Canada sounds like: Mosaïque Project
Interview
Pianist Angela Park, violinist Elissa Lee, violist Sharon Wei, and cellist Rachel Mercer make up Ensemble Made in Canada, the country’s premier piano quartet. This year, they embark on a project that responds to the question, “What does Canadian music sound like?”
The Mosaïque Project is a newly commissioned suite of pieces for the four musicians, written by 14 Canadian composers. Composers of broad-ranging styles - Ana Sokolović, Nicole Lizée, and Sarah Slean, to name a few - combine their work into a quilt-like work for Ensemble Made in Canada, who will tour the Mosaïque Project across the country during the 2018⁄19 season. The piece gets its world premiere at Parry Sound’s Festival of the Sound on July 26, and travels through November 2019.
In a series of upcoming posts, we chat with a handful of the 14 composers about their contributions to this musical mosaïque. To introduce it all, we spoke with the quartet about their vision for this very-Canadian-indeed project, and their excitement about bringing the commissions to various Canadian audiences.
What was the inspiration behind this Musical Mosaïque?
We dreamed of going on a nation-wide tour for our 10th anniversary, and realised that it was not going to be easy to pull off. So we came up with the idea of commissioning a piece that takes us across the country musically. One thing let to another, and we now have a nation-wide tour, and a great added visual dimension, including listeners from all across Canada.
What do you hope Canadian audiences will take away from your touring performances?
We hope that audiences will gain a new enthusiasm for a large variety of styles of new music, as well as for the unknown in general. We hope through the act of drawing to music, audiences will be able to digest the unfamiliar music in a more abstract and open-minded fashion. We also hope they will be inspired themselves and find an outlet for their creative minds. Finally, we hope that they will have fun and enjoy being part of this national project!
For full details about Ensemble Made in Canada’s Musical Mosaïque, click right here.. For a complete list of performance tour dates, click here.
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