Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
January 19, 1971 p. 8
By JEAN MACPHERSON
Staff Writer
Professor Murray Adaskin will not retire for another two years.
The well-known composer-in-residence at the University of Saskatchewan since 1966, whose retirement was scheduled for the end of this academic year, has decided to remain in his position, and plans "to continue to write as much as I have been writing."
Saskatoon's citizen of the year for 1970, Prof. Adaskin said it was his most productive year, musically speaking.
During that time he composed five major works, starting with Night is no longer Summer Soft, prepared for the annual Saskatoon band clinic last February, and ending with his Divertimento No. 4, which will be performed by the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra at the Auditorium Jan. 24.
Prof. Adaskin will conduct the orchestra for the premiere performance of this work.
Prof. Adaskin, who began his violin training at ten years of age, with his brother Harry as instructor, studied at the Toronto Conservatory and continued his musical education in Paris, New York and California.
His youthful performances included playing with orchestras who supplied the music for silent movies, and this helped to finance his university career. He was, for a time, director of music with a stock company which furnished incidental music for stage shows, and later became director of music for the CPR hotels.
It was during an engagement at the Banff Springs Hotel that Prof. Adaskin met his wife, the former Frances James, a prominent soprano soloist. Their 40th wedding anniversary will be an event of the coming summer, and will be celebrated at their summer home in Algonquin Park, Ont.
Teacher, composer, adjudicator and performer. Prof. Adaskin said he has achieved his greatest satisfaction in the composing field, though his teaching experiences have been exhilerating and rewarding.
He became head of the music department at the University of Saskatchewan in 1952. Among many other musical activities in the city, he conducted the Saskatoon Symphony for six years, and was the originator of the Amati String Quartette.
He was instrumental in the establishment of a Saskatoon Cosmopolitan Club annual grant for the commissioning of a work for the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, and has lent his name to the sponsorship of a number of university music scholarships.
Prof. Adaskin received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Lethbridge "for his role in development of music in the prairies"; he was a member of the Canada Council for three years, and was made an honorary member of the Saskatoon Musicians Association.
Noting the selection of Inspector Hilmer Nordstrum as Saskatoon's Citizen of the Year for 1971, Prof. Adaskin said, "The choice has enriched my own honor in being Citizen of the Year. It is a privilege to be in such good company."
Speaking of his compositions, Prof. Adaskin said he enjoyed creating commissioned works, since the medium, the occasion and the theme are provided, and still the scope for personal expression is unlimited.
His compositions have ranged in the area from music for children -- "We mustn't underestimate the young mind's capacity for subtlety," -- to an opera, Grant Warden of the Plains, commissioned by the Centennial Committee for the CBC in 1967.
In a career studded with shining hours, Prof. Adaskin considers a highlight the occasion of his 50th birthday, when he conducted the CBC Symphony Orchestra in Toronto in an entire program of his own compositions.
Much of Prof. Adaskin's work is associated with Eskimoes and Indians, whose culture and history is endlessly fascinating to him. His Eskimo Themes, Qalala and Nilaula, premiered on the CBC under his baton in 1969, was the result of a brief visit to the north. He is presently engaged, he said, in creating a second opera, which will have an Eskimo setting. His collaborator in this work is Robert Williamson of the University of Saskatchewan, who is fluent in the Eskimo language.
Prof. Adaskin creates most of his compositions at home using the piano as a composing instrument, though he does not perform on it. When composing for an instrument with which he is not familiar, he said, he likes to have a professional instrumentalist on hand, preferably the one for whom the composition is being created.
"This work must sound as if this particular instrument was the natural and only choice for its performance. All my works are idiomatically written," he said.
Emphasizing that a composition is very much a part of the composer, he said most composers are pleased and flattered to be asked to attend rehearsals of their creations. He cited as an example his satisfaction in making a recent trip to Calgary to hear the Alberta Chamber Trio tape for the CBC his recent composition, Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano.
Prof. Adaskin's immediate plans include a week of adjudicating at the music festival in Winnipeg and a week at Vancouver and Victoria festivals, to be followed by a summer of "serious work" in musical composition in Algonquin Park.
