The Princess of the Stars

The Princess of the Stars is an environmental performance piece created for solo soprano or mezzo-soprano, two mixed quartets or choruses, four actors or sound poets, six dancers, flute, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, four percussionists, and about 20 canoeists. It was designed for performance at dawn on an autumn morning. The work was performed last August on Two-Jack Lake, just outside the Banff town-site, in celebration of the National Park centennial. Its principal characters, costumed and masked, occupy the bows of the canoes from which they chant an unknown language constructed principally from various key words in a number of Amerindian dialects. The audience, seated on the shore of the lake, is informed of the action by a Presenter who also Interprets some of the events. The musicians and singers are positioned around the perimeter of the lake whose irregular shoreline allows the canoes to enter from “off-stage.” The Princess of the Stars was co-directed by its composer, R. Murray Schafer and Brian Macdonald, designed by Diana and Jerrard Smith, and stage-managed by Robert Pel, Janet Anderson, and Louise Currie.