"The Great War Sextet: Canadian War Poetry with Trombone & Strings" is presented as a conceptual journey through the experience of war and its effect upon the sojourning artist; an Unknown Soldier. This album is dedicated to all artists whose earthly existence was cut too short and too young by war. This album also honours those who bring to bear their creativity in response to tragedy and human darkness.

This piece premiered on November 9th and 10th, 2019, one hundred and one years since the Armistice concluded the great crucible that was World War 1. Featuring performances and poetry readings by bass trombonist Felix Del Tredici, a string quintet that includes Marianne Di Tomaso, Essie Liu, Maxim Despax, Jake Klinkenborg, and Vicente Garcia, under the baton of Pratik Ghandi, with original music by Benjamin Harry Sajo, we bridge the temporal chasm and find common ground for our own anxious age.

The sheer trauma of those four long years (1914-1918) cannot be underestimated: the collapse of colonial empires, the mechanized forces of industry upon our natural inclinations for peaceful existence, the shattering of lives and nations into so many pieces. In the arts, we see the fiery birth of Modernism and the blocs of jaded fatalism and cynicism squared off against an unyielding Romantic optimism regarding the potential of the twentieth century.

In this work, the 21st-century composer draws direct inspiration from these men, touched in some profound ways, by the Canadian experience during wartime. Some died upon foreign fields, while others survived, but they were all literary men who found beauty and rare pleasure in words and their arrangements:

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD;
Sapper W.W.E. Ross, Canadian Expeditionary Force Signal Corp;
Private H. Smalley Sarson, Canadian Field Ambulance;
William H. Ogilvie, Army Remount Service;
Second Lieutenant Bernard Freeman Trotter, Leicester Regiment, 11th Battalion; and
Corporal Adelard Audette, 22nd Battalion.

Their writings, and those of others, can be found in the book "We Wasn’t Pals: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the First World War", edited by Barry Callaghan and Bruce Meyer (Toronto: Exile Editions Ltd., 2001).

What makes their poetry relevant today goes beyond their historical value. At the time of this album's release, the world is far from peaceful. Wars continue to be fought, lives sacrificed for noble and petty causes, whether at the barrel of the gun, a natural disaster, or in the microscopic combat against pandemic viruses. In each of these poems and their musical settings, you will find reflections on how profound and wistful a sense of the transience of life can be. You will experience how it's still possible to have visions of sincere innocent beauty in a hellish landscape; a realization of brotherly kinship between nameless combatants. But, most importantly, considering how most of these poems were written either on the Front or in a hospital, there is an unparalleled purity of feeling stemming from the deepest truth's of these men's souls. These poems are triumphs over their trauma, proving the creative pen is ultimately the champion over the sword.

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:

The solo prelude tracks include the individual artist biographies for the members of the string quintet, which can also be read at www.greatwarsextet.ca

THE CONDUCTOR:

Pratik Gandhi is a freelance conductor based in Toronto. He is currently music director of the Rouge River Winds and of Soup Can Theatre, resident conductor of the Toy Piano Composers ensemble, and vice-chair of the Concert Band division of Musicfest Canada. Over his career, Pratik has premiered dozens of new works by Canadian composers, and is credited as conductor on two albums of contemporary music: Bekah Simms' impurity chains, released on the CMC's Centrediscs label, and the Toy Piano Composers' self-titled debut album, from Redshift Records. Pratik is excited to be working on a work such as The Great War, which explores Canada's cultural history from an important time in its formation. Pratik holds degrees in conducting and percussion from the University of Western Ontario.

THE BASS TROMBONIST & NARRATOR:

Felix Del Tredici is a Canadian trombonist specializing in the performance of contemporary and improvised music. The New York Times has described him as an “extraordinarily versatile trombonist” whose performances are “disturbing yet fascinating” and “hair-raisingly virtuosic”.

He has performed with Klangforum Wien, Musikfabrik, Ensemble Signal, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Kollektiv Totem, Lucerne Festival Academy, Ensemble Polywerk, No Hay Banda, and So Wrong It’s Right.

Felix is a Research Associate at MATRALAB, a research space of inter-x art where he collaborates with dancers, actors, sound artists, composers, and tech-garment designers on new works of art involving the trombone.

THE COMPOSER:

This is Benjamin Sajo's debut album, and exemplifies his current post-modern sensibilities, one that celebrates and finds inspiration from the histories of humanity upon the current states of the world.

Since completing his Masters of Music from McGill University in 2013, and his Undergraduate in Music Theory and Composition from the University of Western Ontario--now known as Western University--he's lived and worked across Canada. He now lives in Ottawa with his wife and pets, working as a teacher for the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and as a freelance composer.