something happened part 1 (RedCity: Kevin Saltarelli, Dave Mansell)

Something Happened by Kevin Saltarelli and Dave Mansell (RedCity)
In 2009 Kevin Saltarelli was commissioned to compose a piece about his home town of Iroquois Falls. He decided that it would be effective to chronicle the origins of this town which is also the birthplace of Canadian newsprint. If created effectively, he realized that the piece could also tell the history of countless rural places during the early years of development across this nation.

There were thousands of photographs available of Iroquois Falls which document the early years from 1912 to 1975. With these he created a 16 minute 'moving' slideshow, divided into four sections. The first section included a handful of photographs of the founder of the town, Frank Harris Anson, sitting by the waterfalls in 1912. He presented these in a way that gave the appearance of motion and composed a somewhat impressionist piano solo to accompany the scene. Kevin quickly realized that some additional musical content would be desirable, and so invited RedCity bandmate Dave Mansell to join this project. With the addition of Dave's original piece entitled 'Vessel', which is an indie rock/electronic composition, this became a RedCity project. The second section utilized the emotional character of David's piece which presents Iroquois Falls in a first person narration. This was in combination with several hundred photos, often presented in a time lapse fashion, of the development of most of the major structures, parks and neighborhoods of this little town. The third section included a very fast virtuosic piano solo over a massive collection of quickly changing photographs of the paper mill's development. In contrast to this, the fourth and final section consisted of a very slow modal choral-like piece called 'Something Happened'. Here there are images detailing Iroquois Falls from the post war era until the 1970's. It was during this time period that the town reached its climax in beauty and productivity. They were able to invoke a great emotional response from the audience who knew all to well how badly the town has suffered in recent years. The newsprint industry is a sunset industry, and the town will share that sunset if the industry does not survive. The piece, which tells a moving story to so many Canadians living in rural areas supported by a single industry, is a nostalgic celebration.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Kevin Saltarelli
• Dave Mansell
• Red City
• Iroquois falls