The premiere of Unavoidable Happenings, a song cycle on the poetry of Anthony Burgess by Canadian composer and pianist Michael Rose.

The work speaks, with some of Burgess’s trademark humour, of scenes of life over which is cast the shadow of entropy. It is an exploration of life’s unavoidable happenings – and inevitable decay.

Pianist Michael is joined by fellow Canadians Betty Allison, soprano, and Echo Mazur, clarinetist. Anthony Burgess’s Bösendorfer will be used for this performance.

Doors 2pm | Concert 2.30pm | Tickets £12 on the door, £10 advance, £8 concessions

About the performers

Dr. Betty Allison is a soprano, teaching artist, and Professor of Voice at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. A graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio, she has performed more than forty operatic roles and brings nearly two decades of experience as a recitalist and chamber musician.

Her work bridges performance, pedagogy, and research, with a particular focus on singing, wellness, and artistic sustainability. Allison’s research investigates how collaborative practices and supportive teaching models can help sustain healthy and resilient singing careers. She is also preparing a new edition of songs by nineteenth century composer Julie Baroni Cavalcabó, helping to return this rarely heard songs to the concert stage.

Michael Rose, pianist, vocal coach, writer, and composer, has performed in concert with many of Canada’s finest artists and has enjoyed a long association with several leading arts organizations including Toronto’s Opera in Concert and Toronto Operetta Theatre.

Michael’s compositions have been heard in concert across Canada. He has written the librettos and music for three full-length operas. His latest, A Northern Lights Dream, received its premiere by Toronto Operetta Theatre in May 2022 and has since been performed in Halifax and Saskatoon.

Michael lives by the sea in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where he is currently working on several sets of songs.

Echo Mazur is a multi-instrumental free-lance artist who grew up in Saskatchewan but has studied, worked and lived around the world. She loves the vibrant musical scene in Edmonton and has lived there for nearly two decades.

Echo performs regularly with the Edmonton Symphony and has also played with the Saskatoon, Regina and Jersey (Channel Island) Symphonies. Other highlights include a concert with the King’s Chamber Orchestra (London) and a short tour of Canada and the U.S. with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Orchestra.

Beyond doubling on flute and saxes in many pit orchestras, Echo has a passion for world music and has studied the African kora and Balinese gamelan. The latter inspired a six-month trip to Bali to study the gender, a metallophone used in the shadow puppet theatre. These and other exotic instruments have also made their way into some of her compositions such as “Bloom,” a multi-media mandala meditation first performed on the Isle of Wight. The most recent addition is the Celtic harp, a perfect project to begin during Covid.

Presently Echo enjoys teaching privately in her home studio and recently with Concordia University. She is also delighted to lead two community clarinet choirs: The Bonnie Tunes and Reed Revolution.

About Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess is best known as a novelist and composer. He took great pride in writing poetry too. He published his first poems as a teenager in college magazine Electron, and went on to pen hundreds of poems throughout his life, from epic poems to music lyrics. His final work was Byrne, a verse novel published two years after his death.

In 2020, Carcanet Publishing released Collected Poems, edited by Jonathan Mann. This was the biggest volume of Burgess’s poetry, and included translations from the Roman poet Belli and the full text of his verse novel Moses.

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During this concert, we will also play host to the exhibition Elias Canetti, a Jewish Emigré in Britain: People, Places, Impressions 1939-1988. Learn all about this fascinating Nobel Prize-winning author in a one-off exhibition on loan from Didsbury Library and Swansea University.