War of Angels

**Nominated for Classical Composition of the Year (Inuit Games) at the Western Canadian Music Awards, 2014**

**Nominated for Classical Composition of the Year (War of Angels) at the Western Canadian Music Awards, 2013**

The production of this CD, “War of Angels” is a part of the Prairie Sounds Imprint of Centrediscs that is administered by the Prairie Region of the Canadian Music Centre.

Intense and beautiful music inspired by the monumental clash of angelic armies, the flight of mythical beasts and the vast expanses of the Canadian arctic. These are the sounds that fill this disc of music commissioned and performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. The audience at the wildly successful New Music Festival in Winnipeg has embraced the music of composer T. Patrick Carrabré for well over a decade. The four works on this disc offer an in-depth sound portrait of the creative partnership between composer, musicians and an audience that ranges from hipsters to veteran symphony lovers.

Works/Tracks

1. Inuit Games (2002) 8:22
Pauline Pemik and Inukshuk Aksalnik, with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Andrey Boreyko, conductor

Symphony No. 1 “The War of Angels” (1996) 26:48
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, conductor
2. I. The War of Angels 7:35
3. II. Beyond the Plains of Battle (St. Joan’s Incantation) 10:41
4. III. …in perpetuum… (Gabriel and Lucifer’s Dance) 8:32

Symphony No. 3 (2003) 17:07
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Andrey Boreyko, conductor
5. I. 4:18
6. II. 7:30
7. III. 5:19

8. The Dragon’s Tail (1997) 9:46
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, conductor

PERFORMERS
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

REVIEWS
“T. Patrick Carrabré’s accessible, modernist music is characterized by angular lines and apt, dissonant sonorities orchestrated with clarity and balance. Inuit Games (2002) is an engrossing work in which Inuit throat singers Pauline Pemik and Inukshuk Aksalnik together weave continuous vocal patterns. Around them Carrabré emphasizes the low and high orchestra registers in mysterious, menacing sonorities. A unique and strong piece. In Symphony No.1: The War of Angels (1996), the opening movement’s fast triplet motion initially struck me as suggesting a finale. But then, shouldn’t wars happen differently in angel space and time? The Winnipeg Symphony brass and winds shine in this work. […] Kudos to Carrabré for his compositions and his work (along with conductors Andrey Boreyko and Bramwell Tovey) for the annual Winnipeg New Music Festival, which has helped composers, orchestra and audiences for contemporary music flourish.” – Roger Knox, The WholeNote

“There certainly is a kind of tribal ceremonial pulse to the music and the two female soloists produce an amazing set of vocalizations unlike anything in western singing.” – Daniel Coombs, Audiophile Audition

“Carrabré’s music, written in an accessible style, is vividly imaginative. Although the works recorded here have their differences, they generally belong to a style I would characterize as early 20th Century Arcadian. They conjure the kind of idealistic, mythical landscapes you find in Debussy and Stravinsky, and Carrabré shares with the latter a preference for building musical structures on the kind of obsessively rhythmic skeletons that developed in mid-century into the minimalism we are familiar with in Philip Glass. […] Recorded live by the CBC at Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall, and mastered by David Jaeger, this is a very well-made CD.” – Stanley Fefferman, Opus One Review

“Carrabré writes to the strengths of the orchestra, which performs his music with vigour and sensitivity. […] The vivid, dark harmonies, repressed intensity, driving rhythms, and an emphasis on percussion that can be found throughout these pieces makes the music strongly compelling.” – J. Drew Stephen, CAML Review