Nelson-based artist and composer Doug Jamieson was in Kimberley on Sept. 18 and 19 with a presentation of his installation "Forty Words for Yes." Designed to be an uplifting audio-visual experience, Forty Words for Yes was created in 40 parts in 2023, compiling 40 different singers singing the word yes in their language of origin.
The production was first premiered in June, 2023 in Nelson, and now Jamieson is taking it on the road. He was in Revelstoke the week before Kimberley, and Nelson the week before that and headed to Invermere after his stop at Centre 64. He has plans to bring the show to Castlegar in December and Cranbrook early next year.
"It’s been a very positive reception," Jamieson told the Bulletin. "When you write a composition you never know for sure what it’s going to be like or how people are going to respond. You get so wrapped up in it.
But I was amazed at how people just listened several times and were almost meditative listening to it.". Jamieson is originally from Ontario, growing up playing guitar, but quickly leaning towards a desire to pursue a more classically-based musical education.
After finishing a university degree, he went back and studied at the Ontario Conservatory of Music and worked on compositions, which he discovered were his stong suit. He then went to Durham, England and completed a Bachelor's Degree in music and continued doing musical projects all throughout his adult life, including during his career, when he ran a music school for inner-city kids in Toronto for around 15 years. He is now retired and he and his wife Elizabeth Cunningham moved to Nelson, B.
C. to be closer to their grandchildren. The process of compiling 40 people who could sing in 40 different languages was no small task, nor was the act of putting it all together into a cohesive choral piece.
"Of course it’s pretty tricky, because you actually have 40 different parts, not just a typical choir where you double everything and maybe have five parts or four parts," he explained. "So this was intricate and then I got another idea that maybe this should be 40 words all meaning ‘yes’ that they sing. "I finished writing it, that wasn’t so hard, but actually putting it together took about a year and a half — just emailing people from different places in the world, sometimes through a Canadian embassy.
" When asked how he chose people to take part in the project, he said: "Probably anybody who would volunteer, who could sing and had a unique language for the project — they’re in!" Many of the participants were actually in Nelson or had stopped through recently. "It’s an interesting thing, Nelson turned out to be a lot more multicultural than I was even aware, because out of the 40, 17 of them are actually living, or were in Nelson recently. "Nelson is an amazing place for arts and culture, as well as all the outdoor stuff.
I lived in Guelph, Ont. and Nelson seems to be even more culturally prolific than that place. It’s an amazing place.
" He said the experience of creating Forty Words for Yes and then presenting it to audiences has been positive for him as well, in addition to being the positive experience he intended it to be for his audiences. "It’s always different when you’re putting things together, because you’re thinking, 'am I going to get somebody to sing this part, who’s going to do what' — you’re working on the details all the time and you try to not lose the sense of sort of being empathetic with what you’re writing," he said. "So you have to have sort of a two-brained approach.
"That’s the big challenge of composition. I’ve been quite happy, I’ve heard the piece hundreds of times now and I’m satisfied with what I did. It was well received and it pleases people.
" Now that he's been done the writing process for Forty Words for a while, Jamieson is currently working on another opera. His wife Elizabeth Cunningham accompanied him to Kimberley and was at Centre 64 on Thursday hosting a kite-making workshop. She told the Bulletin she's been making kites since she was 10 or 12 years old.
"I like the fact, of course, that it flies and you make something that you can actually play with and all the beautiful colours," she said. "And I love that it’s something that in various forms occurs all around the world. It’s something that’s celebrated in Asia and Europe and here, so there’s that aspect of it as well.
" Once they completed the kits, they added words for yes to them and flew them into the sky, as an "affirmation that the music also expresses.".
