Commissioned in 2012 by the Suzuki String School of Guelph, through the Canadian Music Centre's New Music for Young Musicians program.

Duration: ca. 13:00 total

Movements:

Columbia Icefield
Abraham Lake
North Saskatchewan River
The Forks
Lake Winnipeg
Nelson River
Hudson's Bay

Composer's notes:

Both performers read off the score.

Doubling of parts is permitted, and even encouraged.

Please feel free to play individual movements; the only two that should not be separated are Nelson River and Hudson's Bay. However, the pieces together are meant to be a suite tracing a specific geographical journey, and should be performed in the order they are presented here.

PROGRAM NOTES

Watershed was inspired by my travels across Canada. It is one of many pieces that I have composed that are representations of different amazing places in our country, from the Haida Gwaii islands in British Columbia to the badlands of the Prairie provinces to an old fort in Quebec.

In this piece, I wanted to trace the journey that a drop of water takes from a glacier in the Columbia Icefield (in Alberta's Rocky Mountains) through rivers and lakes, all the way to Hudson's Bay in northern Manitoba. Throughout the entire piece, the water drop (and the other water drops traveling with it) are represented by a simple 3-note
motive: starting on one note, moving to a different note, then coming back to the first.

For example:
C - G - C or D - C - D or F# - A - F#

If you're curious why, this is because of the chemical structure of a water molecule, which has two Hydrogen atoms on either side of an Oxygen atom. But you don't need to know about that to play or enjoy this piece!

To create the mood for each movement, I imagined what it would be like to be the water passing through that place. Is it mountainous or flat? How cold is the water around me? Am I moving fast or slow? Does the river go straight or does it bend around?

I am grateful to Paule Barsalou and her students at the Guelph Suzuki School for all of their hard work helping me to refine this piece so that it works as well as possible as a pedagogical piece for young violinists.