Swoop-ga-woop!
Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra just shared a hilarious new music video of my piece "gibbons vs Gibbons" starring the Odin Quartet.
Alex Toškov (who also edited the video) and Tanya Charles Iveniuk struggle to play through a viol duet by English Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, as a pair of white-cheeked gibbon apes (voiced on cello and viola by Samuel Bisson and Veronica Lee) sing, swoop down and swat them. See my full program notes below the video…
All season, the SPO has been releasing music videos in their Performance Series. In May some of these are pieces that will be included on the Odin Quartet's debut album later this year - which will feature "gibbons vs Gibbons" alongside premiere recordings of music Samuel Bisson,
Bruno Degazio, Chris Meyer, Elizabeth Raum, Ron Royer, and Kevin Zi-Xiao He among other Canadian composers!
Programme notes
gibbons vs. Gibbons is one of those pieces that started as a title. I was thinking that it was funny that there is an English Renaissance composer named Orlando Gibbons, since gibbons are also a kind of ape. The most wonderful kind of ape!
Watching them swing and play at the Toronto zoo, and listening to recordings of the whooping-swooping duets of white-cheeked gibbons online, I wondered what would happen if these apes encountered their namesake composer. In my piece, the viola and cello (the gibbons) keep swinging playfully down to bother the violins (attempting to perform a duet by Gibbons), causing unexpected problems in the music.
Eventually, apes and musicians find a way to play together for the final cadence - and a whooping finish! "gibbons vs. Gibbons" is dedicated to these endangered primates who give the world a music of their own.
-- AE