MUSIC
The Icy Crystal See Through No Name Man
When: Saturday, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Where: Wood Recital Hall, 907 Pandora Ave.
Tickets: $12 children, $15 adults at 250-386-5311 or at the door.
Growing up in pre-war Holland, artist Henri van Ben-tum found his imagination sparked by simple things like frost.
More than 40 years since he wrote a fairy tale inspired by the same icy formations, the Victoria resident will see it performed on stage in the new realm of musical storytelling, thanks to a team of local musicians.
Music Corner presents The Icy Crystal See Through No Name Man for the first time Saturday.
"The message is that imagination is so important," said the author's wife and representative, Natasha van Bentum. "It's based on his memory of seeing these extraordinary, beautiful frost images on windows. He imagined insects, birds and butterflies in those images."
The story centres on a young boy who meets a transparent man on his way home from school. The man promises the boy he'll knock on his window at bedtime.
"He appears and creates all these birds and creatures on the window pane," she said.
Van Bentum, now 83, is an established visual artist - audiences may remember his Organiverse series. But Natasha said he has also written several children's stories. He wrote The Icy Crystal See Through No Name Man while living "on a shoestring" in the 1970s.
At the time, he spent a lot of time travelling, and when he couldn't carry art supplies, he turned to writing. The work was also inspired by the birth of his first and only child, Maya, she said.
Music Corner trombonist Marcus Hissen called the work a "huge" première for the group, which also includes his wife and clarinetist Becky Hissen, violinist Christopher Taber and percussionist Masako Hockey. Music Corner seeks to engage young children and introduce them to new musical instruments through musical storytelling. Past performances have included Peter and the Wolf and Aesop's Animals.
"We play these instruments at a professional symphony level, and then we act out the stories as we go," he said.
They approached Vancouver-based composer Anna Hostman to write the score. Though the target audience is children, the musicians do not play "down" to them.
"It's not children's music - it's not the Wiggles or the Doodlebops - it's real classical music," Hissen said.
Hostman, who was also former composer-in-residence with the Victoria Symphony, incorporated influences from one of Ben-tum's friends, the late com-poser Ann Southam.
"Anna uses rhythmic groupings in different patterns that are meant to recreate the imagery of ice and snow crystals, with their regularity and their symmetry," he said. In some ways, they are also very convoluted.
"So sometimes, the instruments blend in a way that's playful and complex, which is what we're trying to capture in the whole story," he said.
The performance is complemented by a visual projection headed by Hissen's brother, Helmut, who has designed software that projects a visual interpretation of sound, based on fractals. It builds on a base image drawn by Hissen's 10-yearold niece.
"Down the road, I'm hoping that we can perform this program more often at various winter festivals," Hissen said.
The performance also involves a few other special additions - including four Thai pitched gongs, flown in from Vancouver especially for the concert, Natasha said.
