The Five Seasons
A twenty-five minute abridged version of The Five Seasons was presented on May 31, 2024 at the Kirk Hall in Victoria BC. Choreograph by Paul Destrooper, Ballet Victoria. This presentation is funded by The Gail O’Rirodan Climate and The Arts Legacy Fund through the Victoria Foundation.
The Five Seasons celebrates Spring, Summer, Harvest, Fall, Winter, and our journey from birth to death.
The Five Seasons is a seventy-five-minute music /theatre/dance work in five movements for mixed voices, vocal soloists, orchestra, contemporary dancers and projected images. The texts reach back as far as 6th Century China and forward, around the planet, to the present day.
The creation of The Five Seasons was made possible with a very generous gift from internationally celebrated Haida Artist, Robert Davidson and an equally generous award from the Music Division of the Canada Council for The Arts.
In the Spring of 2010, I was sitting with my granddaughter and reading to her Rachel Carson’s A Sense Of Wonder. As I was reading this book, published in 1965, it struck me that Ms. Carson’s remarkable ability to express the beauty and the healing power of the natural world is still relevant to my granddaughter and indeed still relevant to all of us on Earth.
After I put the book aside, I felt compelled to build on Ms. Carson’s inspirational messages by setting out to compose The Five Seasons.
‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts… There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.’
(Rachel Carson-A Sense of Wonder)