HA&L 12th ANNIVERSARY
in Partnership with the Art Gallery of Hamilton!
FREE FRIDAY, November 6, 2020:
view screenings in the AGH Pavilion on November 6th or join us online, right here on this page.
CELEBRATING:
HA&L Issue 13.2
No Longer Still In The Land
Mennonite issue
with Guest Editor Grace Kehler
AND
HA&L issue 13.1
The World Out There
with Guest Editors
Alec Follett and Matthew Zantingh
JOIN US! CELEBRATE WITH US!
We’re celebrating the 12th Anniversary of Hamilton Arts and Letters and the publication of HA&L issue 13.1 and 13.2! This year’s launch event will occur online but Contributor presentations will also be screened in the AGH pavilion throughout the day (November 6, 2020 – socially distant seating and protocols will be in effect).
Enjoy music from the DaCapo Chamber Choir, Following the Moonroad, a choral concert composed by Christine Donkin, with texts by Connie T. Braun, George Elliott Clarke, and Lozan Yamolky – guest artist: Miriam Stewart-Kroeker, cello. Guest Editor Grace Kehler in discussion with poet Connie T. Braun and cellist Miriam Stewart-Kroeker. Poetry from Leo Dragtoe. Original songs by Dusty Micale based on the poetry of Paul Lisson. Plus ArtPop’s performance of Roxanna Bennett’s poem The minor chord, first performed at the AGH in 2019. A conversation between writers Daniel Coleman and Geoff Martin on the issue 13.1 article Slave Days in the Queen’s Bush.
NOTE:
HA&L editors, Paul Lisson and Fiona Kinsella, will NOT be physically present at the AGH on November 6. This year we’ll join everyone viewing online!
HA&L at the Art Gallery of Hamilton
November 6, 2020
11:00am – 6:00pm
Free Admission to All Exhibitions! All day Hamilton Arts and Letters Screening in the AGH Pavilion.
Please refer to the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s website for information on Accessibility.
www.artgalleryofhamilton.com
SEE MORE EVENT DETAILS DETAILS BELOW.
HA&L 12TH ANNIVERSARY VIDEO PROGRAM:
The DaCapo Chamber Choir
under the Direction of Leonard Enns
Following the Moonroad
A choral concert composed by Christine Donkin
Texts by Connie T. Braun, George Elliott Clarke, and Lozan Yamolky.
Guest artist: Miriam Stewart-Kroeker, cello.
Video assembled by David Penner.
The DaCapo Chamber Choir was founded in 1998 in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario under the direction of Leonard Enns. DaCapo has commissioned a major and very special work — a half-hour composition by Canadian composer Christine Donkin, reflecting the thoughts and experiences of refugees settled in their new home. Together with three Canadian poets, Donkin has created a wholly compelling, provocative, and deeply satisfying work, a composition that challenges any assumed “neutrality of art” and speaks boldly and profoundly to our present situation as a human family.
Listen >>>
About Following the Moonroad:
Guest Editor Grace Kehler interviews
cellist Miriam Stewart-Kroeker and Connie T. Braun, poet
Discussion of their experience of the composition and its performance.
Listen here >>>
A conversation between writers Daniel Coleman & Geoff Martin
on Geoff’s article Slave Days in the Queen’s Bush
Geoff tells a compelling story that is essential reading in the times we are living. This essay has been widely read and can be found here in issue 13.1, Guest Edited by Alec Follett and Matthew Zantingh. Video to be released in issue 13.2 at HA&L’s 12th Anniversary launch.
Listen here >>>
Leo Dragtoe reciting:
“Everybody In” (*a sonnet to Isolation* courtesy of covid-19)
Leo is a member of the AbleHamilton Poetry Collective. Members are dis/ability activists engaged in promoting dis/ability rights and representation. This poem was first published in HA&L RAVE as part of Hamilton Arts Week 2020.
POETRY >>>
Dusty Micale, Professor of Music at Mohawk College composes songs based on the poetry of Paul Lisson
On November 6th Paul will make three copies of his debut book of poetry available for free giveaway by the AGH, PLUS 1 copy of Re:Creation Stories, HAL issue 12.1 in book form, edited by Johannah Bird.
HEAR it HERE >>>
Dusty Micale and ArtPop perform a composition
based on Roxanna Bennett’s poem “The minor chord”
Commissioned by HA&L and the AbleHamilton Poetry Collective. This piece was first performed live at the AGH in 2019.
Listen here >>>
READ, SEE, HEAR – HA&L issue 13.2 here!
Guest Editor Grace Kehler • Christine Donkin • George Elliott Clarke, and Lozan Yamolky • Leonard Enns • David Penner • Grace, Miriam Stewart-Kroeker • Connie Braun • Jan Guenther Braun • • Maxwell Kennel • Di Brandt • Jonathan Dyck • Connie Braun • The Ca Capo choir • Tanis MacDonald • Casey Plett • Karen Thiessen • Paul Tiessen • Shane Neilson • Joyce Kehler Hildebrand • Peter Johann • Hildi Froese Tiessen • Paulette Dubé • Daniel Coleman and Geoff Martin • Leo Dragtoe • Dusty Micale • Roxanna Bennett • Paul Lisson – Bart Gazzola • Danny Custodio • & MORE to come in HA&L RAVE!
Have a peek >>>
PARTICIPANT BIOS:
HA&L Issue 13.2 Guest Editor
GRACE KEHLER is an Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. A specialist in the Victorian era, she has published numerous articles on the mutually engendering interchange between literature and opera and on the vexed relationships of Victorians with the physical, the sensate, and the evolutionary. Her ongoing research on affect theory and trauma has led her back to her Mennonite origins and to the recent Mennonite literature that witnesses to hurt and pain. Such literature not only attests to various forms of brokenness but actively works to recreate the possibility of communal connections through a process of address and response.
CHRISTINE DONKIN composes award-winning, critically acclaimed music that appeals to a broad range of listeners and performers. Described as “stunning” (ConcertoNet.com), “highly imaginative” (American Record Guide), and having “enormous impact” (The Washington Post), her work is promoted by several publishers and is performed all over the North American continent and beyond.
Christine composes music for musicians of all kinds. High calibre concerts at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Moscow Conservatory are interspersed among frequent performances featuring young soloists, community orchestras, and church choirs. The Toronto Symphony, Symphony New Brunswick, Symphony Nova Scotia, Thirteen Strings, DaCapo Chamber Choir, Elektra Women’s Choir, and the Canadian Guitar Quartet are just a few of the ensembles that have performed her music in Canada.
CONNIE T. BRAUN instructs creative writing, and mentors undergraduate writers and editors, and has published two books of non-fiction and two poetry chapbooks along with journal articles and essays. Much of her writing is grounded in the war-refugee and immigrant experience of World War II, resonant today in her explorations of memory and witness, the silences and language of trauma, the sites of geographical and spiritual displacement and belonging, the pervasive paradoxes inherent in being human, and the relationship between sorrow and hope. Her academic and personal essays, poetry, and reviews, appear in various journals and anthologies, and her poetry has been set to musical compositions. She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets and the Canadian Author’s Association, among other writing associations, and lives in Vancouver.
MIRIAM STEWART-KROEKER is a native of Hamilton, Ontario, where she began her studies at the age of 5. She studied with Paul Pulford and the Penderecki String Quartet at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she received an Honours Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance as well as a Diploma in Chamber Music Performance. She went on to complete a Master’s degree in Cello Performance at McGill University under the direction of Matt Haimovitz. She recently joined the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony cello section in January 2020. On top of performing with various orchestras throughout Ontario, Miriam is an active chamber musician. She is a founding member of the Andromeda Piano Trio, who perform frequently for a number of chamber music series.
DAVID PENNER is a co-partner in (e)stranged Productions where his role is chief video/audio editor. He works, predominantly, in critical video essays on themes from the history of world cinema. He also teaches at McMaster University and was a recent recipient of the McMaster Student Union’s Teaching Award for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He resides in Hamilton with his wife, two children, and golden retriever.
LEONARD ENNS is the founding director of the DaCapo Chamber Choir (dacapochamberchoir.ca) and Professor Emeritus of Music at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo. His work as conductor, JUNO-nominated composer, and choral adjudicator has taken him across Canada, to the US, and to Europe. He was a conducting student of, and graduate assistant to, the late Margaret Hillis for three years at Northwestern University in Chicago. In addition to various other conducting and guest conducting assignments, he founded the Conrad Grebel Chapel Choir and directed it for over three decades, and is the founding and current director of the DaCapo Chamber Choir, now in its third decade. He has recorded six CDs with the Grebel Chapel Choir, and three with the DaCapo Chamber Choir, the third released in November 2018, at the opening concert of DaCapo’s 20th anniversary season. Among various national and international awards as conductor and composer, the following are national awards are representative: in 2010 the DaCapo CD, “Shadowland”, received the Choral Canada Outstanding Choral Recording award, while Enns’ most recent major composition, “This Thirsty Land,” is this year’s recipient of the Outstanding Choral Composition award granted by the same organization.
DANIEL COLEMAN has long been fascinated by the poetic power of narrative arts to generate a sense of place and community, critical social engagement and mindfulness, and especially wonder. Although he has committed considerable effort to learning in and from the natural world, he is still a bookish person who loves the learning that is essential to writing. He has written scholarly books about literature, masculinity, migration, and whiteness in Canada, and he has written literary non-fiction books about his upbringing among missionaries in Ethiopia, about the spiritual and cultural politics of reading, and about eco-human relations in Hamilton, Ontario, the post-industrial city where he lives.
GEOFF MARTIN’S place-based and environmental essays have appeared most recently in The Common, Slag Glass City, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction, and Hamilton Arts & Letters and have been nominated for two upcoming Pushcart Prizes. He is a CNF contributing editor at Barren Magazine and can be found at www.geoff-martin.com, and on Twitter@gmartin9. Originally from southwestern Ontario, he now lives in San Francisco.
LEO DRAGTOE is a Hamilton artist, musician and writer. His work has appeared in Time and Place Quarterly and Hamilton Arts and Letters magazine. His heart beats in rhythm and poetry runs in his veins.
DUSTY MICALE pursued his interest for Classical Music through the study of Composition at the Juilliard School in NYC, and private studies with American composer Stanley Wolfe. Dusty completed a Bachelors of Music from Mannes/The New School in NYC and was awarded a prestigious scholarship for further study at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He later received a position as a “Participating Composer” in the NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop. He recently scored two documentary films, “Prayers of the Ancient Ones,” and “Contemporary Days” and both are in current release worldwide.
Dusty has been ASCAP member since 1989. He has collaborated with other songwriters, teaming up with the best to write and produce. While professional performance, composition, arranging, and recording have been the core of his musical career, Dusty has taught music and piano throughout the years with great passion and enthusiasm. He joined the Mohawk Faculty in 2013 to contribute to the success of his students in this outstanding musical program.
Questions? Email: HAL@HALmagazine.com
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