Snowforms
Join us!
Join our STN ICE choir for the rare opportunity to sing SNOWFORMS by R Murray Schafer – one of Canada’s most innovative choral compositions.
Our SNOWFORMS project for SATB voices is the second video project of STN ICE – a new choir in the STN family, formed in September 2021 to explore some of Canada’s most exciting and unusual choral music.
All singers are welcome to take part in our project on this mesmerizing composition.
Follow the link below to join this individual project, or purchase it at a significant discount on the project price with a STN Ice Spring Pass or an All Spring Pass.
What does snow sound like to you? Sing it at last as part of STN Ice’s rendition of SNOWFORMS.
Virtual products do not ship.
SNOWFORMS
Snowforms is a fully graphic score, written originally for children's choir in 1983.
New SATB Version
Through special permission kindly granted from the publisher Arcana Editions, STN Ice will be singing a new performance of the piece for SATB chorus, with sopranos and tenors doubling the upper parts and altos and basses doubling the lower part.
In some parts of our rendition all voices will sing together, while in others we will be mixing or separating voices to create special sonic effects.
SNOWFORMS Exploration & Video Performance
Led by STN ICE conductor Kathryn Whitney, of Snowforms project will take our choristers through a series of exploratory workshop/rehearsals themed around sectionals of the piece, our personal experience of snow, and modes of vocal response.
Our project will result in a virtual choir video in which our STN ICE choristers will contributing audio files with some video elements.
How will it work?
We provide four sets of learning materials to help you learn SNOWFORMS: full-choir and sectional rehearsals, exploratory vocal workshops, reading material, and clear backing tracks to help you learn your part.
At the end of the project, our singers will be recording the piece in sections that correspond to our workshop topics. Singers are welcome to submit recordings for the whole piece or for just one or more sections.
We will also be asking our choristers to submit videos of their own local experience of snow, which will be incorporated into our video.
Meet R. Murray Schafer
R. Murray Schafer was one of the most innovative and influential Canadian composers of his generation. Known throughout the world for his exploratory, challenging, and beautiful works, he was a champion of music as a sonic art, dedicating his professional life to creating a large body of works exploring sound, sound production, sonic experience, and musical expression in all its forms.
Expelled from the University of Toronto Faculty of Music in 1955 for insubordination, Schafer went on to become one of Canada's most prolific and decorated composers. Recipient of the Canadian Music Council Medial, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix Honneger, the Glenn Gould Prize, the Molson Prize, the Louis Applebaum Composer's Award, the Governer General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, and numerous honorary doctorates, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2013.
We hope you will join STN Ice for the rare opportunity to sing one of R Murray Schafer's most delicate and beautiful pieces - SNOWFORMS.
Virtual Field Trip
Forecasting Avalanches in the Rocky Mountains
As part of our SNOWFORMS project, the choristers of STN Ice will be travelling on the STN Virtual Choir Tour Bus to a remote region of Canada to learn more about the powerful mystery of snow.
Our Snowforms singers will be travelling virtually to the Kootenays - a mountain range within the Rockies in Western Canada known for its pristine wilderness, world-class ski hills, back-country adventuring, and ... avalanches.
We are thrilled to announce that the STN tour bus will stop in Kimberley, BC, where we will spend an hour with one of Canada's top Snow Scientists - Simon Horton, a professional Avalanche Forecaster who works with Avalanche Canada.
In addition to being an adventurer with a special love of back-country (far off-piste) skiing and snowmobiling, Simon is an expert in frost, having completed his PhD on Hoar Frost at Simon Fraser University, where he was also a postdoctoral researcher working on the art of making predictions about avalanches using data from the snowpack.
Simon will spend an hour with the choir talking about the main categories of snow, what we know about them, and what we don't.
He will also share tales of snow from his many sub-zero adventures, and will offer a very special insight into what a Snowform might look or sound like from someone who has dedicated his life to snow.