Dr. Colin Eatock, composer
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Christopher Cerrone (New Music I Like No. 15)

10/9/2023

8 Comments

 
PictureChristopher Cerrone
Has it really been eight years since I wrote a blog in my "New Music I Like" series? Apparently, yes – but rest assured, this is not because I haven't heard anything I like since 2015. Rather, it’s because I’ve been on an extended break, where critical comment is concerned. “I think I’ll stop writing about music,” I decided, a few years ago, “unless I hear something that really makes me feel compelled to do so.”

Fast-forward to 2023, and my discovery of a composer who makes me feel “compelled to do so.”

Christoper Cerrone is already a well-known figure in contemporary music in the USA – with commissions and premieres from major orchestras, opera companies and other ensembles. If I hadn’t heard of him until a few days ago, that says way more about me than it does about him.

Fortunately, Cerrone is well-represented on YouTube, Spotify, and in other online media. Not yet 40, he’s a productive composer, and the scope of his oeuvre is impressive.

So what’s his music like? A lot of things: it’s bright, buoyant and sparkly – but also delicate, bold, wistful, joyous, mysterious and disarmingly direct. He possesses a clear and distinct style (you can’t hear eight bars of his music without knowing it’s his) that draws on such diverse sources as Indonesian gamelan, the subtle sonorities of George Crumb, a touch of “Pierrot Lunaire-style” modernism and good old American minimalism.

In particular, I’d like to draw readers’ attention to Goldbeater’s Skin, a kind of song-cycle for vocalist (soprano or mezzo) and percussion quartet. In it, luscious and tintinnabulating bells, cymbals and mallet instruments gently accompany the singer, contrasted with more urgent movements for percussion alone.

The texts are based on the poetry of G.C. Waldrep. His language is sensual and evocative, and Cerrone underscores these qualities in his setting of lines such as, “My love, there is no winter but the winter of the heart,” and “I cannot help myself, before I know it, there is something like delight.”

Here’s a score-video of Goldbeater’s Skin. It’s well worth the 20 minutes it takes to listen to!


© Colin Eatock 2023


8 Comments

Dance No. 4 for Saxophones

3/5/2022

4 Comments

 
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The Whoop Group of Warsaw, Poland, has made a pretty cool video of my Dance No. 4 for Saxophones.

The piece is an arrangement of the fourth movement of my Quartet of Dances (2004), for string quartet.
 
The short, lively piece adheres to no established form or genre: it is not a waltz, a tango, a foxtrot, or any other specific kind of dance. I call it a “dance” because it is essentially rhythmic rather than melodic in its conception, with an irregular yet emphatic pulse throughout.
 
As well, the piece comes with its own built-in little manifesto: there is too much seriousness in contemporary music. I claim no exemption from my own criticism, as some of my own works unabashedly strive for profundity and gravity. But in this piece, I have tried to inject some joie de vivre into new music.


4 Comments

A Salute to Young Composers

7/13/2021

4 Comments

 
PictureThis young composer already knows the value of a good eraser.
Moving from one apartment to another is never easy. And in my case, it’s been made more difficult by the fact that I haven’t moved in over 30 years. And while I’ve always prided myself on my non-materialistic nature – acquiring as little stuff as possible, as I travel through life – the accumulations of three decades can add up.
 
This is especially apparent in my storage locker – where I’ve stashed things that I’ve felt the need to “archive” over the years. There are boxes in the back of my locker that I literally haven’t looked inside since I abandoned them there in 1990. Often, I don’t know what’s in them until I open them.



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Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018)

6/12/2021

3 Comments

 
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With most nations in some kind of lockdown or restriction, due to Covid-19, I had to search to the ends of the Earth to find a vocal ensemble that could record my music. But I found them! Western Australia is nearly Covid-free – and the Giovanni Consort, of Perth, was able to create this brilliant video of my Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018). I don’t think it gets any better than this.

© Colin Eatock 2021

3 Comments

A meme for music nerds ...

4/2/2021

18 Comments

 
I would be lying if I claimed that the Covid lockdown isn't having a strange effect on me. How strange, you ask? After all due consideration, I created this meme ...

© Colin Eatock 2021
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18 Comments

Don Trumpo

2/9/2021

7 Comments

 
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I used to work for an opera company, and one of my duties was writing synopses for operas. I enjoyed it, and I soon warmed to the glorious stylistic traditions of the genre. Where else, but in an opera synopsis, do you find words like “lascivious,” “impugns” or “absconds”? And thanks to my years of experience, the following synopsis for a yet-to-be composed opera pretty much wrote itself:


Don Trumpo, ossia il tiranno arancione – an opera in three acts.



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Invitation to Love

12/11/2020

3 Comments

 
PicturePaul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906)
“Invitation to Love” is the first of my Three American Poems About Love (2020). The text, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, is as much a glowing reflection on the nature of love itself as it is an expression of love directed towards a specific other.

Dunbar was born in Kentucky, the son of freed slaves. He achieved national and international fame as a poet, an essayist and a novelist, writing both in standard English and in African-American dialect.

“Invitation to Love” is performed here by members of the UK-based Sonoro chamber choir.


© Colin Eatock 2020

3 Comments

Psalm 146

10/26/2020

2 Comments

 
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It is widely accepted by scholars that the Psalms were written to be sung. And over the centuries, composers have responded to this implicit challenge, finding in them a rich source of inspiration. This setting of Psalm 146 is the finale to my set of Three Psalms (2018).

The excellent virtual video below was recorded by the Sonos Quartet.


© Colin Eatock 2020

2 Comments

O magna res (2019)

10/7/2020

10 Comments

 
PictureHildegard in an inspired moment.
Bit of a back-story here. In the carefree days of 2019 I composed music for one of Hildegard von Bingen's mystical poems, "O magna res." I did this for a Toronto-based women's vocal sextet called the Schola Magdalena. This group was to have performed the setting in a concert in April 2020 -- but of course that didn't happen. Then, a couple of months ago, I discovered a New York-based countertenor named Phillip Cheah, who produces a series of home-made videos called "Quire of Cheahs." I asked him if he would like to make a video in which he sang all six parts in "O magna res" himself. He did, and this fine little video is the result.


© Colin Eatock 2020

10 Comments

Spring Night

10/2/2020

4 Comments

 
PictureSara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Sara Teasdale’s poetry is personal, subjective and often often confessional in tone, and frequently explores such issues as love, beauty and death. Spring Night is no exception: here, she contemplates natural beauty – admiring it, while also reflecting that she finds it no antidote for the sadness that love can bring.

My setting of Spring Night is performed here by a vocal quartet from Pro Coro Canada, Michael Zaugg conducting.



© Colin Eatock 2020

4 Comments
<<Previous

    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

    But now I have stepped back from professional music journalism, and I'm spending more time composing.

    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


    – CE

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