Chlorisflora (2022)
from the composer
It was a true pleasure to take part in The Primavera Project and to spend time with both wonderful paintings. The impulse for Chlorisflora comes from the scene to the right in the frame, where the wind of Zephyrus transforms the nymph Chloris into the goddess Flora. This is kind of metamorphosis, where a radical change takes place but the core remains, is wonderfully musical. I was also drawn to Charline Von Heyl’s transformation of the Botticelli, where her profoundly different painting style depicts the same subject and figures. I enjoyed thinking about how this was akin to finding 21st century colors and textures on the cello, an instrument that, like the Botticelli, has been with us to marvel at for hundreds of years.
Enormous thanks to Matt Haimovitz and everyone involved in The Primavera Project.
bio
Brian Current studied music at McGill University and UC Berkeley (PhD). His music, lauded and broadcast in over 35 countries, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music (USA), the Premio Fedora (Italy) for Chamber Opera, and a Selected Work (under 30) at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Brian’s pieces have been programmed by all major symphony orchestras in Canada and by dozens of professional orchestras, ensembles and opera companies worldwide including his Carnegie Hall debut with the American Composers Orchestra in 2005. His music appears on ten commercial recordings, including three albums devoted exclusively to his works. The Naxos recording of his opera Airline Icarus earned him a 2015 Juno Award for Best Classical Composition of the Year. Current is also an in demand guest conductor and regularly leads orchestral programs of contemporary music. He has championed nearly one hundred works by Canadian composers. Brian has been the main conductor of the Continuum Ensemble since 2011 and has guest conducted with symphony orchestras and ensembles in Canada, the USA and Italy. Starting in 2019-2020 he will begin as co-director of New Music Concerts (NMC) of Toronto. Since 2007 Dr. Current has been director of the New Music Ensemble of the Glenn School at The Royal Conservatory. In 2016 he won the inaugural Azrieli Commissioning Competition, at $50,000 the largest of its kind in Canada and one of the largest in the world, and in 2018 his Shout, Sisyphus, Flock won the Jules-Leger Prize for New Chamber Music.