On Monday, March 18th, I visited one of the UBC Composers’ Concerts that play during noon at the Roy Barnett Recital Hall for the first time. These series of concerts feature works composed by UBC School of Music students, and are either performed by the composer themselves or by their fellow classmates. This noon featured two Jazz works by Eugene Shen named after local places in Vancouver (“29th Avenue Station” and “Second Beach”), a guitar and vocal composition by Frederic Lau named “Night Piece”, a harp and vocal composition named “Chance Encounter” by Tze Liew, and “Avdiutt” string quartet work accompanied by vocals composed by Isaac Zee.
Of the pieces I heard that day, I think my favourite was “Chance Encounter”, composed and performed by Tze Liew (soprano), and Nathania Ko on the harp. I am bias towards this one for two reasons: I’ve always wanted to play the harp ever since I was a child, and the poem that Liew set the song to was reminiscent of the poetry I used to learn in my Chinese language class when I was in elementary school. The song itself reminded me of a through-composed aria, as it didn’t really settle on a specific melody for either the harp nor the vocals, and changed throughout, wavering from calm to powerful at times. It was very elegant, and I loved the lyrics that went along with it (she provided the poem on the back page).
Another very interesting piece was called “Avdiutt”, composed by Isaac Zee. It featured a string quartet with Robin Neuvonen and Adrian Kwan on violin, Francesca Kohn on viola, and Susie Yoo on cello, and three vocals with Roan Shankaruk and Kathleen Isaza as sopranos, and Andrea Ciona as alto. I think the vocals were definitely meant to be the highlight, from what I recall of the performance. I couldn’t hear the lyrics (they were not in English) but it sounded kind of like a conversation as they used laughter (imagine a very musical way of saying “ha-ha!”) and other speech-like noises. Distinctly, I also remember the usage of high pitch sighing. The way they would “talk back” at each other was polyphonic for sure, but only sometimes imitative; other times, the vocals seem to be interjecting and interrupting each other. Each “segment” of singing would be interrupted by the clear ting of finger cymbals. I would love to hear this again, since there was so much going on and I wasn’t able to focus on the string quartet as much as I would have liked to.
Despite only focusing on two of the five pieces I heard that afternoon, I truly enjoyed all of them. I wish I had known that this existed earlier on in my university career, as it is a very relaxing way to spend a lunch hour. I would love to hear many of these pieces again if given a chance, as I find that, for myself at least as someone with rather untrained ears, there is a lot that can be missed the first time around. Nonetheless, I would highly recommend going.