Esprit Orchestra: Keeping audiences on the edge of their seats

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Esprit Orchestra’s 2024-25 season is titled “The Edge of Your Seat”—but that could well describe their entire ethos.

Established in 1983 by Music Director and Conductor Alex Pauk, the 65-member orchestra is one of the few organizations of its kind on a global scale. It is Canada’s only professional, full-sized orchestra dedicated to the promotion and performance of new orchestral music. Its new season comprises two Prelude Concerts at Toronto’s Koerner Hall in November and February as well as an International Festival made up of five concerts, kicking off in March and taking place at both Koerner Hall and Trinity St. Paul’s Centre.

The programming choices within the season, a mix of well-known names in contemporary classical and young composers, represents the forward-thinking ethos of the orchestra itself, one encapsulated in the opening program on Nov. 27. It opens with American composer Gabriella Smith’s f(x)=sin2x-1/x. “The actual content is not mathematical in its feeling at all,” Pauk says of the piece. “It’s really gutsy and energetic, full of pulse and energy.” Also on the bill is the work of award-winning Danish composer Bent Sørensen and Maki Ishii’s sweeping Fū Shi (Shape of the Wind), a work Pauk calls “gigantic” though he says the whole concert serves to demonstrate “the three different kinds of music that we play.” Esprit’s second Prelude Concert (Feb. 23) features Pauk’s 2005 Concerto for Harp & Orchestra (Erica Goodman, soloist) on a bill with the music of Steve Reich, Henryk Gorecki, and Hans Abrahamsen, and featuring soloists Mark Fewer (violin), Kevin Ahfat (piano), and Wesley Shen (harpsichord).

The Edge of Your Seat International Festival kicks off March 4 with a program of works by Keiko Abe, Caroline Shaw, and Esprit Orchestra Guest Composer Vito Žuraj, whose 2024 Anemoi, a co-commission between the organization and the Berlin Philharmonic, will make its North American première. Such co-commissions, says Pauk, are the norm, not the exception for Esprit. “Boosting our international connections and presence is a big part of what we’re doing.”

The festival continues at the end of March with a concert of works by Sweden’s Lisa Streich, American Andrew Norman, and the Canadian première of Violin Concerto #2 “DoReMi” by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös. “The extent of his involvement with so many ensembles and orchestras in Europe was huge,” Pauk says of Eötvös, who died earlier this year. “For him, it was total immersion in his craft—an example of what you can do, and maybe if you delve into it, how to do it right.”

April concerts feature a mix of established and young composers including Bernhard Lang, Julia Mermelstein, and Quinn Jacobs; the latter will be premièring a new work that is also an Esprit Orchestra commission on April 6. “Commissioning works from younger composers has always been a staple of ours,” Pauk says. “The orchestra started that way, by presenting works by composers who wouldn’t have a chance otherwise to have an orchestral piece commissioned and played. Of course it’s evolved and matured as we’ve gone along, but it’s remained a strong part of what we do.”

That tradition of supporting composers at all stages of their career is encapsulated in Esprit’s closing concert in mid-April, which will see world premières of new works by Canadian composers Nicholas Ma and James O’Callaghan. Ma came to Pauk’s attention when he heard a MIDI demo of his Hijinks, which allowed the orchestra founder to “really hear what the piece would be like performed with an orchestra.” O’Callaghan’s work was a little different. “Many of his past works have been for acoustic instruments and electronics,” says Pauk, “and in this case he asked for, and we’re providing him with, a chance to write for orchestra only. It was something that was a desire of his that we are enabling to come to fruition. It’s a joyous thing to create excitement in a young composer’s mind and inspiration, and for them to see the realization of their work.”

Alongside the Ma and O’Callaghan premières are Unsuk Chin’s work Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ (Alaraph ‘Ritual of the Heartbeat’), which first premièred in Basel under the baton of Ivor Bolton, and the haunting 1980 piece Lonely Child by Claude Vivier for which the soloist will be soprano Sophia Burgos. Pauk has special memories of his old friend Vivier, who was shockingly murdered in Paris in 1983 at the age of 34. “I remember the times I would be at the airport in Montreal, transferring to another flight and I’d call him,” Pauk recalls. “He’d put the phone right onto the piano—he really wanted me to hear what he was composing—to hear, comment, appreciate. There was a purity in his drive to get across what was in his mind—to get it out and communicate it using his unusual, passionate voice.”

Such musical passion, says Pauk, is a big part of what drives Esprit Orchestra. “There is a desire to give everything your very best and I think that that’s key to what this orchestra is all about.”