Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy was just starting to relax by Sunday afternoon at the Pender Harbour Chamber Music Festival, Aug. 14 to 17.
One of her pieces, Dynamic Sequences, with its jazzy element, had yet to be performed by Baya Kakouberi on piano and Julia Nolan on saxophone, but Murphy felt confident about their delivery.
The festival was celebrating its 10th year of music on a sunny and successful weekend at the School of Music in Madeira Park. Murphy was commissioned to create a celebratory piece — In a World of Motion and Distance — a piano quintet, and it received its world premiere Aug. 14.
“It was so exciting,” said Murphy in conversation with Coast Reporter. “I wrote what I believed in. They understood its sincerity.”
Chamber music can be academic, she explained, but this piece had something different.
“This is a small festival and the audience feels a part of it. They connected with it,” she said.
Festival co-chair Margaret Skelley (with Kathy Harrison) said the commissioned piece was unbelievably well received.
“We love her music,” she said. “She treats instruments in a most challenging way.”
It was Skelley who took courage in hand and wrote the composer to ask for a special piece. Murphy, who is Calgary born and currently based in Ottawa, had the piece ready by January. She flew to Victoria to rehearse with the festival’s musicians, the Lafayette String Quartet. The key piano part was performed by the festival’s artistic director for all of its 10 years, Alexander Tselyakov.
“How else do we support our composers except by commissions?” Skelley asked. Now, the festival has added two wonderful pieces of repertoire to Canadian music, she said, referring to Murphy’s new music and a previous composition for the fifth anniversary from composer Stephen Chatman. Skelley spoke about the camaraderie evident in the weekend’s musicians.
“Such energy, such love of repertoire,” she said.
Indeed, as the final strains of Dmitri Shos-takovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, Op.57, written in 1940, faded away on Sunday, it seemed the audience would not let the musicians leave the stage.
Especially for the 10th anniversary, the committee of volunteers has compiled a catalogue of the programmes over the years, including a list of musicians and the composers whose work was performed.
Sixty-eight artists have performed 212 pieces. For those who like lists, Astor Piazolla is the lead composer with 11 pieces performed. A dreamy, brief piece by Piazolla was added to Sunday’s programme by special request. Brahms and Schubert tie for second place.
The festival has demonstrated a diverse body of work performed in what Tselyakov refers to as “the musical pearl of B.C.” It’s come a long way since he and founder Lise Aylmer envisioned it over the dinner table at the Aylmer home 10 years ago.
