Brush Line

I’ve always been drawn to texts or writings which are fragmented, incomplete - unfinished in some way.  For some years I’ve been informality studying the painting of J.M.W. Turner.  I’m drawn to his seascapes and landscapes, especially to his so-called unfinished paintings - those layered backgrounds with their subtle shadings of ambiguous skies and seas.  In my research I found writings by Turner that appeared in his sketchbooks: though to himself about what he was seeing, many of them in the form of questions.  I use a selection of these as the text for this work.  Brush Line was comissioned by Continuum through the Canada Council for the Arts and the Laidlaw Foundation.  I want to thank conductor Kevin Mallon, the Continuum musicians and mezzo-soprano Marion Newman for their work on my music.

Composer Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York City and lives in Toronto. Her teachers include Allen Shawn in NY, and Rudolf Komorous, Martin Bartlett, John Celona, Michael Longton and Jo Kondo at the University of Victoria. She was Artistic Director of Arraymusic, one of Toronto's major contemporary music ensembles in Toronto, from 1988 - 1993. She is a composition instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her works have been performed nationally and internationally, and she has been supported in her endeavours by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Chalmers Foundation, K.M. Hunter Award, and the Banff Centre.

Linda's music has been recorded by Eve Egoyan, Arraymusic, Evergreen Club Gamelan, Penderecki Quartet, Continuum, Les Coucous Benevoles and on her solo CD, Memory Forms. A new recording of Ballad, a 45-minute work for cello and piano (performed by Andy Smith and Eve Egoyan), has just been released on the World Editions label.

For more information about Linda C. Smith, click here.