Performance

The Contemporary Art Gallery and Griffin Art Projects present Wetland Senario, a composition by Stephen Morris and Mark Timmings based on the strict musical transcription of field recordings from a marsh on Saturna Island, British Columbia. The award-winning ensemble musica intima will perform the piece at both venues, which originally debuted on Saturna by The Saturna Singers.

The performances pay heed to the tiny wetland at a crucial time in its history: environmental reports state that frogs and songbirds are disappearing; at the same time, the drones of airplanes and other human-made sounds are increasing. The composition’s formal purity emphasizes transparency, truth and fidelity in its approach to the soundscape. Engaged in ritual, Wetland Senario blurs the boundaries between choir, audience, and local environmental phenomena. The true performer is the wetland; presenting a collective awareness of our shared, if endangered, acoustic environment.

Presented in partnership with Griffin Art Projects and musica intima.

Biographies

Mark Timmings is a multidisciplinary artist who explores perceptions of place by appropriating data and enfolding them into the domain of art. He creates works that intimate an infinite and vital web of interconnecting natural cycles and human patterns by transforming field observations and aspects of science into aesthetic considerations and contemplative experiences. He lives and works on Saturna Island, British Columbia, where he is a member of the local community choir.

Stephen Morris is a scholar specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music for lute and viola da gamba. He holds a Bachelor in Music and Masters in Music Education from McGill University, and a Bachelor in Education from the University of Toronto. In 2004, he received a PhD in Music History from the University of Washington. Morris has taught music at McGill University, the University of Washington and Agnes Scott College.