The Varsity & PNO DUO

My focus for the last few months has been on composition and shifting my studies towards composing, although I haven’t been composing as much as I should. Nevertheless, I needed pieces for the upcoming application to the composition program, so in December, when the Varsity called for music students interested in creating compositions around the issue of the Harper government cutting funds from arts programs around the country, I was interested. Three fantastic musicians and myself wrote a piece of music that corresponded with a part of this issue; also, we were interviewed and had fancy pictures taken of us, but this is about the music.

The Art of Rhetoric was my piece, and it essentially is a commentary on the idea that politics should not have a place in the creative process of any form of art, because it ruins the work. As a rough guide, I will say that you can follow one of the more prominent themes as it makes its way through the three sections of the piece, hopefully (if I have done my job correctly) noticing that it sounds more pleasant when it does not interact with another theme that resembles politics.

You can listen to it on its own, or among the other pieces by my talented composer friends: Patrick Power, Patrick Murray, and Sam Shahi.

As if all this weren’t nifty enough, I have recently had one of my most exciting experiences as a musician yet: my good friend Trevor and I have started a weekly piano improvisation podcast called PNO DUO; we had a few jam sessions when I went over to his house, and it was way too much fun to not do it regularly. The first four episodes were a blast to do and I’m sure many more great experiences will become of this; I can already say that I have grown as a composer and performer by learning to listen to everything more.

• Hear the latest episode
• Have episodes sent to you in iTunes or via email
• There is a recording of one of our first jam sessions somewhere on the site, but I won’t say where.

Oh, and I upgraded to WordPress 2.7.