Four Ladino Folk Songs

“Durme, Durme: Four Ladino Folk Songs” is a song cycle by Canadian composer Elisha Denburg. It was commissioned for Crossing Borders with support from the Ontario Arts Council. Its digital broadcast premièred in December 2021 on the Crossing Borders: Shifting the Lens program. Maureen has premièred two other works by Elisha: The Hipster Grifter with the Toy Piano Composers and Regina with Essential Opera. 

I’m thrilled to share this beautiful song cycle by Elisha Denburg. I am continually impressed and enchanted by Elisha’s beautiful and nuanced vocal writing. His attention to lyricism for the voice is special. And this affinity for vocal writing is an exciting and welcomed part of the Canadian Western Classical vocal music canon. ~Maureen Batt

Tara Scott, piano

(she/her)

Tara Scott is one of Atlantic Canada’s most renowned collaborative pianists. Her love of teaching and performing has led her to pursue staff accompanist positions at Western, Dalhousie, Acadia, and Mount Allison universities. She has performed extensively with singers, instrumentalists, and choirs across Canada.

Tara has been music director and pianist for twenty full-length operas with Maritime Concert Opera. She co-founded, with Nina Scott-Stoddart, Halifax Summer Opera Festival, an opera training program with fully staged productions, now in its sixteenth season. She has worked as Music Director for Eastern Front Theatre/Neptune Theatre, Essential Opera, and Acadia’s Singing Theatre, and has performed with Opera Nova Scotia, Opera New Brunswick, and Halifax Theatre for Young People.

Tara maintains a busy private piano studio in Dartmouth, NS, and is on faculty at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts. She has adjudicated extensively for music festivals throughout the Maritimes and has worked as piano examiner for Mount Allison University and the Maritime Conservatory. She is also the accompanist for Dalhousie’s Collegium Cantorum, directed by Gary Ewer.

Tara received a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from Mount Allison University under the tutelage of Dr. Janet Hammock. She studied with Dr. John Hess at Western University, receiving a Master of Music in Literature and Performance in collaborative piano. Originally from Grand Bay-Westfield NB, Tara now resides in Dartmouth with her husband and three children.

This EP is Tara’s second commercial release. Her discography also includes Breathing in the Shadows with song cycles by Saman Shahi.

In this song cycle, each one tells a different story, yet all are interwoven, lyrically or conceptually. I have used the poems’ traditional melodies as springboards to a newly rendered work, in the Jewish tradition of “renewing days as of old.” ~ Elisha Denburg

Elisha Denburg, composer

(he/him) 

Elisha Denburg’s music focuses on vocal and chamber works, and is commissioned, premièred, recorded, and toured across Canada and in the United States. He collaborates with ensembles such as Access Contemporary Music, junctQín keyboard collective, TorQ Percussion Quartet, New Music Edmonton, Halifax Camerata Singers, Sneak Peek Orchestra, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Blythwood Winds, Ensemble Paramirabo, Esprit Orchestra, The Bicycle Opera Project, the Array Ensemble, and notably, Essential Opera, who commissioned his one-act opera about the first female rabbi, Regina. His music can be heard on CBC Radio 2’s The Signal with Laurie Brown, About Time with Tom Allen, and Tempo with Julie Nesrallah. His three-movement work ”Sonatina for Vibraphone & Harp” is featured on Angela Schwarzkopf’s JUNO-winning album detach.

Elisha lives in Toronto, and was a founding member and co-Artistic Director of the Toy Piano Composers, a collective founded in 2008 by Monica Pearce and Chris Thornborrow, dedicated to the presentation of engaging new music with a playful approach. www.elishadenburg.com