Cadillac Moon Ensemble

Composer spotlight: Tim Hansen and Nicholas Deyoe

We’re just a few days away from our Dark Circus concert on Friday! In preparation, we’ve asked some of our composers to talk about how they interpreted the Dark Circus theme and their process of writing for CME.

Here’s Nicholas Deyoe on his piece systemic:

I juggle for your amusement, for your distraction

I seem harmless, even attractive at first

I dig deeper into you

You system thrives because of me

You depend on me

I mutate as soon as you identify me

I am your ringleader

I am deceptively meek

I inspire awe with my super(sub)human feats of …strength?

I am a(n) con(ex)tortionist?

I tame wild beasts,

I quietly manufacture new creatures you have never imagined

I am hopelessness

I am optimism

You don’t know me

I am infection

I am systemic


And here’s what Tim Hansen has to say about D’Aquino’s Flea Circus:

I love circus music. I always have. When I think of circus music, I think old school. I think of a boozed up, ramshackle, barely-held-together group of misfit musicians bleakly lurching their way through dark waltzes while a family of Italian trapeze artists hurl themselves around high above their heads. I think of years of roaming from town to town in a series of decrepit wooden caravans, being cautiously welcomed by the townsfolk long enough for the performers to set themselves up, do their thing, and then get the hell out of town. I think of the “other-worldliness” that circuses never fail to evoke - this whole bizarre world of bright colours and sideshow alleys and death defying feats and freaks and carneys and weird, weird music all living underneath a tent that can evaporate overnight, leaving behind a few sad ticket stubs and the lingering odour of popcorn. It’s romantic and disturbing. Just how I like things to be.

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