The Brandon University Orchestra, Concert Choir, Chorale and Symphonic Band will join forces with students from local high schools to perform music by T. Patrick Carrabré. Honouring Pat’s significant contribution to Canadian music, twenty-five years at Brandon University and his sixtieth birthday, the program will include a number of works that have never been performed for local audiences. The pow wow group Spirit Sands Singers, led by Michael Esquash Sr., will join the BU Orchestra and Choirs in Creation Stories, originally written for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Cellist Leanne Zacharias will also take a solo role, in front of the Symphonic Band in Prairie Sky—a piece the group premiered at the Whistler Music Festival in 2013.

Zacharias will direct the Orchestra, while Andrée Dagenais will direct the Concert Choire and Chorale. The Symphonic Band will perform under the direction of Wendy McCallum.

“I’m very honoured that my colleagues and our students are coming together to perform some of my bigger pieces,” says Carrabré. “These works have been heard in larger centres and some have been broadcast nationally, but to have them performed here at home will be really special for me.”

The first half of the program will feature the BU Concert Band. The Dragon’s Tail and a revised version of Poseidon’s Trident will be heard alongside Prairie Sky. Poseidon’s Trident was commissioned by the Westman Honour Band, but has since been revised. The second half of the program will be devoted to Creation Stories. Written while Pat was composer-in-residence for the WSO, the piece celebrates the diversity of world cultures, by including text and music that reflected how many different peoples have “remembered” the creation of the world. While Pat wrote most of the music, he also tried to allow for some shared space, with sounds that would otherwise not be possible on the symphonic stage—this meant writing parts that make sense for the orchestra, while leaving space for musicians from oral cultures (not notated) to collaborate in the making of a complete soundscape.

The concert will take place in the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 4. Tickets are $10 and are available at the School of Music Office or at the door.