Programme note
Afterdreamingly was composed in the fall of 1995 and given its first performance on February 15, 1996, in Montreal, by singer Yolande Parent and the SMCQ ensemble conducted by Walter Boudreau, who commissioned it with the help of the Canada Council. The work, incorporating 13 brief tableaux, is written for soprano and 7 (rather soft-spoken) instruments, on fragments of music and text I wrote myself and where, as if after a dream, the soprano/character naïvely celebrates remembrances of life and love, along with the subdued (and rather consonant) ringing sounds of her past... Inner workings and longings of a joyful mind, still singing, rhymeriverly, to summon the object of her loss and to find new meaning in the world, in the name of ... Life ? Love ? (or is it God ?) (MH)
After its 1996 première, this work was presented in Toronto at the Glenn Gould Studio by the New Music Concerts Ensemble, with soprano Meghan Atchison, conducted by Robert Aitken, on Saturday April 28, 2001. The CBC recording of this performance is heard here.
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