Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Anne Manson, Music Director

MCO 6 / IN THE COMPANY OF BIRDS
2:30pm, Sunday, April 12
Winnipeg Sonora Voices
Anne Manson and Valdine Anderson, conductors

Media Partners: Winnipeg Free Press and Classic 107
Hotel Partner: Inn at the Forks

Manitoba Chamber Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, The B.A. Goodman, M.E.M. Goodman and Dorothy Jean Goodman Foundation, Richardson Foundation, and The Winnipeg Foundation.

First violin
  Jeff Dyrda, Concertmaster
  Barbara Gilroy
  Heather Stewart
  Mina Dinic
  Miona Milovanović

Second violin
  Rachel Kristenson, Principal
  Liudmyla Prysiazhniuk
  Mona Coarda
  Sarah Harrington
  Clair Tang

Viola
  Pamela Fay, Principal
  Jennifer Thiessen
  Margaret Carey
  Michaela Kleer

Cello
  Fanny Marks, Principal
  Bery Barthol Filsaime
  Patrícia Vanuci
  Déverson Correia

Double bass
  David Fay, Principal
  Nenad Zdjelar

Piano
  Leanne Regehr Lee

The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra concert series and offices are located on Treaty 1 Territory and the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anishininewuk, and Dakota Oyate peoples, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. Our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation. We are grateful to the traditional caretakers of this land.

Concert etiquette: please silence and reduce brightness on phones and devices. Recording concerts is not permitted. Please use appropriate intervals for washroom breaks. The MCO strives for a scent-free environment to protect those with allergies. The MCO is a mask-friendly environment.
 

Please note that there will be no intermission

Ola Gjeilo
Song of the Universal (12 minutes)

Kevin Lau 
A House Covered With Dawn (MCO commission, 20 minutes)
  I. A House That Stands In My Heart
  II. A Burst of Sudden Wings at Dawn
  III. What Robin Told Me
  IV. To a Robin
  V. Piping Robin
  VI. I Dreaded That First Robin
  VII. There Is Another Sky

Astor Piazzolla
The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (25 minutes)
Jeff Dyrda, violin
  I. Verano Porteño (Summer)
  II. Otoño Porteño (Autumn)
  III. Invierno Porteño (Winter)
  IV. Primavera Porteña (Spring)

Program subject to change
 

About Winnipeg Sonora Voices

Winnipeg Sonora Voices (formerly known as Pembina Trails Voices) is an award-winning auditioned choral program offered to children and young people ages 5-28 in Winnipeg. The largest city choral program of its kind, WSV’s family of choirs has served the Winnipeg community for over 35 years.

Recent performing highlights include the world premiere of Sid Robinovitch's Jonah with the MCO in 2022 and a guest appearance with the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir performing Sir Paul McCartney’s Ecce Cor Meum in 2024.

About Valdine Anderson

Valdine Anderson is world-renowned for a career that spanned over two decades as an international soprano soloist. Working with all the major orchestras and composers in the world, Valdine has toured with the London Sinfonietta, Germany’s Ensemble Moderne, France’s Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and more.

Valdine is a regular juror for Canada Council for the Arts, a sought-after adjudicator for provincial, national, and international music competitions and new music coach. Most recently, Valdine is the Artistic Director and Consultant of Winnipeg Sonora Voices. She has been on faculty at the University of Manitoba as sessional voice instructor, chamber music consultant, and masterclass clinician for over ten years. Valdine maintains a private voice studio in her home.

About Jeff Dyrda

Canadian violinist Jeffrey Dyrda has performed across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, appearing with leading orchestras including the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Appointed Assistant Concertmaster of the WSO in 2022, he joined the NAC Orchestra in 2024. A former member of the Rolston String Quartet, he won First Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition. Dyrda is also an active educator and chamber musician, and performs regularly at major summer festivals.

About Kevin Lau

One of Canada's most versatile and sought-after composers, and recipient of the prestigious 2025 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize, Kevin Lau has been commissioned by some of Canada's most prominent artists and ensembles. His work has been performed internationally in countries such as the USA, Denmark, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and South Korea. A prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, ballet, opera, and film music, he served as Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 2012-15; to date, he has produced eight works for the TSO. He has composed three original ballets for companies including the National Ballet of Canada (Le Petit Prince), National Arts Centre (Dark Angels), and Bravo Niagara! (Kimiko's Pearl).

Kevin's creative output, often inspired by the fantastical lens of childhood, is unified by a fascination with flow, and the search for deep connections amidst surface diversity - connections that serve as a metaphor for the reconciliation of seemingly fundamental differences. 
 

I. A house that stands in my heart, Jean Laroche
II. A burst of sudden wings at dawn, Francis Ledwidge
III. What Robin told, George Cooper
IV. To a Robin, William Francis Barnard
V. Piping Robin, Annette Wynne
VI. I dreaded that first Robin, so, Emily Dickinson
VII. There is another sky, Emily Dickinson

When I was approached by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with a project that would pair the string ensemble with the Winnipeg Sonora Voices, my imagination leapt immediately to setting text about birds…specifically robins. Perhaps it was the time of year (I began sketching this piece in March of 2025), or the fact that my infant son, whose name is Robin, was on my mind quite a bit. Musically dramatizing the symbolic connection between robins and the arrival of spring (and with it, the promise of renewal and rejuvenation) proved both an obvious choice and one that was hard to resist.

The inner movements of this seven-movement song cycle are all about robins. As there was no shortage of poems on the subject, I devoted a lengthy period to simply reading and soaking in the literary imaginations of others, eventually choosing texts that pleased my ear and that I felt would create a structurally and emotionally compelling arc. The second and third movements (set to poems by Francis Ledwidge and George Cooper, respectively) are both scherzos: one in swashbuckling compound metre, and the other in a brisk, rousing 4/4. These texts are vivid portraits of flight, song, and the delightful frenzy of nest-building, and I have tried to reflect these snapshots with a musical language that is by turns exuberant and whimsical.

The fourth poem, by William Francis Barnard, is weightier (and by far the longest of the seven). Its reverence for the robin’s “secret glee” is tinged with melancholy, and the music expresses the poet’s longing for the robin’s inner strength with varying shades of light and darkness. This is followed by the briefest of the poems (Annette Wynne’s “Piping Robin”), whose invocation of spring’s arrival is set (somewhat counterintuitively) to a gothic, Elfman-esque fanfare. A noticeable stylistic shift into murkier waters occurs in the sixth movement (set to a typically enigmatic text by Emily Dickinson); here, the robin’s joy only serves to deepen the poet’s sense of grief and alienation.

In March 2025, my wife and I returned to our home in Ottawa after spending six months in the hospital, where my son had just received (and was recovering from) a life-saving liver transplant. The bewildering transition back into the rhythms of ‘normal’ life was eased, somewhat, by my reading of Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space,” a treatise on architecture and its meanings. This work inspired me to bookend my song cycle with contrasting poems that deliberately share similar musical grammar; the first about the sacredness of the “house” (as a metaphor for the familiarity of home), and the last about a paradisical space that lies just beyond the shores of our perception.
 - Program note written by composer Kevin Lau

-
Spring is a time of renewal. Here at the turning of the seasons are MCO and Winnipeg Sonora Voices, expertly led by Valdine Anderson. Together, we celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of the new year.

What better way to begin tonight’s program than with an impassioned call to universal peace and harmony? Ola Gjeilo sets the brilliant poetry of Walt Whitman in Song of the Universal, an uplifting anthem to humanity’s ability to transcend its material conditions and strive for the stars. It may sound naive to us, but for Whitman, regardless of the innumerable sufferings humanity suffers, there dwells within everything “the Seed Perfection,” which in the choir attains heights of sensitivity and expression far beyond the simple written word. As the piece ends, we are left with the unwavering certainty that this seed will, one day, blossom into an unending orchard; a paradise where no one will be hungry, no one will feel fear.

As we survey this wondrous green country, we spy from afar a sprightly flock of robins. These are the inspiration for our next piece, a newly commissioned choral cycle from Kevin Lau. A House Covered With Dawn is filled with the playful robin, acting as the motif around which the cycle explores themes of joy and grief, alienation and fulfilment, exuberance and hope. Lau recounts the circumstances in which he finished the work, a very real moment of uncertainty and fear in his family:

In March 2025, my wife and I returned to our home in Ottawa after spending six months in the hospital, where my son had just received (and was recovering from) a life-saving liver transplant. The bewildering transition back into the rhythms of ‘normal’ life was eased, somewhat, by my reading of Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space,” a treatise on architecture and its meanings. This work inspired me to bookend my song cycle with contrasting poems that deliberately share similar musical grammar; the first about the sacredness of the “house” (as a metaphor for the familiarity of home), and the last about a paradisical space that lies just beyond the shores of our perception.

It can be easy to ignore the particulars of our lives in our search for meaning and belonging. However, it is precisely the things around us which define who we are and where we belong. Astor Piazzolla does just this in his dialogue with Antonio Vivaldi. In The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, Piazzolla takes as his foundation the timeless Four Seasons of Vivaldi and uses it to explore the  daily routines and seasonal textures of his native Buenos Aires. Beginning with the Buenos Aires Summer (which coincides with our winter; things work differently in the southern hemisphere!), the joyful rhythms of tango underpin this love letter to Argentina.
 - Program note written by Lukas Sawatsky