- E D G A R S K A
R I K S -
General Music Director
ENSEMBLE ALEATICA – 2007
©2007-06-27
late 20th Century in Riga
Edgars Kariks – was born in New Britain of Latvian parents. After a happy childhood with experiences ranging from his first memories of life in a geologically volcanic and culturally Stone-Age New Guinea highlands environment to experiences of a generously benevolent secondary education in tropical Queensland with interests and opportunities as diverse as rowing, literature, architecture and military aviation, he eventually completed his formal academic studies in the discipline of music.
As recipient of an Australian University Post-Graduate Research Award he received his Master’s degree in Music Performance from Australia's oldest alma mater, the prestigious University of Adelaide. At seventeen years of age he had already been a scholarship recipient for advanced orchestral technique and repertoire studies as a flautist in the Australian Broadcasting Commission's National Training Orchestra in Sydney – a protege of the famed Robert Miller. At age 27 he completed his orchestral conducting studies on a Yehudi Menuhin-chaired Young Musician's Trust of South Australia Scholarship under the avuncular guidance of charismatic Israeli maestro Elyakum Shapirra.
He also played principal flute in the Queensland Philharmonic Theatre Orchestra for three years while in the orbit of renowned Austrian conductor, Bruckner specialist and total Vegan, maestro Georg Tintner.
As a youthful and aspiring
orchestral conductor he obnoxiously imposed himself on various authorities and
created many of his own opportunities...directing the Elder Conservatorium
Orchestra and the University of Adelaide Chamber Orchestra, forming
the music group Masterplayers of Australia in Sydney and the New Music
Ensemble in Adelaide. As chief conductor of the 6th Latvian Youth Song
Festival in Sherbrooke, Canada, he conducted the inaugural International
Latvian Youth Orchestra and Chamber Choir. He later founded the
Latvian Festival Chamber Orchestra, performing across Australia, and was a
guest conductor of the Australian Philharmonic Orchestra. As principal
conductor of the Orchestre de la Jeunesse Lettone, he performed with the
orchestra in Toronto, Boston, and made his New York debut in St Bartholomews
Cathedral on Park Avenue.
His repertoire is an eclectic mix of classical works ranging from the Brahms Symphony Nr 1 and the Beethoven Overture to Egmont through to the second Shostakovich piano concerto, Brittens' Variations of a Theme of Henry Purcell, from Rossini overtures to the controversial Symphony No. 4 by Talivaldis Kenins...and even a little out of the box with works by John Cage and Morton Feldman. He has also commissioned and premiered music by composers such as Diana Sautelle, David Gallasch, Ralph Middenway and Georgs Pelecis. His favourite natural musician today is Bjork.
He served as principal guest conductor of the Janis Ivanovs College of Music Orchestra in Rezekne on its inaugural post-Soviet tour of the province of Latgale. As director of the Brisbane-based modern music ensemble Hollandia Nova Contemporary Music Group he held a parallel position as principal guest conductor of the Brisbane Concert Society Orchestra and resident conductor of the City of Redcliffe Choir.
With the breakdown of the Soviet Union and in supporting the renewal of independence and transition for the people of the Republic of Latvia he relocated to Riga in 1994 where he has also appeared as guest conductor of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and the Latvian Youth Orchestra and worked successfully but all too briefly with the String Orchestra of the Daugavpils College of Music. In further support of the re-emergence of Latvia as an independent nation, he took a deliberate sabbatical from music and served for three years as Training Program Director with the Peace Corps/Baltics development program of the United States of America, and later on while recuperating from major leg surgery served with the Information and Public Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Latvia.
Having established the Kariksway International Award in Musicology he diversified his academic interests and to date has presented more than 75 seminars on Baltic themes at the University of Latvia, presenting papers at international conferences on many different aspects of music, music research and sociological questions. He is on the adjunct academic staff of the University of Latvia and is a member of the academic board of the Master of Baltic Sea Region Studies programme. In his research work, he focuses on the question of Baltic music as a transplanted culture.
At 52 years of age he is the author of three symphonies, one ballet, and numerous works for unaccompanied instruments. While mostly self-taught as a composer, the focussed process (over a study period of five years) of delving into the life and aesthetic of the Canadian composer Talivaldis Kenins and his rich French mid-20th Century cultural heritage had some deep influence on his own compositional output. His somewhat autobiographical ballet La Vie Arcadienne is based on the imagery of the poet John Keats in his Ode on a Grecian Urn. Kariks' style is eclectic...employing occasional Baroque rhetorical gestures, borrowing from Classical harmonic structures, allowing for Jazz-style semi-improvisatory manipulations and crossing through dimensional barriers into anti-gravity contemporary musical sound textures as in his piano cluster work Moonscape. There is always an element of logic-in-hindsight in his music and in fact if you trace the sectional development of his works from the end to the beginning (always travelling forward but backwards at the same time) you will note that the development and connection of ideas is in fact pre-determined not by the first measures of the music, but by the final measures. This is in full accord with his essential and personalised ego-centric Daoist philosophy and Kariksway™ of Living.
Kariks’ first symphony The Stream of Consciousness reflects the increasing array of technological possibilities for composition, recording, and experience available in our time. His depiction of present, past and future through the same music in a changed time-space has been described as being extremely insightful. "In this music the past defines the present, and much of the present is spent seeking to recapture or re-experience idealized moments from the past. The future is significant to us inasmuch as it resembles an idealized mental image we form of it in the present. The past lives on in the present as memories, and the present will in turn become the past. Hearing music that was meaningful to us at some past moment can allow us to relive that moment again. In an era that measures time in nanoseconds in linear fashion, Kariks offers this perspective on time’s interconnectedness over a longer view of things.
Not surprisingly, Kariks has spoken of the work in terms of Yin and Yang rather than Sturm und Drang. Life, someone once said, is what happens to you while you are waiting for something else to happen. This music, one might paraphrase, also happens to you while you are waiting for something else to happen.
Kariks’ symphonic music stands in the stream of neo-Baroque, essentially tonal. Although often labeled as minimalist, his work does not on the whole reflect that distinctive feature of true minimalists, namely the slow change of individual elements over a lengthy period of time. Kariks’ work is perhaps better classified as neo-renaissance, since it not only focuses on the interaction of individual lines in harmonic and melodic counterpoint, but actually lacks time measures, thus making it a form of modern plainsong for orchestra, but not lacking in harmonic elements. Kariks does not shy away from creating music that is genuinely beautiful and enjoyable, simply for the sake of being modern or fashionable." *
His symphony Nr. One-and-a-Half, Wake for the Great Latvian Bearslayer, is a portrait of the persona of Spidola from Rainis' Fire and Night ...with aural imagery transposed from 13th century Terra Mariana to downtown Rome in 2007. Essentially tonal, it is an example of aleatorically controlled nine-part counterpoint on an original Raga sustained for twelve minutes...each minute representing one year of his life in Latvia since transplanting himself in 1994. Kariks' second symphony, Spidola's Lament, is a portrait in sound of his delightful God-Daughter and employs a mix of French impressionist colours and an Indo-Chinese sound pallete with Confucian-Daoist as well as Shinto melodic influences clearly evident. By coincidence, minutes BEFORE the actual premiere performance in december 2006 of the work, it was publically attacked and denounced by a self-proclaimed polemic writer as being a Roof shattering non-symphony...no doubt a calculated publicity stunt. The techniques employed are, however, reminiscent of the music of Maurice Ravel and some now dated ideas by La monte Young c. 1964 as outlined by Pauls Dambis in his book 20. gadsimta muzikas vesture: Celi un krustceli. – Riga: Zvaigzne ABC, 2003
His other music is mostly for solo instruments...exploring their unique sonorities and unaccompanied sound possibilities. "Each of the pieces of The Suite of three works for flute reflects his unique musical poetics. Baltic Cirrus is a flute solo, enticing in its multi-form and impressionistic tonal images. Vocalise of the Blessed Spirit , inspired by memories of his New Guinea birthplace, is an intricate dialogue between voice and flute, endowed with a specific coloration by melodic lines comprised in a pentatonic / wholetone scale inner dialogue. Candle was conceived as a flute solo cadenza in a jazz style, playing out various emotional nuances while reflecting the composer’s underlying image- a candle flame that barely perceptibly sways in the wind and slowly dies out, surrendering its brilliant light to an unfathomable spirit." **
After an accident on Baltic ice in early 1999, a subsequent erroneous medical diagnosis and negligent golden staphilococcus poisoning in a Riga hospital, he underwent several leg operations and consequently became somewhat physically deformed ... he can no longer walk without mechanical assistance...but is neither an invalid nor considers himself to be disabled. He considers this all to be a most profound case of Deus ex Machina. Now that his system is finally cleared of the bacterial poison, he is dynamically reformed and vital in his expressive body energy and eye communication...something for which he owes much gratitude to his most significant early mentor, the late maestro Georg Tintner.
His presence on stage and in recent personal appearances of all kinds, particularly in one of his favoured roles as Resident of the Republic of Latvia has been described as charismatic and speaks eloquently on behalf of those less able. His devotion to their cause in the promotion of the improvement of Quality-of-Life for those who are unaware of the options is an integral part of his continuing mission as a successful Performance artist.
His personal Way and inner discipline is the Way of Dao...a direction he considers, at fifty-two years of age, to be the most honest for him of the many possible paths of ascent and fellowship.
In 2007 he is General Music Director of the Ensemble Aleatica which is based at the University of Latvia under the generous auspices of the Latvian Association of University Professors and Scientists.
His Fourth Symhony (Nr 3) is presently on the drawing board and the premiere performance by Ensemble Aleatica is scheduled for 23 December 2007.
• * Prof. James McGrath, Butler University, Indiana USA
• ** Janis Kudins, Latvian musicologist
