Langley music pioneer Ian Hampton launches new book with concert
The launch for 'Jan's Quodlibet: A Year in Music' will feature performances by the LCMS Senior Orchestra and other faculty.
LANGLEY — A Langley music school is hosting a free launch this month for a new book by its artistic director emeritus and a fellow award-winning author.
Langley Community Music School will hold the event for "Jan's Quodlibet: A Year in Music" on Saturday, Oct. 24, from 7 to 9 p.m., school principal Carolyn Granholm announced.
The book is by LCMS artistic director emeritus Ian Hampton, a cellist, composer and storyteller, and former LCMS faculty member Barbara Nickel.
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"Who knew that Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin were friends and tennis partners?" Granholm said, describing the book's contents.
"That Winnaretta Singer, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, was a musician who had a relationship with Virginia Woolf? Ian Hampton not only shares his own story but celebrates Canadian musicians such as gay Quebecois composer Claude Vivier who was murdered in Paris in 1983, Haida composer Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson and Chinese-Canadian composer Alexina Louie."
Granholm explained the book is meant to delight, entertain, and enlighten with tales of little-known composers, instruments, characters in music history, and insider stories of a working musician's life.
It is told in the voice of Jan, the third-person narrator of Hampton's first book, "Jan in 35 Pieces," which was a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize and the B.C. and Yukon Book Non-Fiction Prize.
The evening will include book readings interspersed with performances of music by Stravinsky, Casals, Milhaud, and Bach.
Performers will include the LCMS Senior Orchestra and a cello ensemble under conductor Joel Stobbe, LCMS faculty Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann of the Bergmann Piano Duo, and fellow LCMS faculty pianists Alan Crane and Holly Duff.
The book, recently released by Ronsdale Press, will be for sale, with Hampton and Nickel available for signings.
The free event requires no tickets or pre-registration and will be held in the music school's Rose Gellert Hall at 4899 207 St. in Langley.
With files from Langley Advance Times