As a Franco-ontarian living in Germany for more than ten years, I terribly miss the two solitudes that make up my linguistic and cultural identity. For this reason, I‘m extremely happy to be a part of the CNMN board and to connect with dedicated artists from sea to sea. Furthermore, I look forward to sharing knowledge from my experiences working in a predominantly European context and from my areas of expertise, works for the stage and for younger audiences (ages 3 to 16).
Thierry Tidrow (*1986, Ottawa) is an award-winning Canadian composer of instrumental and vocal music, with a predilection for opera. His music has been described as “embracing many musical worlds, in which explorations of noise, expressionist lyricism, pastiche and parody form a discursive and richly detailed whole.” (ECM+ Generations Jury 2018) This audacious synthesis of styles gives rise to a chiaroscuro of meaning, often playful, but where the humourous can quickly turn to the horrific or tragic and back. His studied approach to text and sound reveals hidden meanings and erects new ones, and his dramatic instinct leads to an intrinsically narrative mode of expression packed with surprise and intrigue.
Thierry has collaborated with many performers across Europe and North America, including the Asko-Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, the Quatuor Bozzini, Continuum, Ensemble Paramirabo, Sarah Maria Sun, Thomas Hampson, Johannes Fischer, Heather Roche and many others. Their most recent Canadian premiere, Entre Nous, for Quasar and four actors, is a concert-length music theatre that explores what the Quebec/Franco-ontarian language does and doesn’t say about our past, our values, our traumas, our prejudices, our need to belong and to laugh.
Thierry has written more than ten operas, including many for younger audiences and amateur performers. From 2019 to 2022 they were composer-in-residence at Oper Dortmund, and their operatic works have also been played in many opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Bonn, Cologne, Dresden, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf and the Vienna State Opera. Thierry has received many distinctions, including the 1st prize of the inaugural Graham Sommer Competition for his string quintet Quicksilver (2018), and the Canada Council for the Arts’ Governor General’s award, the Jules-Léger Prize for Au fond du Cloître Humide (2014).