Unsung: If the Earth Could Sing

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Unsung: If the Earth Could Sing is a major environmentally-inspired choral cycle for SSAA choir, percussion, and cello written by Katerina Gimon and with text by Lauren Peat. Unsung centers around the question “if the earth could sing, what would it tell us?”. The environmental crisis has been called the “biggest threat modern humans have ever faced” (United Nations, 2021) and Unsung aims to shed light on its impacts on Canadian landscapes in particular, using choral music as a form of advocacy and a voice for change. Each movement focuses on a different geographic region of Canada, moving loosely from East to West, and the choir's part is sung from the perspective of each landscape (or weather event, in the case of the 1st movement).

To aid in characterizing each landscape, the choral writing in Unsung pushes beyond the traditional idiom incorporating extended techniques (ex. overtone singing, timbral alterations), graphic scoring, aleatory, spatialization, and texturally-driven writing.

This major work was commissioned and premiered by Myriad Ensemble, conducted by Elise Naccarato, with the support of the Canada Council of the Arts.

i) Hurricane | The Atlantic Provinces

The first movement, Hurricane, speaks to the worsening hurricane impacts on the Canadian East Coast and their ever-increasing destruction. Mirroring the progression of a storm, the music spirals and grows into a powerful, rhythmic fury, as the storm reaches land.

ii) Grand Lac (Great Lake) | Central Canada

Grand Lac (Great Lake) moves away from destruction to highlight the beauty of the Great Lakes and river systems that branch through Ontario and Québec. In this peaceful and meditative French-language movement, the listener is drawn in by the haunting calm and serenity that the Great Lakes offer but reminded that these landscapes too and the biodiversity they support, are changing.

iii) Grassland | The Prairie Provinces

Grasslands focuses on the disappearing native grassland in the Canadian Prairies (only about 25% remain) and the species that rely on them to survive. The tone of this movement is quite mournful and intimate, aiming to bring to life the subdued and intricate beauty of this region.

iv) Mountain Range |  The Canadian Rockies

Mountain Range gives voice to the iconic Canadian Rockies, highlighting how even landscapes as grandiose and seemingly unchanging as mountains, are not untouched by climate change. The music aims to show at once the grandeur and vulnerability of the Rockies. This can be heard in contrasting sections that depict mountains on both a macro level (the grandiose, unchanging, and majestic landscapes we see) and on a micro level (the intricate layers of rock, erosion, and changes happening at a scale that we cannot comprehend). In this movement you’ll hear echoing mountain calls, powerful choral folk-like textures, and intricate aleatory.

v) Glacier | The Northern Territories

In the final movement, Glacier, we move to the Canadian North to look at perhaps the country’s most startling testament to the ravages of climate change — melting glaciers. The music and poetry are striking and persistent, urging us toward a place of understanding and seeking to inspire action by leaving listeners with one final thought: “The door is open and it’s up to us to decide what our future will be”.

Duration

Unsung (complete set): 21'15"
     i) Hurricane: 3'
     ii) Grand Lac: 3'45"
     iii) Grassland: 5'
     iv) Mountain Range: 5'10"
     iv) Glacier: 4'20"

Year of composition

2023

Voicing(s)/ensemble

SSAA (div) with cello and percussion

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