Curators

About the curators

Since 1991 GroundSwell’s Artistic Directorate has been delighting and challenging its audiences with an eclectic combination of all that is good about new music. As Manitoba’s only series dedicated to presenting contemporary music, GroundSwell has showcased diverse programming featuring everything from inspiring interpretations of 20th-century classics to exciting fusions of visual art, theatre, dance, and the written word.

The Artistic Directorate is made up of Winnipeg composers Gordon Fitzell, Jim Hiscott, Michael Matthews, and Diana McIntosh. We’re also very pleased to welcome this season’s guest curators – soprano Rosemarie van der Hooft and pianist and new music specialist Cheryl Pauls. Every season GroundSwell brings you exciting new worlds of contemporary performance, from local music to international works, and is proud to promote and explore the best of Canada’s diverse and vibrant new music scene.

Gordon Fitzell

Gordon Fitzell’s music has been performed at major international festivals including the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), Festival Synthèse Bourges (France), the ISCM World New Music Days (Sweden), the International Sound Art Festival (Mexico), and the Tanglewood Music Festival (USA). He has received acknowledgements and awards for his compositions from various organizations, including CBC Radio, the SOCAN Foundation, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (USA).

In 2008 the eighth blackbird album strange imaginary animals, which features two of Fitzell’s compositions, garnered two Grammy Awards. Fitzell also appears on the album as co-producer and live electronics artist, and in 2006 performed with the group on two CD release concerts at The Kitchen in New York. In 2009 his chamber work violence was performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World New Music Days in Sweden by Norway’s BIT20 Ensemble, under the direction of Dutch conductor/composer/pianist Reinbert de Leeuw. In 2010 Fitzell was the guest composer of the Cluster Festival of New Music and Integrated Arts, where five of his works were presented. Performances of his work in 2011 include concerts by the Contempo New Music Ensemble, the Harrington/Loewen Duo, the Ensemble de flûtes Alizé, Trio Fibonacci, and the Tempest Flute Ensemble.

Fitzell is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Manitoba Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music, where he leads the XIE (eXperimental Improv Ensemble). In recent years the XIE has presented a diverse offering of sonic art including performances at the Winnipeg New Music Festival, an evening of live soundtracks at Cinémathèque, an outdoor sound installation for the Museum of Clear Ideas, and Jamming the Kitchen—a “sonic cuisine” fund-raiser sponsored by Amnesty International.

Fitzell is a regular curator of sound art events, ranging from chamber music concerts to media installations. Since 2009 he has been an Artistic Director of Groundswell, Winnipeg’s premiere new music series.

Rosemarie van der Hooft

Mezzo-soprano Rosemarie van der Hooft is a versatile and expressive performer who has made her career specializing in early music and new music. She holds a Masters of Early Music Performance from McGill University and has studied with early music specialist Julianne Baird and 20th century specialist Jane Manning.

Her interpretation of repertoire from the 20th and 21st century has received widespread critical acclaim. She has been a frequent performer at the Winnipeg Symphony’s New Music Festival. She regularly performs, premieres and commissions the work of Canada’s foremost composers including R. Murray Shafer, David R. Scott, James Rolfe and Randolph Peters (who has been her most frequent collaborator). Rosemarie is frequently heard in concerts on CBC national programs.

Rosemarie is also widely respected for her interpretations of Bach and Handel, performing this repertoire in North America and England. She collaborates with Montreal harpsichordist Rachelle Taylor; they made their debut at the Lamèque International Baroque Festival in 2005. She is a founding member of the unique vocal/chamber music ensemble EMERADO.

Rosemarie is a respected voice teacher, clinician and adjudicator in the Winnipeg area with students at the University of Manitoba and the Canadian Mennonite University.

Michael Matthews

Inspired by the worlds of nature and literature, Michael Matthews creates music that compels the listener to step beyond the everyday to dwell for a while in images of paradox, to consider the ever-changing tapestry of life. Matthews has a deep love for the contemporary symphonic tradition and has established himself as a master of large-scale musical structures, motivic relationships and organic wholeness, all of which lie at the core of symphonic thought. The symphony is, for Matthews, both a vital form and a special challenge that allows for musical ideas to be carried between movements. Compositional influences include Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Schnittke and, more recently, Scandinavian composers Pettersson and Aho.

Matthews’ music has been performed in countries around the world, including by the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, the Mondriaan Quartet of Amsterdam, the Sequitur Ensemble of New York City, the Kiev Camerata Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and the BIT 20 Ensemble of Bergen, Norway. In Canada, Matthews has been commissioned, and his work performed, by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, Groundswell and CBC Radio.

Diana McIntosh

Described on Bravo TV News as a national treasure, Diana McIntosh has a very active career as a distinctive, original, witty, and innovative composer/pianist/performance artist. She has a dynamic stage presence, and has performed throughout Canada, widely in the USA, and in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Portugal and in October, 2002, she gave 3 performances in Nairobi, Kenya, and she is regularly heard on CBC Radio. Among her commissions for new music are works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, vocal, choir, instrumental soloists, dance, mime, electronics, and theatrically oriented music. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra commissioned two of her best known orchestral works, 9 Foot Clearance (for piano and orchestra), and Through the Valley: Milgaard (for pianist/narrator and orchestra) for its New Music Festivals. Her specialty these days is writing and performing theatrically oriented works - for herself and for others to perform. In 2008 she received 2 commissions from the CBC. One was for a piano Prelude and Fugue for performance at a gala concert in Toronto in honour of Glenn Gould’s life and legacy. The other was to write a theatrical work, Prodigies of the Nose, for speaking/playing pianist and percussionist which she and percussionist Beverley Johnston premiered in the Heliconian Hall, Toronto. The whole concert - all new music by McIntosh - was recorded by CBC Radio and broadcast nationally. Bravo-TV and CBC-TV have each done 2 profiles on McIntosh and her music. Two of these may be seen on her website -www.dianamcintosh.com. Diana founded and was Artistic Director of Music Inter Alia in 1977, the first new music series in Western Canada, and is at present a artistic co-director of GroundSwell. Three CDs — The Original McIntosh, Another Byte of McIntosh and a recent Canadian Music Centre release on Centrediscs, Pinnacles, and a video, Serious Fun With McIntosh, all feature McIntosh’s work exclusively, and many of her works are included on CDs of other performers.

Jim Hiscott

Jim Hiscott was born in 1948 in St. Catharines, Ontario. In 1971, after earning a Master’s Degree in Theoretical Particle Physics, he switched to music composition, studying with Samuel Dolin at the Royal Conservatory of Music and David Lidov and Richard Teitelbaum at York University. He is the recipient of the Creative Arts Award of the Canadian Federation of University Women. His compositions have been performed across North America, in Europe and Asia by many artists including the Hilliard Ensemble, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver New Music Society ensemble, Rivka Golani, Arraymusic, and Philadelphia’s Relâche.

Jim Hiscott has performed his own works for button accordion in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival, the Vancouver New Music Society series, Toronto’s Big Squeeze Festival, and on the main stage of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. He has appeared as button accordion soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Niagara Symphony, and the New Orchestra of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Recent premieres of music by Jim Hiscott include SPIRAL (two violas), by Daniel and Michael Scholz; I SPOKE TO NO ONE… (chamber ensemble), given by the GroundSwell Ensemble conducted by Earl Stafford; THE SONG OF THE STARS (version for soprano and small chamber ensemble) premiered by Maria-Luz Alvarez with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra Players and Rodrigo Muñoz; MANIMASII AURA (button accordion and chamber ensemble), with Simeonie Keenainak and the CBC Radio Orchestra conducted by Alain Trudel; BEATING HEART (solo violin and button accordion with chamber orchestra), by Atis Bankas, Jim Hiscott, and the Orchestra of St. Mark’s, led by Daniel Swift; IN MEMORIAM WALTER KLYMKIW (SATB Choir, soloists, and violin solo), by the Oleksandr Koshetz Choir with vocal soloists and violinist Gwen Hoebig, conducted by Laurence Ewashko; and NORTH WIND (dizi and orchestra), by Xiao-Nan Wang and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Andrey Boreyko.

STRING QUARTET #2 from his recent CBC Records CD “Blue Ocean / Music of Jim Hiscott” was nominated for Outstanding Classical Composition at the 2004 Western Canadian Music Awards.

Cheryl Pauls

Pianist Cheryl Pauls appears regularly as soloist, collaborative pianist and lecture recitalist as she performs and interrogates a diverse range of repertoire from the early Renaissance to the contemporary avant-garde. She has received critical acclaim for introducing audiences across the country to the music of Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Christian Lauba, György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen and Kaija Saariaho, and for premiere performances of works by many Canadian composers. She also maintains an active interest in research that interfaces music theory and performance with cultural studies, liturgical expression, peace building, and memory. Currently Cheryl is preparing a website of pedagogical resources for contemporary piano music, and conducting studies in memory and performance, particularly in reference to post-tonal musics. Cheryl holds a doctorate in piano performance from UBC and is Associate Professor of Music at Canadian Mennonite University, where she teaches piano and music theory.