Community + Education

Student Composers’ Program

In partnership with the University of Calgary’s Music Department, each year a select group of students from the Composition Program are asked to create new works for Land’s End Ensemble. We workshop and perform the compositions, providing the students the opportunity to gain skills and experiences that are critical to their artistic and creative growth.

2023/24 Program

This season’s Student Composers’ Program has us working with students Liezel Kruger, Jon Halvorson, Peter Stambene and Katie Levinson. World premieres of new works by these students with a special performance of Vincent Ho’s “Gryphonsong” and “A Sybil Andrews Portrait” by Jocelyn Morlock, Alexina Louie, and Allan Gordon Bell will take place at the University of Calgary on April 6, 2024, Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall, 4:15pm. Pre-concert chat at 3:15pm with Allan Gordon Bell (composer) and Jocelyn Anderson (Director of the JR Shaw Institute for Art in Canada).

Land’s End Chamber Music Society fosters public appreciation of Canadian and International new music through excellence in creation, performance, education, and enriching collaborations with outstanding composers and artists. We take pride in nurturing our nation’s culture and in shaping our collective identity.

100 Years: Education Materials

It takes a particular kind of spirit to come to a new place and build a creative life. Many of the composers featured on the 100 Years disc did exactly that, bringing with them a rich musical heritage, sometimes from Europe, America, or central Canada.

In so doing, they added new colours and influences to the tapestry musical life in Western Canada. Home-grown composers flourished under these influences, and subsequently added their own voices to the musical culture. Many contemporary composers have traveled widely to study, teach, or perform, yet have chosen to live and work in the West. Each composer featured on this disc made a unique mark on the musical life of his/her day, a mark which the Land’s End Ensemble celebrates with this project. The listening guides below offer ways of understanding the musical culture of the era, the composers, and the music itself. We hope you enjoy studying this music, and contribute to the musical life of your community today by supporting the living composers around you.

Works

Vernon Barford: March from I.O.U. March & Two-Step (1898) Jack Bullough: Dream Shadows from A Prairie Suite No. 1 (1920’s) Clifford Higgin: Meditation, Op. 39 (1935)

How To Use These Materials

Each of the works listed has a listening guide, specific to that piece, oriented towards the needs of students from grades K-6, 7-9, or high school/adult listeners. These categories are guidelines only – teachers and all listeners should not be limited by these arbitrary delineations. You are invited and encouraged to explore every listening guide, to learn something extra about each piece.

Land’s End Emerging Composers Competition

2018 Winners
1st Prize: Adam Scime – Gradual Erasures
2nd Prize: Gavin Fraser – Garmonboziac
3rd Prize & Audience Prize: Alice Hong – Sepia

2017 Winners
1st Prize: Tze-Yeung Ho – shullamite (a)
2nd Prize: Brendan Bevan – Experiments in Anxiety
3rd Prize: Alyssa Aska – Emergence

2016 Winners
1st Prize: Emilie Cecilia LeBel – Oranda
2nd Prize: August Murphy-King – Pitches Proof
3rd Prize & Audience Prize: Joshua Denenberg – Screwball

2015 Winners
1st Prize: Alexandre David – La grande Rapa
2nd Prize: Roydon Tse – Starscape
3rd Prize & Audience Prize: Denis Nassar – Kosmos