Two commissioned works featured at 25th anniversary concert

For 25 years, the bands and choir of the Cochrane Music Society have been sharing their passion of and commitment to music, culture, and community.

This Saturday, May 11, their silver anniversary milestone will be marked in a spring concert that includes the premiere of two commissioned pieces to help shine a spotlight on Cochrane’s vibrant artistic community.

Nieve Caliente

Jay Michalak, one of Canada’s leading trumpeters and Director of the award winning JazzYYC Youth Lab Band, has composed a Latin jazz piece, Nieve Caliente, for Riverside Jazz.

Jay found inspiration from some of the Salsa greats such as Charlie Aponte, Willi Chirinos, and Gilberto Santa Rosa to create a piece that captures an authentic salsa feel and sound, while following a traditional salsa song form which gives every section of the band a chance to shine.

The name Nieve Caliente translates to “Hot Snow.”

“This piece was primarily written on some of the coldest (-50oC) and snowiest days we’ve ever had here in Alberta. To me Latin music has always been “hot”, he explains. "It captures a fire and passion in the music of the people, and what better way is there to honour such a passionate and amazing group of musicians, who just so happen to live and play through some of the coldest weather on earth!”

Meet Me at the River

Juno Award winner Claude Lapalme (conductor, composer and arranger/orchestrator living in Red Deer) has collaborated with Sonny-Ray Day Rider (composer and pianist from the Kainai Blood Tribe pursuing advanced studies (M.Mus) in music composition at the University of Lethbridge) to create a piece called Meet Me at the River, being performed by the Band on the Bow and Choral Waves.

The Cochrane Music Society has always maintained the “river” theme taken from the town’s location on the Bow River. Sonny-Ray Day Rider is of the Blood Tribe/Káínai (BT/K), part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, whose meeting and trade sites were often at the confluence of rivers, such as the Elbow and Bow.

Claude Lapalme composed Part I, “In This World of People”, to describes how meeting at the river brings everyone together on the same footing.

In composing Part II, “Old Gods”, Sonny-Ray Day Rider was inspired by Earth's earliest history – the Hadeon Eon “before I was a dream”. Pairing the wisdom of western classical music experience with Sonny-Ray’s ability to transform the ritual of his spiritual upbringing into musical structure, nurtures local talent and showcases that Indigenous music exists in rich variety.

By producing this work with composers of this calibre, with reconciliation in mind, Cochrane Music Society has pursued a project that allows them to challenge themselves technically, artistically, and culturally to understand our nation and place within it in a deeper way.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. at the Cochrane Alliance Church and the performance begins at 7 p.m.

Tickets are available in advance here or at the door. Adults $20, seniors/students $15, children under 12 free.

Cochrane Music Society thanks the Bow RiversEdge Campground Society and Calgary Association for the Development of Music Education for their generous support of this project.