best music video
bird island suite
“Bird Island Suite” emerged out of the critically acclaimed Iris Trio’s “Project Earth.” This multi-chapter recording project celebrates the natural world, giving centre stage to the immense beauty and wonder found in nature, while also exploring the impact of human activity and the call to come into membership with our biosphere.
With music written by Juno Award-winning composer Florian Hoefner and poetry by decorated Canadian poet Don McKay, “Bird Island Suite” takes inspiration from nesting bird islands around the Newfoundland coast.
The work includes an invitation for us to enter into deep listening - “attention made mammal,” a breathtaking elegy for the Great Auk, hunted to extinction by 1848, a virtuoso musical reel in tribute to the delicate but tough Leach’s Storm Petrel, and a raucous jazz-inspired homage to the bird islands themselves, evoking, as McKay says, the “marvelous musical-noisy stew that seems to summon the very forces of birth and death.”
The film brings this work to the screen, featuring original footage of seabirds and their nesting islands around Newfoundland and poet Don McKay himself, traversing the magical coast of this incredible island.
Country of Origin: Canada
IRIS TRIO, Director
With music written by Juno Award-winning composer Florian Hoefner and poetry by decorated Canadian poet Don McKay, “Bird Island Suite” takes inspiration from nesting bird islands around the Newfoundland coast.
The work includes an invitation for us to enter into deep listening - “attention made mammal,” a breathtaking elegy for the Great Auk, hunted to extinction by 1848, a virtuoso musical reel in tribute to the delicate but tough Leach’s Storm Petrel, and a raucous jazz-inspired homage to the bird islands themselves, evoking, as McKay says, the “marvelous musical-noisy stew that seems to summon the very forces of birth and death.”
The film brings this work to the screen, featuring original footage of seabirds and their nesting islands around Newfoundland and poet Don McKay himself, traversing the magical coast of this incredible island.
Country of Origin: Canada
IRIS TRIO, Director
Praised for their “beauty of sound and striking expression” (Bremen Weser Kurier), the Iris Trio (clarinetist Christine Carter, violist Zoë Martin-Doike, and pianist Anna Petrova) are known for their imaginative programming and powerhouse performances.
They have toured extensively, including performances at the National Arts Centre, Canadian Opera Company, Piano Salon Christophori (Berlin), Sendesaal (Bremen), Geneva Music Festival (NY), The Climate Museum (New York City), and Fotografiska Contemporary Museum of Photography, Art and Culture.
The Trio’s debut album, Homage and Inspiration, was released in 2020 to international acclaim, with the CBC selecting it as one of “10 upcoming Canadian classical albums to get excited about” and Fanfare Magazine hailing it as “a five-star, real stand-out release.”
“Project Earth: The Blue Chapter” (2024, Centrediscs) – the first in a series of genre-defying releases responding to the planetary crisis – has already received widespread airplay internationally and was recently selected as “Record of the Week” by CBC’s “In Concert” with Paolo Pietropaolo.
Collectively, Trio members hold positions at Memorial University, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the University of Louisville, and have performed around the world on major concert stages from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Sydney Opera House.