Lutalica by Mark Takeshi McGregor
LUTALICA
Solo flute music from the Pacific Rim
LUTALICA (n. The part of one’s identity that doesn’t fit into categories. From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows) is a solo flute project that grew out of an identity crisis. A few years ago I started asking myself some “big” questions, starting with the realization that, from an early age, I had been performing the music of predominantly Western European composers on a Western European instrument—but I myself am anything but Western European. I am half-Japanese, half-Australian, born and raised on the West Coast of Canada: a true product of the Pacific Rim. Does my heritage change or inform my relationship with Western music? How do other non-European musicians and artists view their relationship with Western art music? Do they see it as a bridge? A divide? I became especially curious about how contemporary music culture along the Pacific Rim might be interconnected in ways, intentionally or not, that make it unique from the rest of the world, particularly when viewed through the “lens” of my instrument, the Western flute.
What you have here is the first of two volumes of solo flute music from around the Pacific Rim: Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, and the United States are all represented here, including two specially commissioned works by Canadian composers Emilie LeBel and Nova Pon. The works by Alvarez, Brownlee, Flett, Kao, Lindquist, and Pon were performed at a Redshift event at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver in January 2017, where each piece represented one of the museum’s six permanent collections: fish, marine invertebrates, plants and fungi, insects, tetrapods, and fossils; the works by Hori, LeBel, and Lee were performed at Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery in July 2018, co-presented by Little Chamber Music Series That Could and Redshift. For the purposes of this album, Lee’s and LeBel’s pieces— with their themes of loss and remembrance—seemed fitting as prelude and postlude to a program that celebrates biological diversity, as ecologies around the world burn, flood, and are rendered barren.
Tracklist
| 1. | forever after - Hope Lee | 6:15 |
| 2. | Nakoda - Ellen Lindquist | 4:29 |
| 3. | De Mares Imaginados - Pedro Alvarez | 5:38 |
| 4. | Harakeke - Philip Brownlee | 8:05 |
| 5. | Jingzhe - Kaiyi Kao | 5:14 |
| 6. | Tamazusa - Etsuko Hori | 5:57 |
| 7. | Wrenegade - Nova Pon | 6:33 |
| 8. | Stratus and Shale - Graham Flett | 10:20 |
| 9. | Hiraeth - Emilie LeBel | 13:56 |
Credits
Producer: Mark Takeshi McGregor
Recording Engineer: Don Harder
Digital Editing And Mastering: Don Harder
Cover Artwork: The Sea Valley 5 byTaiga Chiba
Photograph: Lenora Ede
Graphic Design: André Cormier
Recording Dates:
Alvarez, Hori, Pon: 2 June 2018, Pyatt Hall, VSO School of Music, Vancouver
Flett, Kao, Lindquist: 4 June 2018, Pyatt Hall, VSO School of Music, Vancouver
Brownlee, LeBel, Lee: 27 August 2018, Pyatt Hall, VSO School of Music, Vancouver
Special Thanks: Shizu Hayashi and Ronald Hunt, Jordan Nobles and Benton Roark of Redshift Music Society, Mark Haney and The Little Chamber Music Series That Could, Amy Gibson and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Taiga Chiba, Hannah Morgan and St. Michael’s Printshop, André Cormier, Don Harder, Mark Mushet, Emilie LeBel, Hope Lee, Dave Pay and Music on Main, Nova Pon.
Bonus Video:
Hope Lee: forever after
A film by Mark Mushet
youtu.be/UGKtOAim964
MARK TAKESHI MCGREGOR
Described as a “mind-blowing” musician of “huge physical energy” (Times Colonist), flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor is one of Canada’s leading interpreters of classical, contemporary, and experimental music. As a soloist, chamber musician, interdisciplinary artist, and as flutist of the internationally lauded Aventa Ensemble, Mark has performed extensively across five continents, including appearances at Athelas New Music Festival (Copenhagen), Festival Montréal-Nouvelles Musique, Internationale A-DEvantgarde-Festival (Munich), the Melos-Ethos International Festival of Contemporary Music (Bratislava), GroundSwell (Winnipeg), Le Hum (Moncton), Núcleo Música Nova’s International Symposium of New Music (Curitiba, Brazil), and the 2017 ISCM World New Music Days in Vancouver. He has performed as concerto soloist with the Victoria Symphony, the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra (Taiwan), and across Canada with Aventa, and has worked with some of the world’s leading composers, including Michael Finnissy, Heiner Goebbels, Philippe Leroux, Nicole Lizée, Jocelyn Morlock, Simon Steen-Andersen, Gilles Tremblay, Barry Truax, and Rolf Wallin. A prolific recording artist, Mark has appeared on the Centrediscs and Redshift record labels, earning him three Western Canadian Music Award nominations. Visit Mark Takeshi McGregor online: www.marktakeshimcgregor.com
redshiftrecords.org/releases/tk468/
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Redshift was founded in Vancouver, Canada with a focus on championing the music of contemporary composers.