The Music
Neptune, Jennifer Butler
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Neptune was the god of water and the sea, and it is thought that it was the planet’s marine blue colour that gave it its name. Jennifer Butler’s Neptune is anchored in a deep three-note chord, repeating like an insistent undercurrent. Over this drone float a limited number of sonorities, in ever changing configurations. The slow tempo, widely spaced registers and long silences conjure up the sensations of great distance, slow orbit, and cold isolation of this outermost planet in our solar system. |
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Jennifer Butler has studied composition with Glenn Buhr, Peter Hatch, Omar Daniel, Keith Hamel and Brent Lee, and has attended workshops with Arraymusic, Pacifc Opera Victoria, the ThunderBay Symphony, the Victoria Symphony, the Kitchner-Waterloo Symphony, and the Penderecki String Quartet. Her music has been performed in Canada and the United States by ensembles such as: the Microscore Project, Four Gallon Drum, Standing Wave, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Regina Symphony Players, the Vertical Orchestra, and the Ad Mare Wind Quintet. Upcoming projects include a new work for Vancouver’s celebrated Tiresias (Mark McGregor and Rachel Iwaasa), and a commission from the Victoria Symphony. |
In 2007 Vancouver duo Tiresias recorded For Dreams of Things that Cannot Be on their CD Delicate Fires, which was nominated in 2008 for a West Coast Music Award. In 2009 Mark McGregor will release his new recording Different Stones which features Jennifer’s work Sky. As both a composer and a performer, Jennifer Butler often collaborates with other artists on multi-disciplinary projects. Since 2002 she has been collaborating with CURV, an experimental interdisciplinary ensemble with composer-performers Kristy Farkas and Marci Rabe. In April 2007, CURV created and performed 20 Silent Words, with Continuum Contemporary Music in Toronto. One of her major artistic influences has been her participation during the past nine summers in R. Murray Schafer’s annual interdisciplinary project And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon.
In September 2004, Jennifer Butler returned to UBC in pursuit of a DMA in music composition. She plans to finish her thesis project, a collage theatre piece exploring different aspects of female creativity, in May of 2009. Jennifer is also an associate composer with the Canadian Music Centre and sits on the executive boards of Vancouver's Standing Wave, Redshift, and Pro Musica.
