Seven years ago, pianist Luciane Cardassi landed in Banff after migrating north from her native Brazil after a stint in California.
As part of her exploration of home, Cardassi, as a Brazilian-Canadian musician, is sharing the second edition of her Going North project at St. Michael’s Anglican Church on Saturday (Jan. 12) at 4 p.m. Tickets are $10.
Going North 2 is a continuation of a project she began in 2010 as a way to explore both her past and present homes through resonant music, poetry and electronics.
The idea, Cardassi said, is to keep her connections with her home in Brazil by inviting Brazilian and Canadian composers and poets, including Banff poet Monica Meneghetti, to write pieces inspired by their cultures, but to share local themes at the same time.
“It is a concert about Brazil and Canada and resonance of the instruments and different colours. As I like to say, it’s not a concert about known melodies. I won’t be singing any tunes people know, but it is about colours and different experiences and certainly beautiful poetry,” she said Monday (Jan. 7).
“Going North is based on my own trajectory as a Brazilian moving north to Canada. It’s like I kept going north and it looks like I stopped. I don’t think I’ll be moving north anymore. It looks like I’ve reached my northern limit,” Cardassi said with a laugh.
While the music is more international in scope, the words are much closer to home, with Meneghetti sharing “From Wapta Ice”, a poem about the Wapta Icefield, the source of the Bow River and another about Myosotis Lake, located near Skoki Lodge.
“It’s very local themes and I imagine that to most people in the audiences will have been one of these places, if not both. There’s this local connection that I thought I would like to find out more about and that I find very interesting,” Cardassi said.
The audience should not expect classic harmonies or traditional melodies. Instead, Cardassi said, come with an open mind and a willingness to be influenced by the music, sounds and poetry.
“If you have open ears and you are open to the beauty of the colours and the poems and the interaction of the electronics, it is a very poetic program and very colourful,” she said.
“It is a matter of people enjoying the piece and letting themselves not expect a traditional experience, although I am playing the piano. It’s not like I’m jumping all over the place. But it is a different use of the piano.”
Cardassi hopes the compositions will inspire the audience to imagine and recall their own experiences in the mountains.
“And that is the other aspect of poetry and music, the poems have words and they are more reverential in that way. When I say ‘Skoki,’ you can imagine the piece. At the same time, for those pieces without the text, the music can still bring you back to a certain place in your life or to a moment that would be very personal.
“That is a very personal experience for each person in the audience and I like that,” she said.
Ronelle Schaufele will join Cardassi on the viola for one piece while Henry Ng, audio production coordinator, film and media, at The Banff Centre, will control the electronic aspect of the afternoon concert.
