Donald F. Cook Recital Hall M.O. Morgan Building

Tuesday, 14 March 2003 at B:qo p.m.

Landscapes of Memory Text: Christopher Pratt Music: Jack Behrens

Excerpt from: How soon when the day is white Looking Back

Looking Back ( 1979) Looking back Every spring I walk along this shore Had you been with me Waiting, then, is two things I find it strange Now that the light

You came to me Suddenly the sun Rosie's song about the rain

Poor Me Poems (2003) Sorry, nothing ventured, nothing gained I have more evidence of you You came into my studio

... Then let me ask you this · I had already written poetry for you Monogram I watched you walking on the Tantramar Me and my foolish memories

Easy Poetry (2003) Wind in dry grass My father used to listen to the wilderness The unknown soldier Easy poetry I know winter is coming The snow comes

Christopher Pratt, narrator Jack Behrens, piano Michelle Cheramy, flute Jane Leibel, soprano

Directed and designed by Jillian Keily Floorcloth and window construction by Dave Riley and Flora Planchat

Canada Council for the Arts

Conseil des Arts du Canada

INTERMISSION

The Chekhov Variations based on Checkhov's The Seagull

adapted by Robert Chafe

Jason Card, Andy Jones, Leah Lewis, Sherry White with

Alison Black, violin; Kate Read, viola; Theo Weber, cello; Frank Fusari, bass

Directed and designed by Jillian Keiley Text manager: Joseph Williams

Floorcloth build:· The Anna Templeton Centre Props: Robert Chafe, Ann Brophy, Elayne Noble

Production stage manager: Ann Brophy Thanks to Jennifer Adams, Dick Buehler, Elayne Noble,

Barbara Neis, Pablo Navarro, Soun~ Symposium

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jack Behrens ( 1935) earned bachelor's and master's degrees in composition at the Juilliard School where he studied with William Bergsma, Peter Mennin and Vincent Persichetti. Following scholarship study with Darius Milhaud at Aspen, he earned a Ph.D. in composition at Harvard, working primarily with Leon Kirchner. He has received numerous commissions and residencies and was founder and artistic director (1985-99) of London, Ontario's "Trillium Plus Music and Letters." He has taught at the University of Regina, Simon Fraser University, California State University Bakersfield and the University of Western Ontario where he served as dean of the Faculty of Music (1980-86) and was named Professor Emeritus in 1998. That same year he was appointed director of Academic Studies at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Christopher Pratt was born in 1935 in St. John's Newfoundland. He has exhibited in galleries across Canada and abroad including Centro do Cultural de Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy; Marlborough Gallery in New York; Canadian Cultural Centre in London, England; and was the subject of a major touring retrospective organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in the late 1980s.

Pratt's work is found in many public and corporate collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario; National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Museee d'art contemporain, Montreal; Lavalin Inc., Montreal; and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Pratt attended Mount Alison University and the Glasgow School of Art, working with Lawren P. Harris, Ted Pulford, Alex Colville and Jessie Alix Dick. Christopher Pratt currently lives and works in St. Mary's Bay, Newfoundland.

Artists' Bios

Alison Black in concertmaster of the Newfoundland Symphony and a member of the Atlantic String Quartet. She studied at Queen's University and at McGill, and came to Newfoundland in 1994 after serving as a member of the Canadian Forces String Ensemble.

Ann Brophy is the General Manager of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. Ann has served in several managerial roles, including production manager of "!cycle," stage manager of Sin City's "Speed The Plow" and General Manager of the Resource Centre for the Arts.

Jason Card has been performing since 1994 and. has acted with such companies as Beothuck Street Players, St. John's Players, Bill's Bad Dance Productions, and Phoenix Theatre. Jason is very pleased to have had the opportunity to perform with Artistic Fraud for the first time in "The Chekhov Variations" in the role of Konstatin.

Flutist Michelle Cheramy joined the faculty of the School of Music at Memorial University in 1995. She takes a special interest in performing programs of new or unusual repertoire.

Frank Fusari is a native of Kitchener, Ontario and studied bass with Janet Auger of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Since 1993, he has been the principal bass player for the Newfoundland Symphony, and has enjoyed playing with many Newfoundland musicians.

Andy Jones has worked at the Resource Centre For The Arts at The L.S.P.U. Hall where he co-wrote, acted in, and directed many original productions. His one-man shows Out of the Bin, Still Alive, King of Fun, An Evening with Uncle Val and To The Wall have all played at the Hall.

Jilllan Kelley is the Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. She is delighted to work with such wonderful actors and musicians. Other work she's done with wonderful actors and musicians include Artistic Fraud's "!cycle", "Under Wraps a Spoke Opera", " The Cheat", and "SchumannBrahmsSchumann."

Jane Leibel, soprano, has been a faculty member of Memorial University's School of Music since 1999. She has had a noted career in opera, appearing with companies such as Vancouver Opera, Winnipeg Opera, Opera Atelier, Opera in Concert and the Canadian Opera Company.

Leah Lewis has been involved with a number of Artistic Fraud productions, the most recent being the staged adaptation of M C Crummey's 'Hard Light'. Leah has been performing in Newfoundland for a number of years and is proud to be involved with Chekhov Variations.

Since 2001 , Kate Read has been the violist of the Atlantic String Quartet and Principal Viola of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. Prior to moving to Newfoundland, Kate worked as a freelance musician in London, playing regularly with the Philharmonic Orchestra and the LSO. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Royal College of Music

Theo Weber will be celebrating his tenth season this year as the principal cellist of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra and Atlantic String Quartet. Theo trained at the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Victoria Conservatory.

LOOKING BACK

Looking back, I can't remember if it was an evening late in spring or early in the fall except that it was warm and it had rained;

and when the light was gone the darkness made a soft and silent room, so close around us that we were its walls.

EVERY SPRING

Every spring it's the same thing: burning boughs of frozen daffodils, unsheltering the climbing rose.

Every spring it's the same thing: dense, fat smoke, the sudden tongue of flame hot grey cone of ash -the ring of unburnt wood around heart.

Every spring, it's that ring: the greatest satisfaction is to rake it in, to see the loose ends consumed, complete.

Every spring it's the same thing: raking in the ring.

I WAL:{ ALONG THIS SHORE

I walk along this shore like people in the Coca-Cola ads or swingers with their polaroids - except I did it as a boy, before T.V.; I felt the sea's frustration at my feet; I knew the sea's impatience -

it was mine until I found that happiness and grief are issues of a common chemistry, but read in different quarters of the mind.

HAD YOU BEEN WITH ME

Had you been with me this morning When the breeze was fresh Then my sails were sheeted drawing, full Then my little boat careened across the wind And all around was froth and foam and freedom All around was salt and celebration All around sharp white intoxicating wind and light. Ah had you been with me then, He:re in this warmth, this stillness, See, we ride like birds here on Conception Bay, That movement is the souvenir storms Wider than the wind you would have seen had you been .. Anyway it's pleasant, Even in this gentle wind Even in this gentle afternoon.

WAITING, THEN, IS TWO THINGS

Before you come, I will have waited years, watched cars come flood the road with light only to disappear into the night.

When you come, by then I will have heard cars stop a thousand times; heard doors open footsteps on the ground, Then to know the forest made the sound.

Waiting, then, is two things: one, for dawn, or death or Christmas which will, must come and two, the waiting that I do for you.

I FIND IT STRANGE

I find it strange so suddenly to be surrounded by things and objects I have used for years, watching near seeing edges round noticing that at my hand these tools, these things erode; that I not only die but also must participate in time.

NOW THAT THE LIGHT

Now that the lights is out that made my windows mirrors of my rooms, and drew strange insects from the darkness to my house, I can at last see out, into the black and crowded night.

SORRY, NOTHING VENTURED, NOTmNG GAINED: POOR ME POEM 1

Sorry, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Immaculate blue sky bright, diamond-frred sun and yet it rained.

All that year the crows flew singly, never two or three: one for sorrow, one for me.

She said, on Saturday "just wave at them as they go by," I waved-they must have been too high -but so would I, if I could fly.

I said perhaps !11 be like Icarus and try, and if, like him I soar too near the sun and melt, and fall, and die ...

And she said "why''.

I HAVE MORE EVIDENCE OF YOU: POOR ME POEM 2

My heart broke its promises to you before the words were dry upon my lips.

I have more evidence of you than I can bear among my souvenirs, and you have evidence of me; remember this and that: remember nothing!

E\·erything is now, not what it used to be.

I onlv see the things you left behind.

YOU CAME INTO MY STUDIO: POOR ME POEM 3

You came into my studio and said: those tones. especially the reds, are stronger than the ones you 'ye used before.

I said: my eyes aren 't what they used to be and there are things I want to see­there's nothing more.

You came into my studio and said: your music is much louder than is usual for you

I said: I think that too much subtlety can be deceit - besides, I want to feel the music through my feet.

You saw me rip the drawing I was working on in two. You said: that's something new not something that you used- or ought- to do.

I said, I'm tired of a lot of things -of colours I can't see, sounds too delicate to hear things out of focus, out of range the vanishing remains of what I hoped would be -but most of all reality.

You said-I thought sarcastically "Poor me"?

WIND IN DRY GRASS

Wind in dry grass, that breathing, rustling sound -no more than the friction, snap, of one dry shaft against another I suppose, a trillion little slaps echoed in the distance, far away by fall seas breaking rolling back the cobble beach:

If needs be, that reminds me summers end. and love is long -but not fore\·er. necessarily.

MY FATHER USED TO LISTEN TO THE WILDERNESS

My father used to listen to the wilderness; night after night he never tired of it.

It seemed to satisfy his need for loneliness: the melodrama of a loon occasionally snipe winnowing in May and June; but always it was voices that he listened for, trying to translate the language of the wind; sound from the forest, heard like conversation in a nearby room, muffled by thick walls.

I have not admitted this before, but when he died, before they took his casket to the church I met with him alone and said what I would call a prayer and rapped three times on the coffin lid: father, son and holy ghost.

Since then, I have listened to the land night after night - I never tire of it; and listened in my room willing to accept the smallest sign: three snipe winnowing at once, three clouds across the moon even three contractions in the heater p1pes ... but never hearing anything.

Sometimes I talk to him trying to explain what's going on knowing that I'm talking to myself.

Or him in me.

There is residue: we listen for its voices in the wilderness.

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

At the grave of the unknown soldier an aging veteran said good day to me with dignity, and pleasantly although he knew my cause was merely curiosity.

The tongue of the eternal flame blue-burning natural gas fluttered in the iris of a round bronze eye, surrounded by legions of crosses on the hill and Stars of David standing near.

And I asked him: do you imagine an old comrade lying there? And without looking up, he said those I remember are not dead -the soldier that I visit here is me.

EASY POETRY

And so it came and went and made me easy poetry -the simplest lament the fundamental cry for time gone by ...

I would have life tied to rope and hold it in my hands I'd throw a clovehitch on a post and tether my demands; my water would come from a well a bucket at a time -the world's sweet water's not on tap so I would measure mine.

I know winter is coming: I know how early we will be awake that morning of the strange, new light -how it will smell so clean, the first snow covering the grass, the leaves the overtired earth; and I anticipate a silence then -the summer birds departed and all the insects stilled.

I know it is coming. In all likelihood, you will be going away.

THE SNOW COMES

The snow comes, covering selecting colors isolating areas of trees describing hills; it brings the low sky down inverts my world, making the dark land light -malignant fingers filling black lines white.

Winter comes: the sea becomes transparent­eye can see, blood feel down the cold waves.

Now black and bottomless pond waters thicken and conceal the fright of spawning fish, and hide the preparations creatures make for night.

NOW THAT THE LIGHT

Now that the lights is out that made my windows mirrors of my rooms, and drew strange insects from the darkness to my house, I can at last see out, into the black and crowded night.