- Four Movement work for full orchestra
Following a research trip to sites in Europe in August 2019 (supported through a research grant at Queen’s University), Canadian composer Dean Burry composed a four-movement work for full orchestra reflecting on the war art of renowned painter Alex Colville and the experiences of Canadians in the Second World War. The work is approximately forty minutes, tracing the painter’s original path seventy-five years later. The National War Museum is an enthusiastic partner for this project and has agreed to provide images of Colville’s works for the performance.
The work is in four movements and scored for standard large orchestra (double winds, two trumpets, four horns, three trombones (two tenor, one bass), tuba, harp, three percussionists and strings.)
In 2022, Tracing Colville will receive its world premiere at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra. The work will be available for future performances from that time on.
In conjunction with the composition of Tracing Colville, composer Dean Burry is creating a lecture-performance entitled Sketching Colville which explores aspects of the history and context of the piece through an examination of paintings, photographs, anecdotes and diary entries, accompanied by piano “sketches” of the larger work.
The Canadian War Museum has generously granted permission for use of Alex Colville’s art work associated with this project. This will also provide the option of a multi-media component to to performance with the option to project Colville’s inspired work.
In the middle of the pandemic, conductor Evan Mitchell and the Kingston Symphony Orchestra remotely recorded an excerpt from Dean Burry’s upcoming orchestral work Tracing Colville. Highlighting the Canadian Army’s time in Nijmegen Holland in Winter 44/45, the excerpt also features Dutch musicians from the Rotterdam Sinfonia.
Tracing Colville- Art & Research
Alex Colville – Artist
Internationally recognized as one of Canada’s leading artists, Alex Colville (1920-2013) spent most of his youth in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and later attended nearby Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. After graduation he joined the Canadian Army and was appointed a war artist. Upon arriving in London, Colville was stationed with a supply unit in Yorkshire. He subsequently travelled to the Mediterranean, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. In 1946 he returned to Mount Allison as a teacher. Following his retirement in 1963, Colville devoted all of his time to painting. He moved to Wolfville in 1973 and from 1981 to 1991 served as Chancellor of Acadia University.
I. June 6, 1944 – Yorkshire, England
Colville’s two-week training period led to the sketches of mechanics fixing trucks and learning how to drive up the steep green hills of Yorkshire. The music is a reflection of camaraderie, youthful eagerness and the big band music woven through the wartime BBC Radio broadcasts which linked the entire allied front.
II. August 15, 1944 – Côte d’Azur, France
Colville sat at the back a landing craft for the tense night time commando raids which marked the opening moments of Operation Dragoon: the allied invasion of the south of France. The “nocturne” he painted also serves as the inspiration for this movement; ominous, mysterious and murky yet determined.
III. November 12, 1944 – Nijmegen, Holland
The Canadians were task with holding the Nijmegen Salient through the winter of 1944/45. The towering bridge over the Waal River, captured at high cost two months earlier, was a key asset. The “architectural” nature of this movement with its focus on brass and bells (the church carillons of the surrounding villages) is a reflection of one of Colville’s most iconic paintings.
IV. April 29, 1945 Bergen-Belsen, Germany
Colville’s visit to the the Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp less than two weeks after liberation by Canadian and British soldiers left a profound and life-long impression on the artist. The final movement of the work stands as a remembrance for those forever changed by the horrors of that place – the liberated and not insignificantly, the liberators.
Project partners
The commissioning of Tracing Colville was generously supported by funding from the Ontario Arts Council.