February 1, 2024
Field Studies / Vines
The Music of Emilie LeBel played by ultraviolet, Jane Berry, And Laura Reid
With live choreography by Melanie Kloetzel/Kloetzel&co.
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church
1121 14 Ave SW
Doors 7PM, Show 8PM
For the second concert in our 2024-2025 season lineup, we bring together Edmonton-based composer Emilie LeBel alongside Calgary-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel, for an evening of live music and dance playing and moving in parallel.
field studies is the 2023 full-length album debut of acclaimed Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia LeBel. Described by Riparian Media as ‘a quietly gripping affair that illustrates the interplay between pensive—almost austere—lyricism and percolating texture’, the full collection of works will be performed live by Edmonton’s Ultraviolet chamber ensemble, with special guest appearances from Edmonton mezzo-soprano Jane Berry and Calgary violinist Laura Reid. Emilie LeBel herself will be operating live electronics during the performance.
VINES is a durational site-adaptive installation created by Melanie Kloetzel (kloetzel&co.) with dramaturgical support from Brandy Leary (Anandam Dancetheatre). Grounded in the concept of 'making kin' with our plant brethren, VINES explores how the human body can translate the growth patterns of climbing plants into a visual feast of respect, reciprocity and wonder. As the mass quantity of performers takes over the performance environment, VINES offers a surreal and mesmerizing vision of vegetal reclamation. In conversation with the haunting music of Emilie LeBel, VINES engages audiences in a larger conversation about humanity’s future in relation to other species on the planet.
The two works, field studies and VINES will occur simultaneously in a sonically glittering and choreographically speculative exchange.
Emilie Cecilia LeBel
Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia LeBel specializes in concert music composition, and the creation of mixed works that employ digital technologies. Described as a creator whose music “reflects her intelligence and audaciousness” (Sir Andrew Davis), and is “restrained and beautifully coherent from beginning to end” (barczablog), as well as “impressively subtle and sensuous” (ConcertoNet), LeBel’s work inhabits sonic worlds that are primarily concerned with textural landscapes, resonance, and variances in colour.
LeBel’s artistic practice has been recognized through several significant awards and appointments, including Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (2018–2022), Composer-in-Residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada (2015), SoundMakers Composer in Residence with Soundstreams Canada (2015–2016), Land’s End Ensemble Composers Competition (2016), Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2015), Canadian Music Centre Toronto Emerging Composer Award (2012), and Canadian Federation of University Women Elizabeth Massey Award (2012).
LeBel’s compositions have been performed across North and South America, and Europe by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Mark Takeshi McGregor, Continuum Ensemble, Women on the Verge, Duo Nyans, Voices of the Pearl, Cecilia String Quartet, Plumes Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Arditti Quartet, Land’s End Ensemble, Cheryl Duvall, Luciane Cardassi, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Onyx Trio, and junctQín keyboard collective, among others. LeBel’s work appears on twelve commercial recordings, including LeBel’s debut album of chamber music, field studies - released on Redshift Records in May 2023. field studies received a Juno Award Nomination for Classical Composition of the Year (2024).
Active as an educator and mentor, LeBel has served as a mentor composer for several early-career artist programs, including HATCH (Continuum Ensemble, Toronto), PIVOT (Canadian League of Composers), ConneXions (Canadian New Music Network), Explore the Score and NextGen Composers (Toronto Symphony Orchestra), and Young Composers Project (Edmonton Symphony Orchestra).
Based in Treaty 6 Territory (Edmonton Alberta) since 2018, LeBel is presently Composer Advisor with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and a faculty member at MacEwan University.
LeBel holds degrees in music composition from the University of Toronto (DMA) and York University (MA, BFA Hons.), and in audio engineering and music production from the Harris Institute for the Arts (Dip. Hons). Her composition teachers include Gary Kulesha, David Mott, William Westcott, and Michael Finnissy.
Melanie Kloetzel
/Kloetzel&Co.
Melanie Kloetzel is a settler choreographer, performer, scholar, and educator based in Moh’kinstis on the traditional Treaty 7 lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy. She is the artistic director of kloetzel&co., as well as co-artistic director of the art intervention collective TRAction, which produces the Climate Art Web (CAW-WAC). Employing practice-as-research methodologies, Kloetzel has developed events, workshops, films and encounters in theatre spaces, alternative venues, spaces of public assembly, and online environments for kloetzel&co., TRAction, and as a guest artist. Reflections/analysis of her research creation practices have enjoyed publication in edited anthologies and peer reviewed journals such as Dance Research Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review, Choreographic Practices, Performance Research and New Theatre Quarterly, among others. Her anthology with Carolyn Pavlik, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces is currently available in hard cover, paperback, and as an eBook from the University Press of Florida, and the recently released co-authored volumes, (Re)Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Perspectives and Covert: A Handbook, are available through Intellect and Triarchy Press, respectively. Before her current position as Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary, Kloetzel was the Director of the Dance program at Idaho State University from 2004-2007. Kloetzel has performed nationally and internationally with such artists as Ann Carlson, Kim David Arrow, and the Leah Stein Dance Company, and was a member of Race Dance under the direction of Lisa Race from 1995-2000. Kloetzel holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the University of Roehampton, an MFA in Experimental Choreography from the University of California at Riverside, an MA in History from the University of Montana, and a BA from Swarthmore College. She was also a 2003 recipient of the Chancellors Distinguished Fellowship Award from The University of California.
kloetzel&co. is a dance theatre company committed to creating works that span stage, site, and screen. Begun in 1997 in Lenapehoking/New York City, kloetzel&co. has been on the move since 2000 and is pleased to acknowledge its current home on Treaty 7 Territory in northern Turtle Island/Canada. Treaty 7 territory in Southern Alberta is the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprising the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), as well as the Tsuut’ina and the Stoney Nakoda (Îyâxe Nakoda) First Nations (including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney), and is also home to the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation, District 5 & 6.
Ultraviolet
UltraViolet is the only instrumental ensemble in Edmonton whose mandate focuses exclusively on the creation and performance of new classical compositions. The group was formed in 2014 as the in-house ensemble for New Music Edmonton’s annual Now Hear This festival. They have since performed over fifty new pieces, most of them Canadian. Many of these have been works by Edmonton composers, and almost all were given their Edmonton premiere by the ensemble. UltraViolet comprises four local artists who are committed to bringing new music to local audiences: pianist Roger Admiral, percussionist Mark Segger, flutist Chenoa Anderson, and saxophonist Allison Balcetis. Individually, the musicians of UltraViolet have premiered hundreds of solo and chamber works and have been active in commissioning and performing new works. They are forward-thinking, virtuosic, dedicated artists who have decades of combined experience in communicating the diverse and compelling languages of today’s composers. The quartet is named in honour of composer Dr. Violet Archer, who encouraged her students at the University of Alberta to create their own opportunities for their music to be performed. Her impact was broad and deep in Alberta and throughout Canada.
In November 2023, UltraViolet performed new works by emerging Edmonton composers Sointu Aalto and Rio Houle in Edmonton and Camrose, and received grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Edmonton Arts Council to fund concerts and commissions in the 2024-25 season.
field studies – chamber music of Emilie Cecilia LeBel was released in 2023, and features three tracks recorded by UltraViolet including … and the higher leaves of the trees seemed to shimmer in the last of the sunlight’s lingering touch of them… which was nominated for a 2024 Juno award. UltraViolet has also received a 2024 Western Canadian Music Awards nomination for Classical Artist or Ensemble of the Year, for their work on field studies.
In 2022 UltraViolet premiered eight new works in two concerts during a period of in-person activity during the pandemic. They include works by Emilie LeBel, Giorgio Magnanensi, rebeccca bruton, Lesley Hinger, Roxanne Nesbitt, James O’Callaghan, and Heather Hindman. This was supported by funding from the Canada Council and the Edmonton Arts Council. In the winter of 2022, with funding from the EAC, UltraViolet commissioned and audio and video recorded two new works by Edmonton composers Emilie LeBel and Nicolàs Arnàez.
In October 2019, UltraViolet was featured on New Music Edmonton’s concert series with From Your Lips, with guest mezzo-soprano Jane Berry, who composed a new work for the extended group.
UltraViolet presented its first multi-concert season in 2018-19, thanks to generous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. The first concert, Farm-to-Table, was a celebration of fresh, local music, featuring works by Edmonton composers Emilie LeBel, Alexander Prior, Ian Crutchley, Erin Rogers, and Dave Wall, as well as works by composers Brian Garbet (Calgary) and Dorothy Chang (Vancouver). In March and April 2019, UltraViolet performed concerts in Edmonton, Calgary, and Canmore featuring three newly-commissioned works by emerging Canadian composers Monica Pearce, Anna Pidgorna, and Evelin Ramon.
The musicians of UltraViolet believe that faith in emerging composers and extending opportunities for their works to be heard in public is necessary for the continuation and flourishing of the contemporary classical music art form. UltraViolet’s core aesthetic is to hold up a mirror to today’s society and reflect back an artistic truth. The group is committed to equity and diversity in programming and is a signatory to the Canadian League of Composers Gender Parity Pledge.
Jane Berry
Jane Berry is an avid composer, arranger, and visual artist whose musical works have been described as making an “impact that went far beyond the musicmaking” (Mark Morris, 2017). Berry burst onto the scene when her first major work Mass for Recovery: Phoenix Rising was performed by Pro Coro Canada. Since then she has gone on to compose a number of works for groups such as Ultraviolet, FEMME, Alive!, and Antidote. Berry is quickly gaining a reputation for both developing and performing works motivated by a desire to use her voice as a composer and vocalist to increase visibility amongst underrepresented populations.
Berry moved to Edmonton to start her PhD of Philosophy in Music Theory in the fall of 2011 and holds a Masters of Arts in Music Theory from the University of Ottawa (2011), a Bachelors of Music in Composition from Acadia University (2005), and is currently in the final year of an After Degree in Education at the University of Alberta. Since arriving in Edmonton she has worked with several local choral organizations in a variety of positions ranging from director and in –house arranger, to section lead and singer. In her spare time Berry serves as a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta, sings with a number of professional ensembles, volunteers with local youth, and works as a visual artist.
Laura Reid
Violinist Laura Reid is a versatile and active member of Calgary's music and arts community. Having established a place in Calgary's Classical scene and with eight years playing as a member of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and countless performances and collaborative work with small ensembles in the city, she left her tenured position with the CPO in 2016 to pursue a wider range of artistic opportunities. She was appointed Artistic Director of Kensington Sinfonia in 2018, leading and programming the 9-piece string ensemble for both their main series of chamber music and their series at Village Brewery that pairs the ensemble with a non-Classical featured artist.
Her musical efforts continue to explore and expand beyond standard Classical repertoire: she is heard regularly at experimental/improv series Bug Incision, has a performance/ recording project Osmanthus with electronic musician Kris Sujata (Valiska), and performs as violinist and vocalist with harp-pop project Hermitess. Laura can be heard as part of many recorded projects: film scores Empyrean and Circle of Steel, albums by Cam Penner, AM Static, Emily Triggs, Rachel Fannan, Ethan Cole, Jesse and the Dandelions.
Not confined to performance pursuits, Laura hosted the weekly radio show Unprocessed on CJSW 90.9 FM (winner of the National Community Radio Association’s award for Best Classical Programming in 2018) for four years until January 2020, a project she started with pianist/composer Mark Limacher, and she was a part of the City of Calgary public art project cREative realm, producing a six-part podcast fantasy audio tour in 2017. She enjoys working with young musicians, having worked with students at Amici String Program, University of Calgary, Western Canada High School, and Mount Royal University.