Ventus Machina
Ventus Machina is a professional woodwind quintet based in southeastern New Brunswick. 2024 will be the group's 14th season, and that’s a long time for a musical group to stick together! It means we are an established chamber music group, with a healthy reputation in all of Canada and some recognition from the rest of the world too. Membership in the group has evolved over the years, and as of 2024, I am the only remaining founding member!
We had a giant change this past season when two of our founding members, oboist Christie Goodwin and bassoonist Patrick Bolduc, moved away to Ontario for work. I thought that might be the end of the quintet, but it turns out I was wrong, and I'm so happy about that! Our new members are super excited about working hard and achieving both short-term and long-term playing, touring and recording goals.
Ventus Machina has released two full length albums – In the Weeds, released in 2017, and Roots, released on the Leaf Music label in 2021. In 2022, we released a third, visual album, Marcher a l'Infini, the music of Denis Richard. All of these are available on streaming services and on YouTube.
We all play in Symphony New Brunswick, and the quintet plays as part of the symphony Virtuoso series. We produce at least three unique programs each year, most of which we tour regionally. We perform a lot of newly written music that composers have written specifically for us. James Kalyn, our clarinetist, is a master arranger and almost every one of our programs involves new arrangements by him. Our programs are usually centered around a theme and often involve a guest artist, who is not always a musician.
We all teach music in some capacity. Daniella Tejada Cortes (oboe), Jonathan Fisher (horn), and Neil Bishop (bassoon) are all Sistema teaching artists. James Kalyn (clarinet) is a full-time professor at Mount Allison University (MtA) and I (Karin Aurell) also teach at MtA part time. We like to spend time working with students in school band programs around the province, in both anglophone and francophone school districts. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we had to take a break from working in the schools, so at that point we figured out how to play covid-safe shows at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. We thought that work was so important that we have kept it up ever since!
As I'm writing this, we are finishing up one of the highlights of our year, the adult chamber music retreat weekend that we put on every July at Mount Allison. In a few hours, 23 happy campers will perform the music they have been working extremely hard to put together over the last few days.
What led you to the creation of Ventus Machina?
Two of our founding members, Christie Goodwin and Patrick Bolduc, had come to New Brunswick as core players of Symphony New Brunswick. Part of their mandate as core players was to perform chamber music for the symphony series. Since the woodwind quintet is the most established chamber music configuration for winds (like the wind version of the string quartet) they knew, they would want to form a woodwind quintet.
Meanwhile, I (Karin Aurell, the flutist in the group) was teaching at U de Moncton and I knew there were new musicians in the province, and that they would want to start some sort of group. There was some funding available at that time from U de M to do concerts and workshops in the francophone school districts, so I approached Christie and Pat and it all went from there.
What stimulates you most about your practice as a group?
Personally, what stimulates me the most is new projects! As the grant writer of the group, I'm always looking ahead to plan next season and the one after that. I love the excitement of working with composers who are writing new music for us. We work with guest artists a lot, and working with specialists from all kinds of different fields is incredibly inspiring. Two guests who have made a particularly big impact on me personally are birder Alain Clavette and Elsipogtog elder Hubert Francis.
How has living and working in New Brunswick helped and/or inspired you on your journey?
Living and working in a small province has positive and negative sides. In some ways there are fewer opportunities, for sure. But I think that people here are more open to collaborations, and to throwing themselves fully into a project. The kind of commitment that the quintet members have to the group would be hard to achieve if we were all trying to make ends meet in Toronto. We're still scrambling to make ends meet in New Brunswick, but I think the group is higher priority for all of us than it would be in a big city.
People here are so open to collaborating with us too. We've worked with classically trained musicians like Christina Haldane and Monette Gould, pop and folk singers like Danny Boudreau, Troiselle and Christian Kit Goguen, and the amazing Ray Legere (bluegrass musician extraordinaire!). We had a chance to work with legendary Acadian song writer Denis Richard before he passed away and were able to both record a visual album and tour extensively with a program of his music over a number of years. Birder Alain Clavette who is New Brunswick famous as “that CBC bird guy” is going to work with us for a second time in the fall of 2024, and his enthusiasm and knowledge about birds has been infectious for us all. And then there is Hubert Francis, Elsipogtog elder and one of the early indigenous rockers, who has been so gracious and willing to share a stage with us. My world will never be quite the same again after having worked with Hubert.
What are your sources of inspiration?
Being in nature, either in the woods or out by the Bay of Fundy. We live in an amazing little corner of the world! Birdsong. I'm inspired by my quintet colleagues and their commitment to the group and to every project. And I find our guests incredibly inspiring to work with. And I get inspiration from our audiences, when our work makes someone smile, teaches them something they are excited about, or touches them in some way.
How does your creative process unfold as you create a piece?
This is James Kalyn, clarinetist and arranger for Ventus Machina. The answer to the question above varies considerably depending on the initial impetus for the project, and probably has a more pragmatic than poetic answer. If I am creating a musical arrangement for Ventus Machina, it is likely the response to the needs of an upcoming program. For instance, now, in the summer of 2024, I am working on two new arrangements, with very different approaches. One is of a song by Hubert Francis. Hubert sent a recording of him singing and playing the song on his guitar. From that I only have a few weeks in which I have to transcribe the song (figure out the chords and the melody), notate it (the singer/songwriters usually don't need to notate their songs for themselves, but a woodwind quintet can't work like that!), then try to create an interesting arrangement that both honours the original song and hopefully adds another dimension. If I'm working with a new collaborator, I will tend to be pretty conservative at first. With Hubert, we have performed together enough that I feel I can be free to add some twists and turns.
The second project I'm working on right now is an arrangement of the traditional tune She's Like the Swallow. This is for quintet alone. For these types of arrangements, I like to let the tune roll around in my head for several months. Ideas and endless variations pop up now and again, and eventually some form takes shape. In my manner the final product is usually a new composition that incorporates the original material but is very far from a plain rendering. Listeners can hear examples of this on our albums and YouTube recordings in numbers like Blackbird, Circle Game and Goldberg Variegations.
What is your long-term vision and what do you hope to achieve?
We have just hired two new members, bringing the average age of the group down considerably. The next few years will be a building period for us. It will be a few years before we attempt another album length recording for instance. We also have some work to do to figure out the considerable administrative duties of running a quintet. What we have now is a ton of enthusiasm for learning new music, for playing new programs, and for touring! We all want to take the quintet home, which means Colombia (Daniella), Newfoundland (Neil), Sweden (me), British Columbia (Jon) and back to Ontario (James). We keep talking about new recording projects as well, especially video recordings.
What have you learned about yourself and New Brunswick's artistic community through your work?
Resilience! And being open to new ideas even if they bring you out of your comfort zone.
What do you think is the impact of artists' work on communities?
I think art is what makes communities! The art doesn't have to be made by professional artists, but when professional artists get involved in community building, they can become real leaders.
Describe what you are most proud of in your career.
That's a hard one, I've had a long career in music, and I think that is something worth being proud of in and of itself. Being one of the founding members of Ventus Machina and having the group grow into the established ensemble it is now, is one of the things I'm most proud of for sure.
What advice would you give to people who want to make a career of music?
Remember the craft. As professional musicians, there are so many things that we have to learn in order to navigate the music business, but I think it's really important to keep sight of our own craft. Whatever genre of music you are performing, make sure that your level of professionalism and your attention to detail about your own playing is always at the centre. And then of course, keep track of the big picture – music brings joy and meaning to people's lives! Being a musician means nothing unless you are touching the lives of your listeners.
