May 23, 2020 of-the-now: archipelago We begin our series with Christopher Reiche Boucher playing Chedo Barone’s Piano Installation with Derangements followed by a discussion. The entirety of the event will be approximately three and a half hours. |
Dory Hayley performing Postcard Pieces including: Seven Lines, Musica Moderna, Seven Lines of Equal Length, and Two Words. This video was made by the Canadian Music Centre BC, and RedShift Music.
June 29, 2018 SongLaunch: Songs from Art Song Lab 2018 Art Song Lab pairs poets and composers together to create a new work collaboratively. It culminates in a week long intensive workshop finishing with a concert presentation featuring the new works that were created during the collaborative process. For Art Song Lab 2018 I am very happy to be working with Barbara Black. Together we created a new work for soprano and piano: Serenity. 12 World Premieres from Art Song Lab 2018. Serenity |
June 2 and 3, 2018 The Fourth Annual: Oak Bay New Music Festival Composer meet and greet: June 2 @2 p.m. St. Mary’s Church, 1701 Elgin Rd. Victoria, BC more information: here Oak Bay Music and the Victoria Composers Collective present their 4th annual Oak Bay New Music Festival. This year’s festival centers around “The Art of Listening: Reinvigorating the Art of Reception”. Composers from the local community and around the globe will reflect diverse perspectives on the art of listening, its role in music, and in our broader society. Saturday’s special opening concert program “Nocturne: Canadian Art Songs” features Cathy Fern Lewis (voice) and Rachel Iwaasa (piano). Cathy Fern Lewis and Rachel Iwaasa will perform my song Weep You No More on their concert on Saturday at 4 p.m. I am looking forward to performing piano, melodica, and toy piano as part of the Sunday afternoon concert. Hope to see you there! |
April 18, 2018 APTL presents: Pushing the Boundaries of Song Victoria’s Cathy Fern Lewis and APTL Ensemble member Christopher Reiche Boucher will join together to push the boundaries of songs and games.
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November 22, 2017 to November 27, 2017 My work: November 25 10am to 4pm only. Sonologues As part of Redshift Music’s Sonologues, my work Frequency Sweep will be presented on their 16 Channel speaker array on November 25 from 10 am to 4 pm. Hope to see you there! Sonologues A week of exotic sonic art installations at the Roundhouse! Wednesday, November 22 Thursday, November 23 Lisa Cay Miller 10 am - 4 pm 'Hekkaideca-myth’ Friday, November 24 Saturday, November 25 Monday, November 27 |
November 24, 2017 As part of the Victoria Conservatory’s Canada Music Week, the faculty of the VCM presents Canada on Key, an evening of Canadian piano music. For this concert I will be performing Linda Catlin Smith’s Thought and Desire. Hope to see you there! |
June 17, 2017 and June 24, 2017 Casse-Tête Vancouver Island Chamber Music Festival Featuring music from the Ursuline Monastery in Quebec, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, John Taverner, new work by Hasselberg & Lewis, a world premiere by Christopher Reiche, and showing of the John Bolton Legacy Video: The Pines of Emily Carr by Jean Coulthard. At this performance Hesselberg & Lewis will be premiering two new post cards as part of my piece Messages by Hand: A Collection of Postcards. |
June 16, 2017 to June 17, 2017 From June 16 till June 17 I will be performing Erik Satie’s Vexations. Starting at noon and ending at noon the following day, the performance takes about 24 hours to complete. Feel free to come and stay for as much or as little as you like. “Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se preparer au préalable, et dansle plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses.” -Erik Satie “True, one could not endure a performance of Vexations… but why give it a thought?” -John Cage I didn’t find Vexations, Vexations found me. Early in 2002, I went to the National Art Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and was struck by an art exhibit that has stayed with me ever since that day. The Gallery had an exhibit of the works of Robert Racine. The exhibit included his methodically created Mirrored Pages as well as a room with a grand piano, a hand copied score and a video of Racine performing Vexations. At this point, I had just finished applying to music schools and knew that my interests were in the realms of composition and theory. I had also been completing a course in art in high school. It was in this art class that a love for contemporary art was fostered but until I saw this exhibit, music and art were very different things. I still remember being taken by the haunting melody that sounded nothing like anything I had ever heard before. The fact that it was so short and repeated so many times gave the performance stability, like a painting or a sculpture. In that moment, the possibilities of contemporary music being considered “art” became clear to me. It was after seeing this exhibit that I made a decision that someday I would perform this piece. Although it was a number of years before I made an attempt at performing Vexations, elements of this work influence my compositional writings. I was drawn to repetition and the play between stasis and motion.I became interested in concepts around boredom in music and what that meant. I remember having discussions about Vexations with composition professors and learned that when it is performed it is usually done as a “tag-team” type performance. What I had originally thought was the norm for the performance was actually the exception which fueled my desires to attempt the task. Through my musical education I was introduced to the ideas of John Cage and eventually to FLUXUS. My interest in FLUXUS was their performances that questioned the nature of music. Most of these scores are created by completing a list of tasks to be performed. From these I gathered that the intent to complete a task constitutes a form of artistic practice. The art is not the completion of the task as much as it is the doing of the task until completion. The challenge is to fully submit to the experience of the task. It is with this sentiment that I present Vexations. About the piece Vexations was composed in 1893 during an interesting time in Erik Satie’s life. Having been involved with a Rosicrucian sect and then forming his own, his music during this period seems to have a liturgical quality. This quality is evident within Vexations. The structure of this work consists of a plainchant like melody followed by a harmonization of that plainchant. The harmonization is notated in such a way that even for a practiced musician it is difficult to read. There is an unmemorable quality to this piece and as a result even performers who have played it numerous times have difficulty memorizing it. Part of the tradition of performing this work is the mind set that each repetition is a new expression of the same work and should be taken as a fresh beginning. The score of this work also includes the phrase: “To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence by serious immobilities.” Satie was in the practice of annotating his music with phrases to help influence the mind set of the performer as they were playing. Of which the intent was to affect the playing of the music in a more subtle way counter to the traditional mindset of the standard 19th century pianist. With this in mind, it is likely that the statement at the beginning of this work is not so much an instruction as it is a suggestion of a mental preparation. This mental preparation is intended to help the performer to express the staves correctly; however in 1963, amongst the ideals of FLUXUS and performance art, the first “complete” public performance of Vexations took place. This performance was organized by John Cage, inferring from the annotation that the piece was to be played 840 times. Since then it has been performed numerous times by groups and individuals ranging in length from 18 to 28 hours. |