NEWmatica is a riveting, site-specific, and interdisciplinary concert of new music and modern tap dance, where the venue itself is played as a musical instrument.
Held in the towering 26-storey Mill at the Britannia Mine Museum (a National Historic Site), NEWmatica celebrates the power of percussion.
Vancouver-based musicians Fringe Percussion (Jonathan Bernard, Martin Fisk, Brian Nesselroad and Daniel Tones of Maple Ridge), soprano Heather Pawsey, and contemporary tap dancers Danny Nielsen and Dayna Szyndrowski showcase their individual musical expressions – and where they intersect– through rhythm, melody, harmony, text, and audience participation.
“Whenever possible, we love to engage our audiences through active participation in our concerts,” says Heather Pawsey, artistic director of Astrolabe Musik Theatre.
“For NEWmatica, we’ve invited members of the public, through a series of workshops, to join us and literally play the Mill as a musical instrument itself in a series of musical motives used as transitions throughout the evening.”
This one-of-a-kind presentation will feature the music of iconic American composer John Cage (Third Construction; forever and sunsmell) as well as Canadian composers André Cormier (Tableau de Backyard), Jocelyn Morlock (Darwin’s Walken Fish; Train) and internationally acclaimed Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (Tantrika), in celebration of his 80th birthday.
The Britannia Mine Museum's Mill (one of the last remaining gravity-fed concentrator mills in North America) was chosen as a venue because of its cathedral-like height, soaring into the air with 14,416 window-panes. Its long and reverberant acoustic, punctuated by splashes of water trickling down its rock-face walls, allows for spatial placement that enables unamplified voice and tap to seamlessly integrate with the larger forces of a percussion quartet.
Steel beams and girders, round wooden platforms, concrete floors, and found objects provide ample and varied opportunities for the public workshop participants to play the Mill as a percussive instrument itself.
SHOWTIME
NEWmatica plays May 25 at 7:30 p.m. at the Britannia Mine Museum on the Sea to Sky Highway. Tickets at brownpapertickets.com or in person at the mine museum. Dress Advisory: As the Mill is unheated, please dress warmly, with footwear suitable for uneven terrain.