Chamber Ensemble lineup is complete

Just finished lining up the chamber ensemble that will perform the Requiem for Fourteen Roses on December 6, 2014. Am very grateful and excited to be working with these excellent musicians and wonderful people. Thank-you!

Sienna Dahlen - vocal soloist

Tina Fedeski - flute

Nicholas Dyson - flugelhorn 

Roberta Archibald - flugelhorn 

Mark Ferguson - trombone 

Ryan Purchase - trombone 

Steve Boudreau - piano

Peter Rapson - cello

John Geggie - double bass

Bell & Todd's CenterPeace Mandala

About 10 or so years ago I was visiting my friend Janet in New York City. In a stationer's store I first encountered the work of Bell & Todd in the form of their Healing Mandalas calendar. The "CenterPeace" mandala was a part of that calendar. I still have it, because I just couldn't bear to part with the lovely images at the end of the year, all made up of flower petals. I chose "CenterPeace" as the visual representation of "Requiem for Fourteen Roses" partially because I have loved it for so long. If you look quickly, you see a beautiful geometric image, but if you take the time to look close you see the petals. "CenterPeace" is made completely from roses. I also like it for this project because it's a photo of roses that doesn't look like a greeting card. As it turns out, the artists created the image when they were on a healing journey of their own. I find that the more time I spend with the image in the context of creating "Requiem for Fourteen Roses", the more I find my focus moves from negative feelings associated with the event to a place of wholeness and healing and peace, which is just where we need to be moving after 25 years. What Bell & Todd have achieved with their image is what I am trying to accomplish with the music: not a forgiving and forgetting, but a remembering and acknowledging and a focus shift to community building, seeing the good in ourselves and each other, and recalling why we need each other. Husband & wife team Bonnie Gold Bell and David Sun Todd create healing art sourced in natural objects. In the case of "CenterPeace", they cut rose blossoms from their garden and placed them directly on their digital scanner to create a vibrantly beautiful mandala. Their artistic statement tells us: "Each Bell & Todd image begins with a photograph of Nature, remixed to reveal its inner glory. We use computer software as a tool for this visual alchemy. We often work with sacred geometries to create symmetrical mandalas and spiritual icons. Another style of our work features Nature scenes that open windows into the living world. Every image showcases Earth’s astounding palette and patterns, re-combined with reverence for her spirit. The colors and designs of the arts cover a wide gamut, and yet they all share the essence of joyful wonder."

Below is Bonnie and David's meditation to accompany their mandala.

CenterPeace Meditation

This image is a mandala. That word, which comes from the Hindu tradition, means “sacred space”. Mandalas are balanced symmetrical images with a clear center point. Images like these create a visual focus that supports integration and harmony. When we gaze on this kind of image, our human brains use this pictorial data to help us center ourselves and integrate all the parts of our being into a coherent whole.

Start by taking a few deep breaths. As you gaze on the CenterPeace image, your breath will ease and your body will open, enabling the reception of blessing through your eyes.

This image is created from a photograph of multi-hued rose petals. Take in the colors and textures and patterns made by the petals. Connect with the radiant energy of Nature that comes through the flowers and draw it into your system.

While you are looking at the image, let yourself really feel it. See the CenterPeace image with your entire body from the vantage of your heart, rather than your head. Your eyes may close as your contemplation progresses. No problem. You can still “see” inwardly what is coming to you through the image. Your whole body can perceive the peaceful vibrations coming through this picture. 

As you gaze on the image, hear this message:

On a carmine field, a sphere of petals shines like a pastel sun. Both deep and soft, its rosy contours invite you in. Let the flowers lead you to your own heart-core. Refuge, haven, CenterPeace. May this mandala’s power be amplified by your regard and be a beacon of serenity for the world. 

Image and words © 2000-2011  Bonnie Bell and David Todd

CenterPeace Mandala courtesy of www.bellandtodd.com

NEWS: Project support received from the Corel Endowment via the Ottawa Arts Council

Am feeling blessed, humbled, and grateful to have received project support for "Requiem for Fourteen Roses" from the Corel endowment via the Ottawa Arts Council (formerly the Council for the Arts in Ottawa). Thanks so much! *** From the Council for the Arts in Ottawa's website: In 1996, Corel Corporation elected to consolidate requests for funding in the various local arts disciplines by establishing the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts. The fund would be accessible to individual artists working in all arts disciplines, with 25% of annual disbursements going to those whose work involves new technology and the arts. Through the provision of various services, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa is in touch with the general arts community on a day to day basis. The CAO was deemed by Corel to be the most appropriate body to administer the annual disbursements of the earned interest throughout the arts community that it is mandated to represent. Focusing on the visual arts, a joint venture between Corel and the CAO resulted in a juried exhibition and auction sale of paintings and sculptures by international and nationally known artists as well as those of Ottawa and the National Capital Region (100 kms surrounding Parliament Hill). This took place at the Château Laurier, on October 9, 1996. The event, Corel VIVA! les arts was organized by the CAO and was supported by significant involvement of the City of Ottawa, using many community volunteers. It was generously funded by Corel through both direct funding and provision of services. Corel VIVA! les arts was extraordinarily successful from educational, informational and promotional standpoints. There was a financial return of $30,000.00 made up of donations from Corel and from the dealers and artists whose works sold at the auction. This is the capital upon which the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts is built. The Fund was further augmented by a second fundraising initiative completed in October 1997, and future collaboarations are planned. The Board of Directors of the CAO, having examined numerous options, decided to investigate the appropriateness of the Community Foundation of Ottawa-Carleton (CFOC) as the capital investment administrator. The understanding between the CAO and Corel Corporation is that designated funds are to be deposited with the CFOC, where the principal, being outside the reach of our organizations, becomes a permanent part of our community assets, managed by the CFOC to ensure the optimum return. Interest from the capital will be designated in perpetuity to the CAO for annual disbursements to qualified applicants in our area. The CAO will ensure that no more than a 20% maximum may be retained by the CAO for operational expenditures, while a minimum of 80% of the money will be distributed throughout the arts disciplines in our community.

http://www.arts-ottawa.on.ca/awards/awards-corel-en.php

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a brilliant man of many talents. He wrote poetry, short stories,  songs, novels, plays, essays, and he was a painter. He is perhaps best known for being the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was knighted in 1915 by King George V, but he repudiated his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.

Some of the texts in "Requiem for Fourteen Roses" are from his book, "Gitanjali", which translates to "song offerings".

***

Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.

A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At age sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. He graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and strident nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.

Source: Wikipedia

Who commissioned this work?

When people learn about the existence of this project, I'm often asked "How did this project start?" or "Who commissioned this work?" or some other variation of the question.

I was talking with a friend in late November or early December of 2013, and we were discussing the (then) upcoming 24th anniversary of the École Polytechnique Massacre, and the years since it happened. I said something along the lines of "Somebody's gotta write a requiem for the 25th anniversary."

And then the idea just wouldn't go away, and it percolated and developed in my mind and heart and ears as I went about the rest of my stuff. And after a bit I found I had collected a series of texts that would be appropriate. After another bit I realized that enough of it was sketched out that I could reasonably expect to finish the project, and perhaps I should start talking to people about potentially performing it.

When Sienna Dahlen agreed to perform as the soloist, there was no longer any "maybe" about the project, and I was fully committed to pulling together the resources to perform it. Since then the project has been finding its feet. A venue was secured for the anniversary date, instrumentalists agreed to perform, and poets granted permission for the use of their work as texts. The details just started falling into place, and I continued composing.

So, in answer to the original question, from my perspective it really seems that the work commissioned itself, and it's up to me to keep up with it. It is simply something that must be done. And it's so worth doing.