We were very excited to have Rae Crossman , well known poet on both radio and stage, and Tilly Kooyman, distinguished clarinetist of international acclaim, perform at the Elora Poetry Centre.
Confluence of Words and Music
Poetry of Rae Crossman with Music Performed by Clarinetist Tilly Kooyman
Featuring Compositions by R. Murray Schafer
In this presentation, language and music flow together to evoke misty dawns, forest hikes, and river passages. Listen to bird song, cataract chants, and wind wail. Touch the tip of a young spruce. Read the rough calligraphy of bear marks. See an amber bead of sap lanced with light. Marvel morning.
Living in Kitchener, Rae Crossman writes poetry both for the page and for oral performance. His poems have been published in literary magazines, broadcast on CBC Radio, dramatized on stage, performed and recorded as vocal music, and displayed on transit systems across Canada. Collaborative projects include storytelling, choral compositions, and theatrical pieces set in natural environments.For more than twenty-five years, in canoes and along forest trails, Rae has lived the roles of several mythological characters in R. Murray Schafer’s Theatre of Confluence. He has served as a short story editor for The New Quarterly and has received a Waterloo Region Arts Award for his artistic endeavours across disciplines.
Guelph clarinetist Tilly Kooyman is an active solo, chamber and orchestral musician, with particular interests in contemporary music, interdisciplinary works and sound ecology. She has performed across Canada and toured Japan with the Higashi-Hiroshima Clarinet Ensemble. An advocate for Canadian music, Tilly has premiered many works by Canadian composers at the World Bass Clarinet Convention in the Netherlands, the International Bohlen-Pierce Symposium in Boston, and with various ensembles broadcast on CBC Radio.
Tilly and Rae have frequently collaborated as members of the performance group SlanT, and have appeared together at the Open Ears Festival, Stratford Summer Music Festival, International Clarinetfest, Narrative Matters Conference, Soundstreams, and other events. For three decades they have participated in R. Murray Schafer’s Patria works and drawn inspiration from his call for art to be transformational. “What is the purpose of art? First, exaltation. Let us speak of that.”
The Elora Poetry Centre & Gallery 