Times Colonist from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada • 43

TIMES COLONIST, VICTORIA, B.C. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009 C11 timescolonist.comextras WEB EXTRA: He's baaaack! Russell Brand returns for a second bout of hosting at the MTV awards Editor: Bruce MacKenzie Telephone: 250-380-5346 E-mail: featurestc.canwest.com MUSIC Canad: hat laii country tips it Stars descend on Vancouver for annual awards ceremony tomorrow night I I r'ti iZ 1 Scottish-Canadian country-soul heartthrob Johnny Reid is nominated in six different categories for a Canadian Country has several other hot artists close on his tail with five, including veteran George Canyon and newcomer Victoria Banks. Bamford, below left, and Dean Brody, below right are close runners-up with four nods each. FRANCOIS MARCHAND For Canwest News Service Canada's best and brightest country stars will be converging on Vancouver tomorrow, bringing their cowboy boots, oversized belt buckles, sequined shirts and old-fashioned, no-nonsense charm to GM Place for the 2009 Canadian Country Music Association Awards. The two-hour review, which takes place tomorrow evening, will be hosted by actordirector and Vancou-verite Jason Priestley (of 90210 fame) and will include musical performances bv such Canuck coun try powerhouses as Aaron Pritchett, Emerson Drive, Paul Brandt, Jann Arden, Terri Clark, Crystal Shawanda and Johnny Reid who are all likely to grab a statuette or two along the way.

Topping the nominations list is Scottish-Canadian and country-soul heartthrob Reid, whose latest release, Dance With Me, landed him six shots at nabbing a prize in categories including Album, Male Artist, Songwriter, Single and Video of the Year, as well as the CCMA Fans' Choice Award. Following closely behind are East Coast neo-tradi-tionalist George Canyon who has never lost in any category he was nominated for at past CCMAs and Ontario rising star Victoria Banks, who could both rival Reid in five of the key categories. Gord Bamford CCMA's 2008 Top New Male Talent and this year's newcomer, Dean Brody, each got four nominations of their own. Canyon, Bamford and Brody will also be performing some of their nominated material on stage, which may hint that they could all walk away with at least one statue. The CCMA stage will also host performances by international superstars Martina McBride, Reba McEntire and Richard Marx, the latter set to join Canyon and Shawanda for a unique triple-bill moment.

While the biggest categories could be swept or shared by one or two artists, the real tug of war will most likely take place in the Group or Duo of the Year category, where two heavy-hitters could easily claim the honours. In what could be dubbed a Battle of the Prairies, Doc NICK PROCAYLO, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE the pedestal it acquired last year? Or could an old favourite like Canyon or momentous young talents like Pritchett or Farrell run away with the prize? Also look for a nod to this year's Hall of Honours inductees: award-winning singer-songwriter Buffy Ste-Marie, longtime promoter Barry Haugen and veteran country DJ Johnny Murphy. The three trail-blazing personalities will be officially inducted into the After all, The Higgins won six awards at the British Columbia Country Music Awards with their album Real Thing last October and are also nominated in the Roots Artist or Group of the Year category at this year's CCMAs. The ever-so-tricky Fans' Choice Award, which is handed out according to votes from the public, may also be full of surprises. Will Reid manage to complete a potential sweep by nudging Doc Walker off HANDOUT Music Award.

However, he Two other artists Gord HANDOUT CCMA's Hall of Honours earlier during the Country Music Week celebrations taking place in Vancouver from Sept. 10 to 13.The three trail-blazing personalities will be officially inducted into the CCMA's Hall of Honours before the awards show. The CCMA Awards celebration will be presented live on CBC-TV tomorrow night, with encore presentations airing across Canada on Country Music Television. to the Victoria Symphony and its music director, Tania Miller, is Sharman's first original work as composer-in-residence. Another premiere will follow in February, of a concerto for English horn, which Sharman recently began composing for one of the orchestra's oboists, Russell Bajer, an experienced performer of new music.

(Sharman's main instrument is the flute, but he also "played oboe badly" as a teenager.) And Sharman is already looking ahead to 2010-11, his last season as composer-in-residence. He plans to compose two more works for the Victoria Symphony and to oversee premieres by other B.C. and Canadian composers; he is also working with Miller on ventures that will bring together music and other art forms for the orcheStra's innovative Odyssey series. Walker (of Portage la Prairie, Man.) and Emerson Drive (of Grande Prairie, Alta.) are both on the cusp of releasing their sixth and fourth albums, respectively, and are currently at the top of the food chain when it comes to Canadian country bands. Both bands have been trading the honours since 2002, Emerson Drive winning three times and Doc Walker twice.

Only country-rockers The Road Hammers (who music, for the breed of small harpsichord known as the virginal. "I sang Byrd's music in choirs when I was a teenager," Sharman says, "but came to know his keyboard music only recently." For Byrd Dances, he chose a set of pieces a pavan and two galliards composed in honour of the Earl of Salisbury and first published in 1613. (The pavan was a stately dance in quadruple time, the gal-liard a quick leaping dance in triple time; the two were customarily paired.) Sharman's arrangement is very free. "I layer, fragment, extend and colour the originals in the manner of a fantasia, another genre in which Byrd excelled," he says. He fuses the two galliards into a single movement, and his orchestration, which he describes as three-dimensional," explores sonorities far I New work to symphony's season are not in the running this year) have been able to dethrone the two acts in the past seven years, winning back-to-back prizes in 2005 and 2006.

But sizing up the true contender in the Group or Duo category proves to be a bit of a head-scratcher considering the added presence of all-in-the-family country trio The Higgins. The Vancouver-based act could easily be dubbed a "dark horse," but doing so could prove foolish. launch removed from Tudor England (tuned gongs, flutter-tongued brass and flutes, muted strings). Byrd Dances, he says, was "great fun to write." Sharman was born in Biggar, in 1958, but his family moved to Victoria when he was 15. He studied at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where his composition teachers included Murray Adaskin, and at the University of Victoria, where he received a bachelor of music degree in 1980.

He continued his studies in Germany and the United States, earning a PhD and working with some of the biggest names in contemporary music (Andriessen, Feldman, Fer-neyhough, Foss, Rzewski). Now one of Canada's best-known and most admired composers, Sharman has more than 100 works to his credit, and his music has been performed in more than 30 countries. During his busy 2008-09 season, he held teaching residencies in Windsor and Montreal, hosted the Calgary Philharmonic's new-music festival Hear and Now, and oversaw premieres of a handful of his works most recently, Couples, Doubles, Pairs, introduced in May by Victoria's Aventa Ensemble. Sharman has lived in Vancouver since 1991, but since September 2008, when his three-season appointment as composer-in-resi-dence began, he has been commuting here regularly. His duties for the Victoria Symphony have included serving on its programming committee, arranging talks by visiting composers, helping to organize (and performing in) its New Currents Festival, and co-ordinating a series in which the orchestra reads through and records new works by B.C.

composers. Moreover, Sharman is "passionate about teaching young people." He is involved in the orchestra's Musicians in Schools program, and is mentoring promising young composers through vsNEW, its New Explorations Workshop. Last season, he gave private lessons to six composers between the ages of nine and 19, had their music rehearsed, performed and recorded by a trio of orchestra members, and arranged for a CBC radio documentary about the program. (Perhaps the most exceptional talent he supervised last season was composer and pianist Carmyn Slater from Sooke, who was just nine but was already writing music of real sensitivity and sophistication.) Byrd Dances, dedicated KEVIN BAZZANA Classical Music Kevinbazzanashaw.ca This weekend, the Victoria Symphony will launch its 2009-10 season with the premiere of a new work by Rodney Sharman, its composer-in-residence. Byrd Dances is Shar-man's arrangement of three short keyboard pieces by the English composer William Byrd (1543-1623), who, alongside his plentiful vocal and consort music, history's firp great corpus of keyboard.