Seasons of the Sea weaves together contemporary classical music written by award winning Vancouver composer Jeffrey Ryan with a narrative written and performed by Sahtu Dene / Coast Salish artist, writer, and storyteller Rosemary Georgeson. The work describes the seasons on and by the sea, and the words are inspired by the 13 moon season of the Coast Salish peoples who used the tides and seasons of the sea and the life it brings as their calendar.
Rosemary Georgeson STORYTELLER
Rosemary was the recipient of the 2009 Vancouver Mayor’s Award recognizing her as an emerging artist in community arts. Rosemary has provided outreach and story consultation for Vancouver Moving Theatre’s In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community play and co-wrote and provided cast hospitality for We’re All In This Together: The Shadows Project. She was Urban Ink Productions Community Liaison and worked closely with Marie Clements on the CBC radio drama Hours of Water involving hundreds of participants–decades of women who lived and worked in the drowning west coast fishing industry. Rosemary’s first documentary We Have Stories screened in the fall of 2013 at The Heart of the City Festival and was also part of Indigenous Women In Film Screening/Discussion/Q&A at Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC in May 2014. Rosemary was also Vancouver Public Library’s Aboriginal Storyteller in Residence 2014.
Jeffrey Ryan COMPOSER
Praised for his ‘strong personal voice’ (Globe and Mail), composer Jeffrey Ryan is a four time JUNO nominee and recipient of SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award whose music runs the gamut from orchestral and chamber works to opera, art song, and choral music. Born in Toronto and raised in Fergus, Ontario, he has called Vancouver home since 2002, when he began a five year stint as the Vancouver Symphony’s composer-in-residence, then stayed to be a part of Vancouver’s burgeoning new music community. He remains as fascinated today by the English Bay tides as on the day he arrived.
Joan Blackman ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & VIOLIN SOLOIST
Joan Blackman is the Artistic Director of Vetta Chamber Music. As a violinist, she has been a long-time member of the Vancouver Symphony as Associate Concert master, soloing with the VSO, Victoria Symphony, and the CBC Radio Orchestra. Well known throughout Canada and the US for her chamber music skills, Joan has performed on Music in the Morning, Music Fest Vancouver, the Pender Harbour Music Society Concert Series, The Jeffery Concerts in London, Ont., and the American String Project, as well as the Hornby Island Festival, the Pender Harbour Chamber Music Festival, and the Victoria Summer Music Festival.
Pro bono licensing of this video courtesy of Vetta Chamber Music.