Episode 17 of the Redshift Radio Podcast features an interview with pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa and composer Rodney Sharman. They join Adrian Verdejo to discuss their latest album Known and Unknown Solo piano works by Rodney Sharman 

Available on Redshift Records: https://redshiftrecords.org/new-releases/tk539/

When composer Rodney Sharman was 21, he swore to himself that he’d never do anything other than music to make a living. For over 40 years, he’s kept that promise. Rodney began composing at age 10 while growing up in the small town of Biggar, SK. As a kid he taught himself to play recorder, flute and oboe, and took clarinet lessons. He made a first attempt at writing for orchestra around age 13, but lacking proper score paper he drew his own and copied it at school. At 15, Rodney began composition lessons with Murray Adaskin in Victoria. Since then he’s become an internationally celebrated composer. He’s won the Kranichsteiner Prize in Germany, the CBC Young Composers Competition and the Walter Carsen Prize, among many others. He’s been resident composer for the Vancouver Symphony, the Victoria Symphony and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He’s closely collaborated with choreographer James Kudelka and film director Atom Egoyan and has a PhD from the State University of New York. He’s an all-around musical mensch who loves mentoring young composers and supporting the work of his contemporaries. Rodney’s instrumental music often blurs distinctions between harmony and timbre. He writes operas and cabaret songs. He loves to explore historical western music (operas by Wagner and Mozart, works by Schumann and Scarlatti), transforming musical artifacts into something new. Rodney remains totally engaged with the sense of possibility that creating music offers – that transcendental experience when the ego disappears and there’s nothing but the music to let him know what to do. 

http://www.rodneysharman.com/ 

RACHEL KIYO IWAASA “Keyboard virtuoso and avant-garde muse” (Georgia Straight) Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa is among Canada’s foremost contemporary music pianists. Rachel’s reputation for fearless performative risk has inspired many of Canada’s most notable composers to write for her, including Hildegard Westerkamp, Rodney Sharman, Jocelyn Morlock, Cris Derksen, Nicole Lizée, Farshid Samandari, Emily Doolittle, Jeffrey Ryan, Leslie Uyeda and Jordan Nobles. Rachel’s work as a recording artist is available from Redshift Records and earsay music. While grounded in the European classical tradition, Rachel explodes expectations of what is possible at the piano, flowering in liminal collisions between artistic genres. Her www.iwaasa.com interdisciplinary adventures include work with artist SD Holman; film director Nettie Wild; playwright David Bloom; choreographers Jennifer Mascall, Idan Cohen and Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg; and multi-media provocateur Paul Wong. With SD Holman, Rachel co-founded the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver, acknowledged as one the top three festivals of its kind in the world. Rachel lives and works on the sovereign unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver, BC. Rachel and Rodney would like to thank SD Holman, David Kohlruss, Ken Gracie and Philip Waddell, Anthony de Mare, David Bloom, David Pay, DB Boyko, Jerry Pergolesi, Jordan Nobles, Ortwin Stürmer, Lydia Kwa, Mark Takeshi McGregor, Peter Eliot Weiss, Sunny Drake, Thalia Myers, The Banff Centre, and each other. Redshift TK539 www.redshiftrecords.org ©2024 Rachel Iwaasa and Rodney Sharman Dedicated in loving memory to Inger Iwaasa, 1930-2020, without whom this album (and so much more) would not have been possible. We gratefully acknowledge the McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund, held at Vancouver Foundation, for commissioning Known and Unknown, and the Canada Council for commissioning support of Opera Transcriptions, Book 3.

https://www.iwaasa.com/

Website: https://redshiftradio.org/
Podcast Produced by Adrian Verdejo