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Heather Schmidt
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A Review of Heather Schmidt's 2007/2008 Season |
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Saturday, 17 May 2008 00:00 |
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MGMG is delighted to provide this 2007/2008 season update for virtuoso pianist and composer Heather Schmidt (www.heatherschmidt.com). The season began with a highly successful live broadcast from the Glenn Gould Studio to celebrate what would have been Glenn Gould’s 75th birthday. CBC Radio commissioned 10 of Canada’s finest composers to write solo preludes and fugues based on the musically usable letters in Gould’s name. Heather performed her own composition “Twelve For Ten”. In October Heather performed in Quebec with duo partner cellist Shauna Rolston as part of Canada’s prestigious Piano Six/Piano Plus. This was followed by her performance of her 4th piano concerto “Phoenix Ascending” in Texas and a solo recital in Pennsylvania. November was devoted to recordings: the first for Naxos of the rarely heard solo piano music of Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, another of Heather Schmidt compositions for cello and piano featuring Heather and cellist Shauna Rolston.
The 2008 year began with a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C+ in Montreal followed by a trip to St Petersburg, Russia to attend the premiere of her Flute Concerto. On January 26th, BRAVO aired “Synchronicity” a one-hour film by RedStar Films about Heather, her music and her remarkable artistic relationship with cellist Shauna Rolston. In February Heather traveled to Northern Ontario and again performed Mozart’s No. 21 C+ piano concerto. She also gave a solo recital “An Evening with Heather, Fanny, Clara and Friends” featuring the piano music of Heather Schmidt, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Clara Schumann.
Much to Heather’s delight, the rest of the 2007/2008 season is no less hectic. In addition to conference presentations, master classes, adjudicating responsibilities and attendance at premieres of her compositions, she will be performing duo recitals with cellist Shauna Rolston in British Columbia and Ontario. She is especially looking forward to her Toronto performance of her Piano Concerto No. 3 for chamber orchestra and piano and the Bach Piano Concerto in f minor with Sinfonia Toronto. Once the current season winds down, Heather looks forward to a busy 2008/2009 which includes recitals in Calgary’s Celebrity Series and the world premiere of her Piano Concerto No. 5 “Ammolite Concerto” with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. |
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CBC Performance Anxiety Interview Receives Amazing Response |
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Friday, 17 March 2006 00:00 |
On February 24, Heather Schmidt was interviewed by Eric Friesen on CBC's Studio Sparks. The topic was Performance Anxiety. Heather spoke of her own experiences and her present commitment to addressing this issue head on through her new foundation the "Optimal Music Performance Institute" (www.optimalmusic.org). The response to the interview has been overwhelming and demonstrates that performance anxiety is a real problem at every level of performance. More importantly, it is becoming increasingly apparent that performance anxiety is being treated from the standpoint of the symptoms, for example by the use of Beta-blockers, rather than the causes. According to Dr. Schmidt, such solutions can affect the performer's ability to perform at their best. In contrast, her approaches provide a natural solution to the causes of performance anxiety and empower the performer.
[Editor's Note: Dr. Schmidt has graduate degrees in composition and in piano performance, as well as in psychology. A copy of her Studio Sparks interview can be found on the CBC website at: www.cbc.ca/studiosparks. After accessing the site, simply go down to the section called Musicians and their Health and follow the links.] |
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World Premiere of Phoenix Ascending a Resounding Success! |
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Saturday, 17 December 2005 00:00 |
CPO celebrates Alberta talent
Kenneth DeLong, For The Calgary HeraldIt is not every concert that features the music of three Alberta composers. Even more rare is the opportunity to see all three taking their bows before a large, cheering audience. This, however, was what was witnessed at Jack Singer Concert Hall on Saturday night as the CPO presented a concert in celebration of Canada Music Week. On hand to lead the CPO in the all-Canadian, mostly-Alberta concert was conductor laureate Mario Bernardi, the grand old man of contemporary Canadian music. The concert was also a celebration of various anniversaries, including the 50th anniversary of the founding of the CPO and the 25th anniversary of the establishing of the Calgary branch of the Canadian Music centre. By happy coincidence, it was also Bernardi's 75th birthday. The music on the concert spanned 40 years and included three generations of Alberta composers, including Malcolm Forsyth, now in retirement, who taught the U of C's Allan Bell, who in turn taught Heather Schmidt. This passing of the compositional torch could be heard in the consistently colourful approach to the scoring for the orchestra, a distinctive feature of all the works presented. The program opened with Forsyth's Jubilee Overture, a happily titled piece, considering the occasion, composed before Forsyth took up residence in Edmonton…… Of particular interest was the Fourth Piano Concerto of Heather Schmidt, entitled Phoenix Ascending. Schmidt a double-threat musician, is principally a composer, but she is also a brilliant virtuoso pianist. Despite its surface dissonances, Schmidt's new concerto strikes a popular tone. Filled with bravura passages, big chords, pounding bass octaves, and delicate filigree passagework, it speaks the language of the romantic piano concerto, especially of the sort familiar from movie scores. The concerto is sure to find favour with audiences who respond to the big gestures of romantic concerto tradition, and the composer is a powerful advocate for her work, her pianism fully equal to the considerable demands of the music…. Two works by Allan Bell concluded the program, the first entitled Serenity, a short tone poem sensitively blending modern techniques and a delicious lyricism. The concluding Symphonies of Fire showed Bell's more extrovert side, the framing movements filled with jazz-inflected chords and exciting, driving rhythms. Published: Sunday, November 27, 2005 Review
Canadian Celebration, Heather Schmidt, piano.
Mario Bernardi, conductor.
© The Calgary Herald 2005 |
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World Premiere of Symphony No. 1 "Manufactured Landscape" |
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Saturday, 17 September 2005 00:00 |
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On Saturday May 21, the Hamilton Philharmonic under the direction of Maestro Michael Reason performed the world premiere of Heather Schmidt's Symphony No. 1 "Manufactured Landscapes". The bold and convincing performance of this stunning work was received with enthusiastic and sustained applause from the audience -many patrons leaping to their feet at its conclusion "Manufactured Landscapes" is a substantial three movement work which runs just under 40 minutes. Prior to its performance, Ms. Schmidt provided some insight into the reason behind the title. "This symphony was inspired by the photography of renowned photographer, Edward Burtynsky, specifically, a series of photographs known as Manufactured Landscapes." When I first saw the photographs in this collection in their full-scale size, I was immediately struck by their power, beauty and originality. The photographs of "Manufactured Landscapes" include scenes of quarries, mines, railways, oil refineries, recycling plants and ship breaking facilities. These photographs capture the grandess of human advances in technology and industrialization, the destruction of these advances upon nature, and the unique and unexpected beauty that arises from the man-made landscapes themselves. The angles, the colour palettes, and the images themselves cannot adequately be described in words. The music in my symphony does not portray a specific photograph. Instead, I attempted to shape the music in a way that would evoke many of the emtotions, sounds and colours that I feel and see when looking at these remarkable photographs. Some of the thoughts that were foremost in my mind as I composed this symphony were the process of industrialization, man's desire and struggle to constantly strive towards higher levels of achievement, the beauty of nature in its pure untouched state, and the superimposition of technology upon nature. Although the photographs of "Manufactured Landscapes" were the original inspiration for this symphony, the music goes beyond this starting point and transcends the details of specific photographs or philosophies of technology and nature. I believe that audiences who are familiar with the photography will understand the connection, and audiences who are not will be carried through the music on their own path of sound and landscapes. MGMG Note: Symphony No. 1 was commissioned by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and its performance celebrated the culmination of Ms. Schmidt's highly successful three-year tenure (2002-2005) as composer-in-residence with that orchestra. The symphony was recorded by CBC (David Jaeger and crew) for broadcast on Two New Hours (CBC Radio Two) in the fall of 2005. |
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