Read All About It!

Read the program notes written by Dr. David Gardner and composer Harry Stafylakis for the November 2018 Ottawa Symphony String Theory concert.

Learn All About It!

You can find everything there is to know about the 3D StringTheory project right here.

Curators | Nos conservateurs

Dr. David Gardner
Ottawa Symphony Historian | Historien de l’ Orchestre symphonique d’ Ottawa

Alain TrudelOttawa Symphony Music Director | directeur musicale

A technical note about this episode: The video featured in this episode is the original Facebook live feed of our November 2018 concert. In a few instances, we edited to improve viewing. The audio is our archival recording of the event and the best quality capture of this concert. En-JOY!

You missed this exciting Ottawa Symphony project?

It was pretty cool. The Ottawa Symphony 3D StringTheory was one of some 200 projects selected for a Canada Council for the Arts New Chapters grant, a special, one-time program created on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Confederation. These projects showcase the diversity of artistic expression across our country and created a lasting legacy for all Canadians.

The Ottawa Symphony 3D StringTheory was a partnership of technology, craft and art to create 3D-printed string instruments that we showcased in a concert and an original composition for these instruments, in November 2018.

Musical Selections

• Jeffrey RYAN*, Violet Crumble

• Harry STAFYLAKIS*, Singularity

*Canadian Composer

Meet this episodes’ composers

Jeffrey Ryan

Jeffrey Ryan grew up training his ear with Petula Clark, The Partridge Family and Captain and Tennille, playing saxophone and flute in high school bands, singing in two choirs, and writing his own songs for voice class. Now, as a freelance composer based in Vancouver, Canada, he finds inspiration in the world around him.

Praised for his “strong personal voice” (Globe and Mail), “masterful command of instrumental colour” (Georgia Straight) and “superb attention to rhythm” (Audio Ideas Guide), and recipient of SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award, Ryan writes music that runs the gamut from orchestral and chamber works to opera, art song, and choral music, engaging audiences in concerts and broadcasts worldwide.

https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/37546/biography Canadian Music Centre - Centre de musique canadienne

Harry Stafylakis

New York City-based composer Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982) hails from Montreal. "Dreamy yet rhythmic" (NY Times), with a “terrible luminosity” and “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), his concert music is “an amalgamation of the classical music tradition and the soul and grime of heavy metal” (I Care If You Listen), “favoring doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms” (The New Yorker).

He is the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Composer-In-Residence and Co-Curator of the Winnipeg New Music Festival. His works have been performed by the Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Victoria, PEI, Spokane, Stamford, and Greek Youth Symphony Orchestras, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, McGill Chamber Orchestra, Roomful of Teeth, JACK Quartet, ICE, Contemporaneous, Mivos Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, among others. In 2019 he collaborated with progressive metal pioneers Animals As Leaders on the orchestral adaptation of their music for metal band & orchestra.

Awards include the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award, four SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers, and grants from the Canada Council, NYSCA, SSHRC, and New Music USA. He is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the NYC composer collective ICEBERG New Music.

www.hstafylakis.com

Did you know?

Jeffrey Ryan is inspired chocolate!

A Violet Crumble is an Australian candy bar. (And it looks suspiciously like the Cadbury “Crunchie” bar, available in Canada.)

Harry rocks!

Stafylakis is influenced by this intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music. He has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a characteristic vitality and drive.

Geena Salway, one of our 3D StringTheory soloists, shared these videos of her testing the 3D-printed "viola" she played in our November 2018 concert.

Geena’s first impression of the 3D printed viola!

An excerpt of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto on the 3D printed viola

Geena Salway
Alumna, Ottawa Symphony - U-Ottawa Mentorship Program
Soloist (viola), Ottawa Symphony 3D StringTheory, November 2018
Viola section, Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra

The Emergency Relief Fund of the Musicians’ Association of Local 180 (Ottawa-Gatineau) supports local musicians affected by the Covid-19 Pandemic.

To help, go to: ma180.org