John Burge is a JUNO Award-winning composer and a passionate advocate for Canadian music who has a strong affinity with writing for string instruments. All of the works in this recording were commissioned and premiered by the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra. Opening with the joyous and celebratory Sinfonia Antiqua, the mood shifts to an evocative and impressionistic atmosphere in Forgotten Dreams, while One Sail captures the compelling power of poetic imagery. The Upper Canada Fiddle Suite blends tradition and nostalgia with entirely original inventiveness, and concludes an album that perfectly represents Burge’s eloquent and deeply expressive compositional style.

John Burge is a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and his outstanding work as a composer over the years was recognised in 2013 with a Queen’s University Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship. He is renowned for his choral music and, while he is best known in Canada, his works have been performed throughout the US and Europe.

John Burge’s music deserves the widest possible appreciation and this release with the finest of soloists together with the excellent Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra provides an ideal point of entry for those discovering his work for the first time.

Principal flautist of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) of Canada since 1992, Joanna G’froerer enjoys an exciting career as an orchestral player, chamber musician, soloist and educator. For Naxos she has recorded Saint-Saëns’s Music for Wind Instruments (8570964), and is the flute soloist on Rodrigo’s Complete Orchestral Works, Vol.8, which features the Concierto pastoral (8557801).

Canadian cellist Rachel Mercer has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across five continents. American Record Guide wrote she plays ‘with polish, sensitivity, verve, and beautiful tone’ for her recording Sounds of Our Time (970212) as part of the Mercer-Park Duo.