Department of Music announces New Collaborations concert

The University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Music is excited to announce a unique concert involving performance faculty, as well as select members of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. Billed as New Collaborations, the exciting event also represents the first Saskatoon performance of the newest Department of Music faculty member, Véronique Mathieu.

The event will take place on Friday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Convocation Hall, and is free and open to the public.

Mathieu joins the Department of Music, in the College of Arts and Science, as holder of the David L. Kaplan Chair in Music. She has performed as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician throughout Asia, Europe and South America, as well as South Africa, the United States and Canada. She is a prize-winner of the Eckhardt-Gramatté Contemporary Music Competition (2012) and the Krakow International Contemporary Music Competition (2010), and is a three-time winner of the Canada Council Bank of Instruments Competition.

Mathieu has extensive undergraduate and graduate teaching experience in Canada and in the United States and has served as the director of the strings division at the University of Kansas School of Music. Other significant roles include visiting teacher at the Toronto School for Strings and artist-in-residence at the Festival International de Musica Erudita de Piracicaba in Brazil.

The David L. Kaplan Chair in Music was made possible by the significant financial support of Department of Music alumni Xiaoping (Bob) Xu and Ling Chen. It is named in honour of Xu and Chen’s former music professor, David Kaplan.

Kaplan was the head of the Department of Music for nearly 20 years. He played several instruments, composed numerous pieces of music and conducted orchestras and bands, including the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. In recognition of his influence, Kaplan was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2002 and was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 2006. He passed away in 2015 at the age of 91.

The Sept. 28 concert will feature works by Kaplan and by Claude Debussy, and will conclude with a performance of the suite version of Stravinsky’s L’historie du Soldat. Also of note is that the original theatrical premiere of L’histoire was on Sept. 28, 1918—100 years to the day in advance of the New Collaborations concert.

Related Articles