Kicking off the Cultural Olympiad, a myth-rooted piece of music gives voice to a sensational sculpture by Bill Reid

Don’t get mad—get better. That could be composer Bruce Ruddell’s unofficial motto, for while he’s recently been the victim of vexing circumstances, he’s using his travails to upgrade his art.

In this particular instance, he’s discovered that the sheet music for The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, his collaboration with the late sculptor and author Bill Reid, has gone missing since its last performance—and his computer, on which the score is stored, is acting up. But rather than rage against fate, Ruddell is welcoming this opportunity to rework some sections of his signature oratorio.

“It’s always a work in progress, that’s for sure,” he says, laughing on the line from his Victoria home. “And the very end has always troubled me. It’s been hard for the orchestra to play the last three chords properly, so I’ve struggled with each revision to indicate it in such a way that they can play it in tune, and all hit the downbeat right away. Maybe we’ll get it perfect this time.”

Whether or not the performance meets Ruddell’s standards, it’s undeniable that the 1998 piece, inspired by Reid’s sculpture of the same name, is a perfect match for the opening concert of the 2008 Cultural Olympiad, at Christ Church Cathedral on Friday (February 1)—the first of many arts-related events scheduled between now and the 2010 Olympic Games. Much like the Olympics themselves, Reid and Ruddell’s oratorio is rooted in ancient myth—and its creators’ cross-cultural partnership exemplifies the kind of brotherhood that the games, at least theoretically, are intended to foster.

“Absolutely,” says Ruddell, adding that Reid was his mentor and friend, as well as the author of the prose poem that would become The Spirit of Haida Gwaii’s libretto. “I mean, it is a collaboration, you know, between a white guy and an aboriginal guy. So it seems to kind of embrace what they [the Olympic organizers] are looking for, without it being over the top. And also that sculpture is as great as anything Michelangelo ever did. It really is unbelievable.”

Reid’s 1991 masterpiece was originally commissioned for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, but you don’t have to travel south to see it for yourself: chances are you’ve got a reproduction in your pocket, given that it’s the heavily laden and stylized Haida canoe shown on every $20 bill. Another version of The Spirit of Haida Gwaii is located in the Vancouver International Airport, where it’s become a place of pilgrimage for baritone Clarence Logan, who’ll join soprano Melody Mercredi and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir in Friday’s performance.

The Saskatchewan-born Logan, who’s part Cree, says that viewing the sculpture—and touring the Queen Charlotte Islands with Vancouver Opera last year—has given him some insight into his role. “It’s a fascinating piece, just the monumental size of it,” he says, reached during rehearsals for the VO production of The Italian Girl in Algiers. “And it’s such a complex work of art, because you have all of these creatures. It really does take quite a long time to take it all in.”

Some of the work’s stark power, Logan adds, comes across in the first few bars of Ruddell’s score. “A lot of my opening number is almost unaccompanied; there’s basically just one little flute obbligato going,” he explains. “It’s a very sparse setting. And as an articulation he calls for my first solo bit to be ”˜heavy’, when I’m talking about the bear at the bow of the boat. So it is quite a departure from the typical oratorio.”

Although Ruddell is well versed in Haida music—he’s helping to ready a 10-CD set of historic and contemporary recordings for release in late February—he deliberately refrained from using First Nations instrumentation in this piece. “It was important for me to approach it from my tradition, in that way,” he stresses. “So I’m not using any drums or rattles. But those rhythms, not necessarily consciously, started to come out. They’re embedded in the woodwinds and the strings and the vocal parts, and I think people will pick up on that.”

Ruddell also reports that fate seems to have stepped in when he was trying to find a way to end the work—at the same time that his artistic collaborator’s life was coming to a close.

Reid’s libretto, he explains, ends with the line “The boat moves on forever, anchored in the same place.” And although Ruddell didn’t make any alterations to the rest of the great sculptor’s text, he felt that this phrase needed to be underlined through repetition.

“When I presented it to Bill and his wife, Martine, I said, ”˜Bill, I hope this is okay, but I’ve repeated the last line. I wanted to repeat it three times, but it just wasn’t finished, so I repeated it a fourth time,’ ” the composer explains. “And Martine grabbed my arm and said, ”˜Did you know that in the Haida culture, any important statement is repeated four times?’

“That,” he adds, “was kind of neat.”