CO-COMMISSIONED BY ROCKPORT MUSIC

Composed 2018; 28 minutes

Sri Lankan-born, Dubai-raised, UK- and US-educated Dinuk Wijeratne has based an international career in Halifax, NS, Toronto, ON, and, since 2021, Ottawa, ON, where he is Director of Orchestral Studies and Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa. He collaborates as composer, conductor, pianist and creativity consultant with many musicians from several countries, embracing, he says, “the great diversity of my international background and influences.” 

Dinuk Wijeratne writes: 

This concerto is part autobiographical immigrant story, part response to the Syrian conflict and part exploration of the notion of ‘home.' Kinan Azmeh and I have been close friends and musical travelers since our student days at both the Juilliard School and International House, NYC. Our ‘Art of the Duo’ project – a recital of 
 original music for clarinet and piano – continues to take us to concert venues around the world. For me, our 2009 Middle East tour left an indelible impression, particularly the two concerts in Kinan’s native Syria, in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo.

It seemed natural to me that this piece would become my response to what has transpired in Syria since that time. At the time of writing, the Syrian conflict has claimed over 600,000 lives. Since the uprising began in 2011, over six million have fled their country as refugees and asylum seekers, the Canadian government having resettled over 73,000 Syrians. At the heart of this music is the question of how one might define – or be forced to redefine – the meaning of ‘home.’

The solo clarinet represents ‘the traveler,’ an individual, in turn, either in line or at odds with his/her environment(s). The six episodes of the concerto are designed to run into each other without interruption:

Part I -     Prologue: Foretelling is a dark musical dream-sequence. The clarinet, beginning offstage, is heard in an anguished premonition of things to come.

Part II -    The Dance of Ancestral Ties celebrates a carefree childhood, with its essence deeply rooted ‘at home’ both geographically and socially.

Part III –  Flux destabilizes the traveler’s sense of security. There is a sense of dislocation.

Part IV -   Exile: The salt of bread and rhythm is a desolate response to the essay Reflections on Exile by Edward Said, in which he quotes the poet Mahmoud Darwish. In Said’s words:  “[Exile] is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”

Part V -    In Cadenza: Solitary Traveler, the clarinet is left alone to play a cadenza, or solo passage.

Part VI -   In Epilogue: Home in Motion, the traveler learns to be ‘at home’ everywhere.

“On any given day I never feel fully western or fully eastern,” Dinuk Wijeratne says. “But, if I play or create a piece of music, I can - for a moment - find a sense of balance that otherwise eludes me.”