The first faculty concert of the season at Coquitlam's Place des Arts next week will be a whirlwind journey to four continents.
Clarinetist and teacher Johanna Hauser will lead her audience around the world, stopping first in Armenia to hear the folk dances from composer Aram Khachaturian.Hauser will perform the piece with Reg Quiring on violin and his wife, Rosemary O'Connor, on piano.
Next, Hauser will land in England with O'Connor to performRalph Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song, a work originally set for cello and piano.
Hauser will then pair up with Quiring for Ofer Ben-Amots' Cantellations, a sombre tribute to the Israeli community.And finally, her chamber music tour will conclude in Asia withBright Sheng's Tibetan Dance for clarinet, violin and piano.
The latter piece, written in 2000, inspired Hauser to put together her Global Classics concert. Recently, she was buying sheet music at Long & McQuade when Tibetan Dance sprung up. Not knowing when - or if - she would ever play it, Hauser eventually began to structure her faculty recital around the work.
"I found it fascinating how his ethnic roots fused with western classical musical," she said of Sheng, a Chinese-American composer, conductor and pianist who is now on faculty at the University of Michigan.
Hauser said she picked the piece from Israeli-American Ben-Amots - now a music composition and theory teacher at Colorado College - because it reminded her of the Jewish folklore sounds she heard as a child while at the synagogue.
By contrast, Vaughan Williams' English tune offers "such a sweet melody" while Khachaturian "is one of the titans of Soviet music."
"It has been really, really interesting to put this program together. You can hear so much of their native countries in their music," Hauser said.
Hauser has her bachelor's degree from Vassar College and a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She started her career in New York City, performing with groups such as Dance Theater of Harlem,Bel Canto Opera, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, The Group for Contemporary Music, The Queens Symphony and The Queens Symphony Woodwind Quintet.
Tickets to Global Classics are $15/$13 on Saturday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Place des Arts (1120 Brunette Ave., Coquitlam). Call 604-664-1636 or go online at placedesarts.ca to reserve a seat.
