On Monday 25th March 2019 I attended the UBC Contemporary Players Performance at 12:00 Noon in the Barnett Hall. The was the second performance that I had seen from this particular group of students. It had been performed on commission through Belkin Gallery, Workstream for international continuum for multiple schools around the world. A lot of the pieces that had been performed had actually been composed by students which were really impressive to see.
The first piece featured by Dorothy Chan was a trio and was inspired by an old work from the 1990s called Dark Sea Sun for Solo Guitar. The intention of this piece was to try and make us as the audience feel like we were at sea. This performance featured- a flute, piano and a cello and was a beautiful introduction which set the pace for the rest of the pieces to be performed later on. The piece began beautifully and suddenly got very fore boarding and eventually came to a stop with plucking from the cello. I found it interesting to see how this song took a drastic turn and how it made me feel as though there was some kind of impending doom.
The second piece, Tenebrae began with string players that played beautifully together joined by a soprano. I noticed that as the soprano singer sang, one specific instrument would echo her and this was the clarinet. This piece started off as quite intense but got a lot more serene and calm towards the end. The third piece to me was almost like a climax in a play, the performers set the mood by dimming the lights to further grab our attention. The music started off swiftly, almost as though somebody was walking (it sounded like footsteps to me because of the steady beats from the percussion instruments). Eventually, I noticed the student on the drums was picking up the pace of how he was playing making me feel as though someone was fastening their walk. It was really interesting how this piece ended almost abruptly making us as the audience curious to know what was going to happen next.
The piece Pado which Korean means wave, and for that particular scene basically just means the wave of the ocean was the next peace that was performed. This was actually one of the most fascinating parts of the performance for me because the instruments actually made wave sounds by blowing into the trumpet but not fully blowing to produce any sound which made it seem like the crushing of the wind. All together these instruments created again some kind of foreboding effect, but towards the end formed some kind of harmony. This was a beautiful introduction to the last piece of the play titled Transformations was beautiful and made me feel so calm. This could have been to symbolize finally reaching “peace at sea” or even to show us how transformations are beautiful at the end despite being rough at the beginning. All in all, this was a beautiful performance done by very talented students! I was truly astonished to see and hear how they made wind gushing sounds through their instruments- I didn’t even think this was possible!