Amahl Arulanandam - Bekah Simms: Bestiaries (2022)

For the past decade, award-winning Canadian composer BEKAH SIMMS has been carefully crafting an auditory universe that is hers alone. Simms' rich, brilliant music offers the perfect paradox for the present moment: it's at once totally accessible and yet completely uncompromising. It's music that takes a strange enough route through what has now become familiar topography, that it leaves the listener utterly bewildered. BESTIARIES displays her bold imagination on a far wider canvas than either of her previous outings. Featuring chamber orchestral forces, and, on two pieces, amplified solo parts plus vivid real-time electronic environments, the recording is full of movement, detail, and wildly contrasting hues, all of which churn together into something at once lyrical and violent, atmospheric, and foreboding.

Artists featured on Bestiaries include the cellist AMAHL ARULANANDAM, soprano CHARLOTTE MUNDY, the CRYPTID ENSEMBLE with BRIAN CURRENT, and the ENSEMBLE CONTEMPORAIN DE MONTRÉAL (ECM+) with VÉRONIQUE LACROIX.

BEKAH SIMMS hails from St. John's, Newfoundland and is currently based in Glasgow, Scotland after nine years living and working in Toronto. Her music has been widely performed across North America and Europe. She has been commissioned by some of the top interpreters of contemporary music in both Canada and internationally, such as Crash Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, l’Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Esprit Orchestra, Continuum Contemporary Music, Ensemble Télémaque, Ensemble Paramirabo, and But What About?

She has been the recipient of over 30 awards and prizes, including the 2019 Barlow Prize, two SOCAN Foundation Young Composer Awards, and the 2017 Toronto Emerging Composer Award. She was nominated for the prestigious Gaudeamus Award in 2022, and two of her works from her debut album impurity chains (Centrediscs, 2018) were nominated in both 2019 and 2020 for the JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Her music has thrice been included in the Canadian Section's official submission to World Music Days (2016, 2019, & 2021), and in 2016 the CBC included her among their annual 30 hot classical musicians under 30. Simms is a Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, following previous academic positions at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.