In our 2019/20 Season, we are exploring how "old" can meet "new." This theme runs across our season in many ways, including six short new works by living composers written to complement the programs.
We are delighted to introduce Cecilia Livingston, whose new work for wind sextet will premiere in Gone with the Winds this January.
Tafelmusik: Tell us a little about yourself, and how you started composing music.
Cecilia Livingston: I was born and raised in Toronto and when I was about five years old I started piano lessons with Valerie Weeks (who has performed with Tafelmusik many times, making this commission a beautiful coming-full-circle!) Even when I was so little, she really encouraged me to feel and respond to the music I played on the piano, and to think it was very normal to have a harpsichord in one’s living room. She was my first glimpse of a musical life.
I’ve never fit the typical “young composer” narrative: alas, no baby genius moment, composing my first masterpiece on a Fisher-Price keyboard! I really started composing in university: I was in a music education program, but realized that the composition assignments in my theory classes were what I couldn’t wait to work on. I switched degree programs and by the end of my undergrad I figured this was the direction for me.
Now I split my time between Toronto and London (UK), where I’m composer-in-residence at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. In my spare time (ha ha, a concept unknown to composers!) I like running, eating other people’s cooking, and watching dreadful reality TV that has nothing to do with classical music.
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Keith Lam has been a member of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir since 2012.He was first introduced to Tafelmusik as a participant in the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute from 2009 to 2012. Born in Hong Kong, he can .jpg)
