WindRose popularity surging after award win

Imagine having composers beat down your door to write music for you.

That’s exactly what’s happened since the WindRose Trio’s debut CD Path of Contact won the 2009 Western Canadian Music Award for classical recording of the year.

“It seems that the more we play, the more we have to play,” chuckles oboist Beth Levia. Rounding out the trio is bassoonist Matthew Howatt and St. Albert clarinettist Jeff Campbell.

“We used to have to search for music, but now composers come to us or they write and ask if they can compose for us. It's really super flattering.”

Just recently, Edmonton composer Joseph Li wrote a reed piece for them and Ian Crutchley has put in a grant application to write a composition for the trio. “If the planets line up, we will have a new piece next season.”

But fans don't have to wait for next year. The trio, a mainstay since 2002, is making its city premiere at the St. Albert Chamber Music Recital this coming Saturday at Don's Piano Warehouse, and a John McPherson gem is on the program.

McPherson, a principal trombone player for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra wrote Scared-So, a play on words of the musical joke scherzo. “He originally wrote it for brass band, but rewrote it for woodwinds. It's fun, light-hearted and it has an irregular beat pattern.”

The concert centrepiece is Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu's Four Madrigals, a late Romantic lush work that will be on the trio's second album, which is now in pre-production. “We are only three voices but Martinu is really gifted at making three voices sound like five or six.”

Opening the concert is Polish composer Alexandre Tansman's Suite pour Trio D'anches, a melodic work that Levia predicts will become a WindRose staple.

The trio is also playing Canadian contemporary composer Alexina Louie's Riffs, a technically challenging work based on a collection of notes that creates a jazz or Klezmer feel.

And when one of Campbell's former students gave him a stack of music, the trio discovered American composer George Heussenstamm's Seven Etudes Op. 17.

Opening for the trio is emerging student Megan Propp, a Grade 9 Stony Plain clarinettist. Recital founder Nancy Watt has accompanied Propp on several occasions. She notes the young artist picked up the clarinet five years ago but has had limited public performance opportunities.

“That's why it's so great to give her an audience,” Watt says. Propp will play G.F. Telemann's Ondeggiando of Sonata No. 6 and R.M. Endresen's baroque Spinning Wheel.

A champagne and truffle reception completes the recital.