Platinum

The latter and less traditional option sparked my imagination. Some free-associative thinking about chemical elements and alchemy produced the premise of my piece: a series of miniatures inspired by elements, whose musical characteristics would be transformed by means of musical alchemy into the final movement.

Mercury is, well, mercurial; Phosphorous is luminescent; Iron is metallic, and very heavy; Francium’s most stable isotope has an extremely short half-life, and only one ounce of it exists on earth at any given time; Helium is vital to the operation of MRI machines and for levitating birthday balloons (I have learned that there are large untapped deposits in Western Canada); and Oxygen is both invisible and essential. Platinum is, of course, a rare and precious metal.

Congratulations to Land’s End Chamber Ensemble on their anniversary! The commission of this piece was generously supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

George Fenwick

George Fenwick is a free-lance composer and arts administrator. A native Calgarian, he studied composition with Allan Bell and Quenten Doolittle, and received his B.Mus from the University of Calgary.
He has written works for the concert hall and the stage which have been performed throughout Canada, in France, Germany and the USA, and broadcast on CBC Radio. He has also participated in several multidisciplinary projects.
Fenwick is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. He has received commissions from Land’s End Chamber Ensemble, the UCalgary String Quartet, Kensington Sinfonia, Spiritus Chamber Choir, and the Calgary Youth Orchestra. His works have been performed by a variety of performers and ensembles, including Alberta Winds, Canadian Chamber Choir, and Mount Royal University’s Kantorei.
He has composed music for a variety of theatrical presentations, with companies including the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Alberta Theatre Projects, and the U of C’s School of Creative and Performing Arts.
His score for The Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan was nominated for a Betty Mitchell (Calgary) award in 2009, for Outstanding Sound Design or Composition, and an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award (Edmonton) in 2010, for Outstanding Score of a Play or Musical.