murray Schafer’s evocative Seventeen Haiku is a theatrical composition that sets Japanese poems to music that evokes the singing of birds, crickets, streams, the tolling of a bell, or fireworks at a festival. The program features other evocative works: Seasons by Toru Takemitsu, river woman by Melody McKiver, and Pulau Dewata by Claude Vivier.

Japan’s ‘First Family’ of percussion

Daniel Druckman

ARTISTS
Fujii Percussion: Haruka Fujii, Mutsuko Fujii, Rika Fujii
Soundstreams Choir 21 – David Fallis, Music Director 
The Canadian Children’s Opera Company – Teri Dunn, Conductor
Gregory Oh, piano
Ryan Scott, percussion

REPERTOIRE

R. MURRAY SCHAFER, Seventeen Haiku – 1997
AKIRA MIYOSHI, Conversation, Suite for Marimba – 1962
AKIRA MIYOSHI, Letters to God – 1985
CLAUDE VIVIER, Pulau Dewata– 2013
TŌRU TAKEMITSU, Seasons -1970
MELODY MCKIVER, river woman – 2022
HARUKA & RIKA FUJII, Songs for Ishikawa – 2024

PROGRAM NOTES

Seventeen Haiku:
Seventeen Haiku was written at the request of Nobuyuki Koshiba for the
Japanese choir Utaoni, which had previously won an all-Japan choral contest
singing my work Magic Songs. I thought it would be interesting to set some
poems in Japanese and began reading the Man’yoshu as well as the haiku
poems of Basho, Issa and others. Gradually I began to assemble a group
of haiku, some of which described an acoustic event: the singing of birds,
crickets, the wind, the tolling of a bell, the sound of a stream or fireworks at a
festival. It occurred to me to ask the choir members to help me find suitable
haiku, and I also asked them to write some of their own if they wished. From
them I received not only a selection of traditional haiku, but also twenty-nine
new poems written especially for the pleasure of the prospective composer.
Many of these new poems were chosen together with more traditional
haiku to form a collection that takes us from sunrise, through to sunset and
a festival after dark, closing with the stillness of night. I wanted to set the
poems in Japanese, a language I do not speak. To make this possible I called
on my friend, the Japanese composer Komei Harasawa, who very generously
prepared translations for me, and read the poems on cassette. To him I
am totally indebted, though, of course, I accept full responsibility for any
misunderstandings or distortions in the settings.
In keeping with the transition from dawn to darkness, I have included notes
on stage lighting tha may accompany the singing, if desired. Also some
movements of the choir are suggested so that, to a certain extent, the entire
collection might take on a theatrical quality in performance.
—R.Murray Schafer
Indian River, Ontario, January 14, 1997

Pulau Dewata:
A stay in Bali in 1976 marked a turning point in Claude Vivier’s career. Most
of Vivier’s subsequent works show the influence of the atmosphere of this
Pacific island. Pulau Dewata, whose title means “Island of the Gods” in
Indonesian, is a tribute piece to the wonderful Balinese people. The whole
piece is merely a melody whose rhythmic language is sometimes drawn
from the Balinese rhythmic line. The ending of the piece is in fact an exact
quotation of the “panjit prana,” the offering dance of the Legong. It is a
simple piece: monochrome, a short piece above all full of joy, alternating
single melodies—”intervalized”—and complementary melodies in the
Balinese style. The score of Pulau Dewata is dedicated to the McGill
Percussion Ensemble. It does not specify instrumentation, permitting
any combination of instruments that suits the scoring.
Seasons, Tōru Takemitsu:
Seasons by Tōru Takemitsu was composed in 1970 and exists in two
different versions, to be performed either by four players or only one player.
Seasons was originally written to be performed on metal instruments
created by sculptor François Baschet for the world exhibition EXPO 1970
in Osaka. The music is to be improvised based on the score which is
graphically notated in just one page. Seasons represents the natural gentle
variation of the seasons in Japan, whose subtle changes are felt even though
imperceptible to our eyes. This idea is expressed by the individual tones of
the musical instruments. A delicate variation develops and then suddenly
changes from one contrasting sound to another until the cycle is complete.

Letters to God:
Letters to God was commissioned by Mutsuko Fujii, and performed by
Ms Fujii and the Nishi-Rokugo Boys and Girls Choir in 1985. Akira Miyoshi
took inspiration from the children’s book Letters to God which is translated
from English by the known Japanese poet Syuntaro Tanizaki and illustrator
Syomei You. The original book is a collection of short letters to God from
children published in 1975 complied by Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample.
The book has so far sold nearly a million copies. Marshall and Hample
gathered the letters from friends, hospitals, orphanages, camps and
Sunday schools across the nation.

river woman:
river woman was commissioned by and first performed by the Elora Singers
and the TorQ Percussion Quartet in 2022, with music by Melody McKiver,
setting a poem by katherena vermette.
Melody McKiver is an Anishinaabe musician, composer, violist and drummer/
percussionist, and they are an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Music in
the Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba.
katherena vermette is a Michif (Red River Métis) poet and novelist whose
first book North End Love Songs won the Governor General’s Literary Award
for Poetry in 2013. river woman comes from her second volume of poetry
of the same name. (An interesting confluence—at the corner of Bloor and
Major, just outside the building we are performing in tonight, is a Heart
Garden, remembering and honouring those who were forced to attend
residential schools, and the garden is surrounded by panels on which are
inscribed another poem by vermette, entitled “an other country”.)
In river woman, McKiver, with flowing rhythmic gestures and striking
harmonies, deftly portrays the many aspects of the river that vermette
so beautifully describes in her poem as a woman, her constancy, her
changing moods, how she has been abused and dredged, and yet how
“her spirit rages on”.

Songs for Ishikawa:
Songs for Ishikawa was originally composed as a suite, featuring a
collection of songs to uplift the people and land of Ishikawa, which was
severely impacted by a massive earthquake on New Year’s Day of 2024,
leaving significant damage throughout the beautiful peninsula region.
Recently, in late September 2024, a huge typhoon passed through the
same area—still in the process of recovering from the earthquake—and
has now caused further suffering due to flooding. For the Soundstreams
performance, we are presenting two of the songs from the suite, arranged
for percussion and choir. One is Nenne, a lullaby composed by Rika Fujii,
which incorporates the region’s famous lullaby melody alongside Rika’s
original lyrics. The other, Today, composed by Haruka Fujii, is an anthem
of encouragement dedicated to all those on Earth who face life and death,
bravely living each day, and to those who support them.