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It’s November at last, in a more than usually acerbic election year in the USA, in the final days of a presidential campaign revolving in large part around a slogan about making America great again. All of which causes me to recall a moment in CBC Radio history, just over 40 years ago, that not only continues to hold its significance, but takes on a new resonance.

On the eve of the US Bicentennial year in 1976, CBC Radio Music commissioned American composer John Cage (1912-1992) to create a work to serve as a part of CBC’s observance of those 200 years of American history. Richard Coulter, my colleague in the national music department of CBC Radio, had already begun looking, in 1975, for a major American composer who might accept a CBC Radio commission through which to pay a musical tribute to the upcoming event. Richard knew Aaron Copland, having worked with him in Stratford, but when asked, Copland said he was overwhelmed with work and was too busy to even consider the project. Richard turned to me “as a former Wisconsinite”  to discuss where to look next. We both concluded that Cage would be a most suitable alternative. Richard had, in previous years worked on the Music of Today series with Norma Beecroft and Harry Somers, and several of those programs had dealt with John Cage. And, as Richard recalls, Cage “had made a couple of earlier visits to Toronto including his obsessive chess game at Ryerson with Marcel Duchamp in 1968. So I was acquainted with his processes through the years.” So we both agreed on the choice of Cage and that set the wheels in motion. The result was Cage’s Lecture on the Weather, a work that would eventually be recognized as one of his strongest political statements and most significant works overall.

Richard’s mention of my Wisconsin heritage figures directly in the story: it was thanks to a broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio in the late 1950s that I first encountered Cage and his music. I was a lad in my pre-teens at the time, and the program I heard featured Cage discussing his Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. The impact of this listening experience was profound and, I dare say, one that changed me forever. Suffice it to say that my curiosity about contemporary music was thus kindled. Then, in 1974, as a member of CBC Radio Music staff, I had a much closer encounter with Cage while working with Glenn Gould on our series of CBC Radio programs celebrating the music of Arnold Schoenberg. Gould, after interviewing Cage, the former Schoenberg student, via a studio link between Toronto and New York, went on to describe Cage as “Probably the only American composer who’s had any major degree of influence on the European music scene.” He felt Cage “in many ways was the Compleat American Primitive, a sort of musical Thoreau, really, and yet the people on whom his influence was felt the most profoundly were those super organized types like Karlheinz Stockhausen.”

This view, of course, was from a 1974 perspective. It was instructive to have one genius’ point of view regarding the work of another genius, and to see how completely the two contrasted with one another. And in the process, I had plenty of opportunity for hero worship!

One year later, I found myself in the aforementioned consultation with Richard Coulter, who had just been speaking with Austin Clarkson, who was the chair of the music department of York University at that time, about the possibility of CBC Radio staging some of our productions at York. “I recall Austin Clarkson phoning one day,” Coulter says, “to suggest that the CBC believed that music events ended at St. Clair Avenue! He had a point, and that was one of the reasons for mounting the Cage commission at York along with the fact that there was a large American faculty and many US students enrolled then at that institution.”

Clarkson, now professor emeritus, told me that “York staff were delighted to have CBC Radio originate the work with Cage on the York campus. When Cage came for the production the following year, he agreed to meet with York students in their electronic music studio. I came to that session, and it was a wonderful interaction with the students.” (Clarkson added that he always included Cage’s book, Silence, among the texts for his course, a General Introduction to Music.)

The score for Lecture on the Weather (published by the C.F. Peters Corp.), states that the work was “commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in observance of the Bicentennial of the United States of America.” The work is scored for narration, including a preface and 12 amplified speaking parts (preferably to be spoken by 12 US expatriates in Canada), recorded sounds of nature and projected visuals. The texts read by the 12 narrators were derived from three books by Henry David Thoreau, his Essay on Civil Disobedience, Journal and Walden, to which Cage had applied chance operations to determine the precise selections. The 12 narrators were also given moments where they could choose to improvise melodic fragments, either by singing or playing an instrument. Cage enlisted the collaboration of American media artist, Maryanne Amacher to provide the sounds of nature. These included vividly recorded sounds from Walden Pond: first, rain and birds, then wind, and finally thunder. Although it was a commission for radio, Cage nonetheless felt that the visual element was essential for the impact it would have on the live audience. He asked the Argentinian painter and sculptor, Luis Frangella to create the visuals, which consisted of slides of Thoreau’s drawings, chosen with chance operations and projected on a wall in the performance space. The Preface was for spoken delivery by Cage himself.

In that Preface, Cage lays out his thoughts about accepting a commission to observe the US Bicentennial and his reasoning as to how he would respond, given the political realities of 1976. He writes: “The first thing I thought of doing in relation to this work was to find an anthology of American aspirational thought and subject it to chance operations.” But instead, he chose the writings of Thoreau because “reading Thoreau’s Journal I discover any idea I’ve ever had worth its salt.” He speaks about Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and their respect for Thoreau’s ideas. He quotes King, in particular, for having said “What we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed. We were saying to the white community, ‘We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.’” Cage wrote that he hoped that creating this work, might “give another opportunity for us, whether of one nation or another, to examine again, as Thoreau continually did, ourselves, both as individuals and as members of society, and the world in which we live.”

Cage then turns in the Preface to his process of using chance operations to determine the details of his composition. He says, “It may seem to some that through the use of chance operations I run counter to the spirit of Thoreau (and 76, and revolution for that matter).” But rather, he says, these procedures are a way of “freeing the ego from its taste and memory, its concerns for profit and power, of silencing the ego so that the rest of the world has a chance to enter into the ego’s own experience. We would do well to give up the notion that we alone can keep the world in line, that only we can solve its problems. More than anything else we need communion with everyone. Communion extends beyond borders: it is with one’s enemies also. Thoreau said: ‘The best communion men have is in silence.’”

And finally comes the powerful dedication: “Our political structures no longer fit the circumstances of our lives. Outside the bankrupt cities, we live in Megalopolis which has no geographical limits. I dedicate this work to the USA, that it become just another part of the world, no more, no less.”

As Cage stood and delivered his Preface for the first time, the members of the audience at York University listened, dumbfounded. The usually apolitical John Cage had taken the opportunity to call for real change in the world. And as Lecture on the Weather unfolded, that same audience came to realize that they were the first witnesses to a prescient work, one of lasting significance. Lecture on the Weather was broadcast on the series I produced, Music of Today, on July 4, 1976.

I was fortunate to enjoy many more productions with John Cage, especially after I created the long-running CBC Radio Two series, Two New Hours, in 1978. But the experience of working with him on Lecture on the Weather was perhaps the best way to get to know him, and to establish a long friendship.

David Jaeger is a composer, producer and broadcaster based in Toronto.

That “Music heals” – if not the body then at least the soul – is one of the most popular sayings about the power of music; its benefits oft-touted to prove the good that it can do for its listeners and practitioners.

But it doesn’t though – at least, not always. Like any physically and emotionally demanding experience, music can put an enormous strain on the bodies and minds of the people who make it. For many, a career in music can lead to serious stresses – stresses that often don’t get talked about. It’s time, for performers and listeners alike, to begin a dedicated conversation about how music can heal and help people – and on the other end, how people doing musical work can exercise the self-care necessary for keeping a life in music from becoming harmful.

Ensemble Vivant is one group that makes the connection between music and health an intimate and integral part of its work. Founded and headed by pianist Catherine Wilson, the group is a pioneer on the piano-chamber music scene, culling its repertoire from both classical and jazz worlds. It’s also the flagship ensemble for Wilson’s not-for-profit Euterpe – an organization that conducts research on the healing effects of exposure to live concert performances, and provides musical opportunities based on that research for children and communities in need.

Ensemble Vivant’s current project is “Christmas Tidings,” a month-long tour from November 27 to December 23, to ten cities across Southern Ontario. The music itself is a variety of seasonal repertoire, much of it adapted from the ensemble’s 1992 album of the same name. What makes this particular tour stand out from other holiday shows, however, is its incorporation of Euterpe initiatives. At each concert, the ensemble will be collaborating side by side with a different children’s choir, providing guidance as well as professional performance and rehearsal opportunities for local students.

Wilson is the driving force behind this initiative, and with good reason. “Playing in a community band in junior high school provided a safe haven, allowing me to escape from an extremely strife-ridden background,” she says. “The band was family for me and planted the seeds for my love of chamber music.” Wilson goes on to explain that for her, a key goal of Euterpe, and of the work that Ensemble Vivant does alongside it, is ensuring that those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to high-calibre concert experiences get the same types of music-making and concertgoing opportunities that made such a difference in her own life.

In terms of her own life in music today, Wilson recognizes the health threats of performing professionally, but maintains that seeing the healing benefits of music in action through her Euterpe research and performances provides ample motivation for seeking and finding solutions.

“There are a variety of physical stresses to being a concert pianist. Staying healthy physically, avoiding injuries and not becoming too worn down is always a challenge,” Wilson explains. “I swim regularly and see a top physiotherapist. I have endured several long-term setbacks over the years…yet it is music that has always been my main source of psychological strength. Industry stresses, physiological and psychological stresses notwithstanding, the music-making is a labour of love…and is what excites us and keeps us healthy. Giving through music is healing and enriching for our audiences, as well as for us.”

Ensemble Vivant’s tour begins in Orillia on November 27 and travels across the province, wrapping up on December 23 in Ottawa with the Cross Town Youth Chorus. For details on the tour, visit ensemblevivant.com.

Artist’s Health: I first visited the Artists’ Health Centre this summer, when a sudden change in my work schedule led to a minor injury in my wrist. Becoming aware of the services and the resources they offer for artists of all disciplines has been hugely helpful – both for managing the healing of my own injury and for navigating how musicians can become more open generally about challenges with mental and physical health.

Based out of Toronto Western Hospital and run in partnership with the Artists’ Health Alliance, the Al and Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre is a clinic offering both medical and complementary care for professional artists. Patients must self-identify as creative professionals and meet at least one of the centre’s requirements for what constitutes being a professional artist. Services include acupuncture, chiropractic medicine, craniosacral therapy, registered massage therapy, physiotherapy, psychotherapy (for individuals and in groups) and shiatsu therapy – all with a special focus on accommodating the career paths, lifestyles and income levels of professional arts workers.

Susannah McGeachy, the clinic’s nurse practitioner, is typically a musician’s first one-on-one contact with the Centre. Her job, which includes assessing the client’s needs, referring them to other centre professionals and giving them interim guidance on how to manage their condition, means that she sees a lot of different professional musicians – with a lot of different complaints.

“I deal with a wide variety [of issues], but there are certainly recurrent themes,” says McGeachy. “I would say that generally, soft tissue injuries are pretty common – things like sprains and strains that aren’t always allowed to rest and heal the way that they need to because of the demands of a musician’s professional practice. Things like chronic tendinitis – broadly, we call them overuse injuries, where you can get inflammation and damage from using a very small muscle group to do the same kind of motion again and again, many times. Another thing that comes up often is the challenges that musicians face around mental health and anxiety, sometimes associated with what I call being in ‘constant evaluative situations’ like auditions and performances, with a certain level of career unpredictability.”

With the level and volume of issues that McGeachy sees, it’s clear that our music industry needs to change – both in the way it employs musicians and in the stigmas in the performing arts around prioritizing self-care. “I know it’s a complex thing,” McGeachy says, “but I think that with performance and rehearsal scheduling, more attention and awareness needs to be paid to the physical demands on the musicians – who are often performing a lot of very different repertoire in a short period of time, and having these ‘bursts’ where there’s a lot of physical demand, both in terms of the pieces themselves and the travelling that musicians have to do. I think with orchestras, for example, and even sometimes in educational institutions, the work happens with much more regard to venues, conductor availability, and things like that – but it doesn’t always seem like there’s an eye on getting a good balance of repertoire – physically – and giving the musicians rest and recovery time.

“There’s this idea in the music industry,” McGeachy continues, “that it’s important to play as many gigs as you can, and that however those fall, the musicians are just sort of expected to rise to the challenge. And I think that systemically, that makes it very hard for individual musicians to know how to take good care of themselves.”

And as for advice to musicians, about how they can focus on self-care, and why it matters?

“Your body is your instrument as much as your instrument is your instrument,” says McGeachy. “If you think about the care and attention that a musician gives to making sure that their instrument is well-tuned and protected and not exposed to the elements...what I think musicians don’t always realize is that they are an even more intricately made instrument than the one that they’re playing. And that really to make a long-term career out of this work, it’s important to learn your body as early as possible. It’s about forming practices that will allow you to do what you love for as long as you want.

“Overall, I think the biggest message that I try to drive home with musicians is to learn to listen to their bodies,” she says. “To not play through pain. To break up practising into shorter sessions, especially if something hurts. And to warm up: I think that musicians often think of musical warm-up but not physical warm-up. Before playing, it’s important to do some physical warm-up to increase your heart rate and circulation – a brisk walk, jumping jacks, or a few flights of stairs. It sounds silly, but it’s pretty basic physiology – it decreases the risk of injury. And otherwise, musicians are people too, so doing the things that are good for everybody: regular exercise; a well-balanced diet; drinking lots of water; and doing things that you love, and promoting your own balance and mental health.”

McGeachy also mentions that her door is often open and that the Centre is always happy to see people (artistshealth.com) – so musicians, if you’re ever in need, be sure to look them up.

The potential for music-making to act as a healing experience for people – and the potential for a musical career to become mentally and physically unhealthy as well – is worth discussing. If you have your own story about music and self-care, as a musician, or as a listener, feel free to send it along, to editorial@thewholenote.com. I’m sure that there will be others who can relate.

I’ve dealt in the past with injury and anxiety, and it isn’t an easy subject to communicate about. I’ve known professional musicians who have neglected their well-being because they felt that self-care was fundamentally at odds with living in the service of their craft. I’ve known music students who have been reluctant to tell teachers about playing while hurt, because they were afraid to be seen as a liability within their studios. Unless performers and listeners keep having conversations about how music affects the minds and bodies of people, for better and for worse, it will remain difficult for people to recognize that self-care and musical commitment need not be at odds with one another. In fact, for many professionals, those two things make the most sense when they can feed off of one another.

Let’s get talking.

Sara Constant is a Toronto-based flutist and musicologist, and is digital media editor at The WholeNote. She can be reached at editorial@thewholenote.com.

Esprit Orchestra founder and music director Alex Pauk will take the podium at Koerner Hall on the evening of October 23 to lead his orchestra in a heartfelt tribute to Canadian composer and cultural icon, Murray Schafer (b. 1933). Pauk has collaborated with Schafer for over 42 years on a wide range of innovative musical projects that includes 60 performances of Schafer’s works with Esprit alone, not to mention many others that began when the two met in Vancouver in 1973. “The time is right for this tribute,” Pauk told me. “It’s right for Murray, it’s right for Esprit and it’s right for me.” He went on to say that the concert “reflects the amazing relationship between Murray, me, Esprit and the audience.”

When they first met, Pauk was engaged by the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra (VYSO) and Schafer was in his last years of teaching at Simon Fraser University (SFU). In 1974 Pauk conducted Schafer’s North/White, a work composed that year for full orchestra and snowblower, with the VYSO. At that time, Pauk was looking for academic work at SFU, and he asked Schafer if he might help or offer advice. Schafer’s reply may have turned Pauk’s fate. He said: “You’ll be better off if you stick to conducting contemporary music, and the rest of us will be better off too.”

The VSYO released Pauk from his conducting position in 1977, in what Pauk felt was a reaction to his programming of “too much contemporary repertoire.” But by then Pauk had met the Romanian/French composer/conductor Marius Constant. Constant was touring the world conducting contemporary repertoire, including his own, and he found frequent conducting opportunities in Vancouver with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. Constant provided a career archetype for Pauk, one that matched the guidance Pauk had received from Schafer. He befriended Constant, and the two discovered they shared artistic interests. For example, Constant remarked how very interesting the works of Schafer were, particularly those he had conducted with the Radio Orchestra in Vancouver.

The freshly inspired Pauk returned to Toronto in 1980 with a mission to create a contemporary music orchestra and in 1983 founded Esprit Contemporaine, soon to be renamed Esprit Orchestra. The works of Schafer figured prominently in Esprit’s programming from the very beginning. Alex told me that it was while preparing a performance of Schafer’s Dream Rainbow Dream Thunder that he was suddenly struck by the realization that Schafer’s ear and skill with the art of orchestration was extraordinary. He realized as well that “Schafer’s orchestral music is about ideas – BIG ideas!” And his sonic palette was designed to project those powerful musical aspirations.

This observation about Schafer’s extraordinary gift for writing orchestral music was not lost on me, as I began to expand my own appreciation of his music through hands-on experience. Having created Two New Hours, the network contemporary music series on CBC Radio Two (1978-2007), I began recording and broadcasting concerts with Esprit Orchestra almost from its inception. Among the many fascinating new orchestral compositions my broadcast team and I encountered, it was the works of Schafer that stood out. We were impressed with the orchestration, the breadth and power of the ideas and simply the realization that Schafer’s writing sounded brilliant in every way, especially given the exceptionally high standard of performance delivered by Esprit. These were the characteristics that would make for compelling radio, and we were inspired to do our utmost to help make these works sound as vivid and convincing on air as they were in the concert hall.

I had known Murray since first meeting him in 1971 during the Dayspring Festival at Toronto’s Metropolitan United Church. His artistic leadership was immediately apparent, as he showed no fear whatsoever for being out among the throng, constantly challenging and provoking people. He was also fearless about taking music away from its comfort zone in the concert hall. A wilderness lake was just as good a venue for music, complete with its built in audience of loons, chipmunks, frogs and, yes, even bears and wolves.

My engineers and I went with Murray and his hand-picked group of musicians to Wildcat Lake in the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve to make a radio program called Wolf Music in 1996. This was to be a radio program made of Schafer’s music, played in the wilderness, interspersed with his gently spoken reflections on the relationships between mankind and nature. The recordings we made at dawn when the wind was still, using groups of microphones positioned around the lake were eventually assembled, synced in our editor and broadcast, both on CBC’s Two New Hours and also in Germany, on Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Wolf Music received a special citation at the 1998 Prix Italia in Assisi. The recording is available on the Centrediscs label (CMCCD 8902).

This adventure proved to be a mere test for us to determine whether it might be feasible to record and broadcast the 1997 Patria Music/Theatre Projects’ production of Schafer’s environmental opera, Princess of the Stars. On the strength of Wolf Music, this subsequent challenge was agreed to, and the entire cast of singers, canoe paddlers, stagehands, puppets and the members of Esprit Orchestra, all decamped to Wildcat Lake for the duration of the production in the late summer of that year. The Two New Hours team went along too, and several performances were recorded and eventually broadcast on CBC Radio Two. In 1999 that production won a medal for excellence in broadcasting in the International Radio Festival of New York.

Nearly 20 years and hundreds of compositions later, Schafer has written music for all situations: the wilderness, the countryside and, alas, even the concert hall. I had several opportunities to commission works from Schafer for broadcast on Two New Hours, including the dramatic aria, Thunder, Perfect Mind. This work, based on an ancient Egyptian text, had its premiere in a performance by Esprit Orchestra and Pauk, with soprano Eleanor James, Schafer’s wife, at Jane Mallett Theatre in Toronto in 2004. We subsequently recorded the work in Glenn Gould Studio for release on Atma Classique. That recording, which also includes James’ performances with Esprit and Pauk of Schafer’s Letters from Mignon and an orchestration of his early work, Minnelieder, is currently available in the Atma Classique catalogue.

The Esprit concert at Koerner Hall later this month will include a rarely performed Schafer composition, Adieu Robert Schumann (1976) – a CBC commission, written for Maureen Forrester), incorporating writings from the diaries of Clara Schumann detailing her ailing husband Robert’s decline, and using as well fragments of Schumann’s own compositions. The soloist, Krisztina Szabó, speaking about her role as Clara Schumann, says she is “struck by the poignancy of Clara’s thoughts,” as she watches her husband slip away. Szabó, who grew up singing Schafer’s choral music as a member of the Toronto Children’s Chorus and who has been a soloist in other Schafer works says, “I love the evocative colours in his vocal writing … “I find that Schafer’s music calls to me.”

Two works on the concert that are more commonly associated with Esprit are the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1985), which was, in fact, the first work of Schafer ever performed by Esprit, in 1987, and the Esprit-commissioned Scorpius (1990), a sort of orchestral scherzo. Esprit has programmed these works often and, in the case of Scorpius, has realized excellent value from one of their five Schafer commissions.

Flutist Robert Aitken, the soloist in Schafer’s flute concerto, says this will be his 18th performance of the work. He told me: “It’s the most successful flute concerto of our time. Whenever it’s played, it’s a huge success, it always steals the show.” Pauk added, “It’s simply one of the great flute concertos of all time.”

Esprit’s tribute to Schafer underscores a long and fruitful relationship between Canada’s most revered composer and the country’s only symphony orchestra exclusively devoted to the creation and performance of contemporary music. Pauk told me that “Schafer’s music embraces so many dimensions, ideas, emotions, theatricality, spirituality and even humour, all unified within a musical experience.” He says that this completeness is what makes Schafer so enduring, and this concert is perfect proof of that.

Murray Schafer and Eleanor James will attend the Esprit concert on October 23; one week later, on October 30, coincidentally also at the Royal Conservatory of Music, they will be present as harpist Judy Loman launches a 2-CD compilation of Schafer’s complete works for the harp. Loman told me: “Because it’s my 80th birthday, it has now become my birthday present to myself to include the launching of this CD.” Schafer composed seven major works for the harp, five of them for Loman and two for her students, Lori Gemmell and Heidi Krutzen. The CD, titled Ariadne’s Legacy, will be available from Centrediscs, the record label of the Canadian Music Centre.

David Jaeger is a Toronto-based composer, producer and broadcaster.

When Claire Chase speaks there is a sense of urgency in her voice, as if she’s always on the verge of a discovery that she can’t wait to reveal. It’s not exactly an incorrect assumption to make – Chase is famous for being a musician who is always reaching ahead of her time. As flutist/founder of New York’s ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) and an active performer of newly composed works, Chase has always looked towards the future – creating the music that until now has yet to be heard.

To that end, she’s already accomplished a lot. Praised in The New Yorker as “the young star of the modern flute,” Chase is one of new music’s most relentless advocates. She’s a prolific soloist and recording artist, and a frequent collaborator with composers both established and emerging. She’s a recipient of a 2012 MacArthur “Genius Grant” for her work in visioning an artist-driven business model that emphasizes giving performing musicians the freedom to direct their own career paths. She’s also, incidentally, slotted as a co-artistic director of summer music at the Banff Centre for 2017 – but in the meantime, she comes to Toronto this month as a guest of Soundstreams, for two shows inspired by the musical future of the flute.

Density 2036. The first, “Density 2036,” is part of a 22-year-long centenary celebration in the making. Tracing its roots to the premiere of Edgard Varèse’s solo flute masterwork Density 21.5 in 1936, Chase’s project is a series of annual commissions, leading up to a 24-hour flute recital in the year 2036. Each year she collaborates with a different roster of composers to premiere a recital-length solo set, with the objective of performing all 22 years’ worth of music as a 100th-anniversary celebration of the Varèse original.

On October 4 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Chase (along with sound engineer Levy Lorenzo) will open Soundstreams’ new Ear Candy concert series with a selection of music from the last three years of the Density project. The show will sample from a daunting breadth of musical language: two older works – Steve Reich’s Vermont Counterpoint and of course, Varèse’s Density 21.5 – as well as pieces from Density 2036’s three-year archive of commissions, including recent works from Marcos Balter, Mario Diaz de León and Du Yun.

When it comes to Chase’s choice of composer-collaborators, nothing is out of bounds. “The only rule that I’ve given myself for the project is that every time a piece is created through Density, the piece that follows it has to be a complete departure,” she says. “I don’t want to repeat collaborations. I don’t want to repeat language. I want every new Density birth to really be a birth – so in choosing composers, I’m interested in those who are really going far outside their comfort zones…and who are as fiercely and fearlessly committed [as I am] to the idea of creating something new: new for them, new for me, new for the instrument.

“It’s a very difficult thing to ask someone to do,” Chase concedes. “But I love that question. I love the space that it opens up. I love the vulnerability and the malleability that results. So I look for people who are up for that adventure – and who want to jump off that proverbial cliff with me.”

As the soloist leading that cliff-top jump, preparing for an end goal 22 years in the future is no easy task. However, for Chase it is in part this long-term, cumulative nature that gives Density 2036 its appeal. “It’s about the idea of really setting the bar high for myself,” she says. “Of saying, okay, what would it be like to build up to being able to play continuously for 24 hours when I’m 58 years old? It’d be an Olympic sporting event – but it’d have to also be something that really is in service of the music. How could I do that and what would my training look like over these decades? It was such an interesting question that I had to start the project immediately.

“And it’s about saying, okay, the goal is to create this repertory. If I can commit seriously to making it, performing it, and putting it out there for myself, but be just as committed to disseminating it and making sure that it is available for other flutists – for them to study, to learn, to make it their own, to play it better than I can – then that would be really cool.”

Magic Flutes. Chase’s second Toronto appearance, titled “Magic Flutes,” will open Soundstreams’ mainstage season at Koerner Hall on October 12. At first glance the concert program, which includes works by long-revered composers for the flute like Debussy and Takemitsu, fulfills all the expectations of a standard flute recital. But at Soundstreams – especially with Claire Chase in tow – “standard recitals” are not what they do. A second look reveals that the show will feature five flutists (Chase, joined by Marina Piccinini, Patrick Gallois, Robert Aitken and Leslie Newman) positioned in what Soundstreams bills as a “surround-sound” setup, pairing classic 20th-century flute repertoire with less-known works and a world premiere from local composer Anna Höstman. According to Soundstreams artistic director Lawrence Cherney, the show takes its cue from the tale of the Pied Piper, and harnesses the potential of the flute as “both a force for good, and a force for evil.”

And if Soundstreams plans to reshape what the flute can do – and what it can represent – in this concert, then Chase is game. “What excites me most about the flute,” Chase explains, ”is that it is our oldest musical instrument. Our little tube, our little pipe, was the first musical instrument, other than the voice, and percussion in its earliest iteration. That’s really moving to me, really inspiring to me, and it makes me think about all the ways that this instrument – and the way that we tell stories through it – can still evolve.”

“Ideally, we are getting smarter,” Chase continues, laughing. “Ideally our brains are evolving. And so our instruments and the way that we play them, but most importantly the way that we communicate with them – the new languages we develop through them – we have a responsibility to evolve that as well. And flute is front and centre in that effort, because it was the first.”

A Self-Identified Termite. Of course, musical evolution, at least as Chase describes it, is a multifaceted thing – not only about the music that performers play and how they play it, but about shifting the social structures upon which that music is built, for the better. The work that won Chase her MacArthur fellowship focused on just this. Her own unique brand of musical entrepreneurship – what she calls an “artist-driven organizational model” – is about giving performers the agency to perform with intent, and to direct their own professional development. It’s about seeing the musical artist as a whole person, and strengthening the connective tissue between that person and the spaces around them.

Says Chase: “This model is [about enabling] the artist as a fully empowered agent of the work of her community. That’s something that’s deeply important to me. It’s the reason I formed ICE; it’s also the reason why I am an advocate for many other organizations and ensembles. I just believe deeply in the power of young artists doing for one another what, frankly, institutions are doing a lousy job of doing for us. I think that in some ways that message has been misconstrued to say, ‘oh, we can do this for ourselves, you guys are off the hook!’ That’s not it at all. It’s more of a termites-vs-elephant way of looking at the world. And as a self-identified termite, I believe it’s my duty, and it’s our duty, to help do for one another what is not going to happen with these big cultural gatekeepers.”

And the advice she would give to young artists, who are hoping to do just that?

“My best advice is from Oscar Wilde: that you should ‘be yourself, because everyone else is taken.’ That’s the truest way to say it. It’s not just that being yourself is something we all walk around doing effortlessly. It’s a lifetime of work and it’s a daily slog…it’s also a daily joy, to figure out who we are.

“But being committed to being ourselves and celebrating that, indeed, ‘everyone else is taken,’ is not the path that is encouraged by all institutions, by all teachers…It’s certainly not the path I was encouraged to take. It’s not the reigning conservatory advice. In fact, what we’re taught to do, in many music programs, is exactly the opposite. It’s, ‘how can I make myself more like this mold? How can I follow this path? How can I follow the shine of this person?’ Of course we learn from each other, by repetition and by emulation. But we also learn by noticing, and by feeling, and by trusting ourselves. If there’s one thing that I can do to help a younger generation of flutists and artists trust themselves and trust one another, it would be that.”

It’s clear that she lives by her own advice. The sense of who Chase is as a person is intimately tied to what she does. The sense of her own individuality, her own physicality, permeates her playing, such that audiences can hear in the music her own unique voice. It’s a hopeful thought, that she believes that we all can trust our own paths, our own selves, our own potential shine. And a success story, as well – because that’s what she did, and she is luminous.

Sara Constant is a Toronto-based flutist and musicologist, and is digital media editor at The WholeNote. She can be reached at editorial@thewholenote.com.

On October 23 at 2pm the unique Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra will perform at Roy Thomson Hall, one of the last three performances in a tour which includes Taiwan, Tokyo, New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C.

As we know, simply maintaining, let alone touring, a symphony orchestra is a large, complex and challenging undertaking, so where does this orchestra come from and who is responsible for it? The short answer is that the orchestra is based in New York and is part of Shen Yun Performing Arts. And from the Shen Yun Performing Arts website: “In 2006 a group of leading Chinese artists – all Falun Dafa practitioners - came together in New York with one wish: to revive the true, divinely inspired culture of China and share it with the world.”

Who these specific artists were and who is responsible for the organization’s ongoing operation is not revealed. The reason for this probably lies in this statement a little further along in the website: “Over the past 60 years the [Chinese] communist regime has treated Chinese values – centred on the idea of harmony between heaven and earth – as a threat to its existence…bringing 5,000 years of civilization to the brink of extinction.” According to the website the Chinese government has felt so threatened by Shen Yun’s presence that it has sent out competing shows and even gone so far as to slash the tire of a tour bus in Canada.

Art and ideology: The threat that art poses to ideology is not so difficult to understand: one has only to reflect on the impact of the signal sent rippling through the Soviet Union when Glenn Gould was allowed to present a program of Bach’s music in Cold War 1957, or the McCarthy-led crackdown on the arts in the U.S. at the same time. The current Chinese situation becomes a little murkier when one considers that this same government’s Ministries of Education and of Culture support and sponsor the Beijing Modern Music Festival, to which Toronto’s New Music Concerts recently toured, a tour recapitulated in NMC’s September 30 opening concert. It would appear that the largely secular and formalistic music of contemporary Western composers is no longer perceived by the Chinese authorities as a similar threat to that posed by the music and dance of Shen Yun.

Shen Yun’s artistic methodology is to bridge traditional Chinese and Western musical cultures, integrating traditional Chinese instruments into an otherwise “standard” symphony orchestra which performs symphonic orchestrations of traditional Chinese music, sometimes interspersed with arrangements of Western Classical repertoire. (With the number of Chinese students who have embraced the Western musical tradition, studying it in China as well as at North American and European music schools there is a potentially huge pool of Western-trained orchestral musicians for Shen Yun to draw on.)

One of these is violinist Chia-chi Lin, now in her tenth year with the Shen Yun Symphony as a member of the first violin section. She was also the conductor of the pit orchestra for the Shen Yun Dance Company’s performances in Toronto last May. She studied at Rice University and at the Peabody Conservatory before becoming the principal second violinist of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, then moving on to become a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony for several years before joining Shen Yun.

After one of the performances at the Sony Centre last May I sat down with her to chat. She told me that while she had been happy with her job in Pittsburgh, she moved to Shen Yun because of the Falun Dafa connection and its mission to revitalize traditional Chinese music and dance. (Her connection with Shen Yun also includes the vice presidency of Fei Tian College in New York which trains young dancers and musicians in the traditional Chinese art forms.)

Shen Yun’s mission is to infuse traditional Chinese music and dance with new life to rescue them from the threat of extinction; paradoxically it is doing this by means of a fusion of Chinese and Western musical resources, so that it transcends race and nationality. Likewise, the message of harmony and connection between heaven and earth is one which is equally central to many of the composers whose music is performed in the concerts listed in this magazine.

I recently came upon these words about the impact of music by French writer, Amin Maalouf, in a concert program. They are worth repeating in this context. “In addition to the aesthetic emotion, we feel another which is even more intense – a sense of magical communion with reconciled humanity.”

Flutist Allan Pulker is chairman of the board of The WholeNote.