MUSICIAN OF THE MONTH: DINUK WIJERATNE

We’re thrilled to introduce May’s Musician of the Month: Dinuk Wijeratne!

Sri Lankan-born Dinuk Wijeratne is a JUNO and ECMA-winning composer, conductor and pianist who has been described by the Toronto Star as ‘an artist who reflects a positive vision of our cultural future’. His boundary-crossing work sees him equally at home in collaborations with symphony orchestras and string quartets, Tabla players and DJs, and takes him to international venues as poles apart as the Berlin Philharmonie and the North Sea Jazz Festival. Dinuk has also appeared at the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Opera Bastille, Teatro Colón, and across Sri Lanka, Japan, the UK, and the Middle East. Season highlights include Dinuk’s appointment as Composer-in-Residence of Symphony Nova Scotia, and his role in ‘What would Beethoven do?’ – the recent documentary about innovation in Classical music featuring Eric Whitacre, Bobby McFerrin and Ben Zander.

Dinuk grew up in Dubai and took up initial composition studies at the Royal Northern College of Music (UK), later studying with Oscar-winning composer John Corigliano at the Juilliard School. Dinuk has composed specially for almost all of the artists and ensembles with whom he has performed; to name a few: Suzie LeBlanc, Joseph Petric, David Jalbert, Bev Johnston, Kinan Azmeh, Zakir Hussain, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Sandeep Das, Tim Garland, Nick Halley, Ed Thigpen, Ramesh Misra, Ed Hanley, Eric Vloeimans, Buck 65, the Apollo Saxophone Quartet, TorQ Percussion, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Cecelia String Quartet, and the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Vancouver, Buffalo, Illinois, Windsor, Victoria, and Thunder Bay. His music and collaborative work embrace the great diversity of his international background and influences.

1.What is your idea of perfect happiness?  If, as a species, we were able to escape the clutches of our own egos. Imagine the power that would unleash.

2. What living person do you most admire? It would be hard to choose amongst many inspiring artists, some of whom are personal friends. Closer to home – my mother, who has shown me that it is possible to turn adversity into triumph.

3. Which talent would you most like to have? To play the tabla like Zakir Hussain! (maybe in the next lifetime).

4. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Any moment when I manage to surpass myself, or conquer my negative emotions.

5. Where would you most like to live? I feel ‘at home’ whenever I get to make music. Geographically, while I’d love to experience living in many different places, I feel incredibly privileged to live in Canada.

6. What is it that you most dislike? Misplaced entitlement as a personality trait; when musicians ‘phone in’ a performance; when people mark library books in pen (grrr!); and the sacrilegious paucity of decent Häagen-Dazs flavours in Canada (we seem to be deliberately importing the three least interesting flavours – what is the problem?!).

7. If you could have lunch with any composer, dead or alive, who would you choose? Why? My favourite composer Mozart, who for me is ‘the King of balance’. Assuming I could speak antiquated German, I would love to ask him about the proportion of ‘intuitively inspired’ versus ‘rigorously worked out’ material in his music. That is, how much of it is the result of conscious processes, and what are they? What is his definition of ‘spirituality’ in music? Ooh, so many questions….

And where would you have lunch? I’d take him to Patois, Toronto’s famous Jamaican-Chinese fusion restaurant, to see if he’s a purist.

8. What is something people would be surprised to learn about you? I’ll give you a twofer: