Our 25th Anniversary Concert Saturday, May 11 7pm at Cochrane Alliance Church was a tremendous success! Our enthusiastic audience gave standing ovations for both commissioned pieces!
Nieve Caliente
Jay Michalak, one of Canada’s leading trumpeters and Director of the award winning JazzYYC Youth Lab Band, has composed a Latin jazz piece, Nieve Caliente, for Riverside Jazz.
Jay has created a piece that captures an authentic salsa feel and sound, while following a traditional salsa song form which gives every section of the band a chance to shine.
The name Nieve Caliente translates to “Hot Snow.” Jay says, “This piece was primarily written on some of the coldest (-50oC) and snowiest days we’ve ever had here in Alberta. To me Latin music has always been “hot” – it captures a fire and passion in the music of the people, and what better way is there to honour such a passionate and amazing group of musicians, who just so happen to live and play through some of the coldest weather on earth!”
Meet Me At The River
Juno Award winner Claude Lapalme (conductor, composer and arranger/orchestrator living in Red Deer) has collaborated with Sonny-Ray Day Rider (composer and pianist from the Kainai Blood Tribe pursuing advanced studies (M.Mus) in music composition at the University of Lethbridge) to create a piece called Meet Me At The River for Band on the Bow and Choral Waves together.
The Cochrane Music Society has always maintained the “river” theme taken from the town’s location on the Bow River with our ensembles Band on the Bow, Riverside Jazz and Choral Waves.
Claude Lapalme composed Part I, “In This World of People”, on a waka poem by the Japanese poet Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875). It describes how meeting at the river brings everyone together on the same footing. He chose to use the Japanese poem partly because, though the experiences with racism vary, both newcomers and Indigenous Peoples have had broadly similar history of being subjugated by white settler-colonial society.
In composing Part II, “Old Gods”, Sonny-Ray Day Rider was inspired by Earth’s earliest history – the Hadeon Eon “before I was a dream”. By pairing the wisdom of western classical music experience with Sonny-Ray’s ability to transform the ritual of his spiritual upbringing into musical structure, we nurture local talent and showcase that Indigenous music exists in rich variety. We also demonstrate our commitment to fostering cross-cultural dialogue and understanding.
By producing this work with composers of this caliber, with Reconciliation in mind, we have pursued a project that allows us to challenge ourselves technically, artistically, and culturally to understand our nation and our place within it in a deeper way.
Thanks to Bow RiversEdge Campground Society, Rotary Club of Cochrane, Cochrane Lions Club and Calgary Association for the Development of Music Education for their generous support!
