Inspiration can strike at any moment. If you’re a composer, you have to be ready to capture that inspiration at the drop of a hat.
That’s something that Dauphin’s Nic Bray found out a couple of summers ago. Lying in a hammock with his partner in Riding Mountain National Park, inspiration struck.
“We had a perfect view from the bottom of the spruce tree looking all the way to the top,” Bray recounted to Nolan Kehler on Morning Light. “And it had really struck me – the kind of simultaneous might and grandeur of this tree, but the delicate beauty of it as well.”
“So right afterwards, I got out of the hammock, grabbed a stick, and scrawled a bit of the rough etching of the form into the dirt, and that was kind of my basis.”
Fast forward to last December, and “Spruce” was the winner of the 2025 Emerging Composers Competition presented by the Prairie Chapter of the Canadian Music Centre. The competition is for composers from the prairie provinces to showcase their works for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and as a result, Bray’s piece - born out of an etching made with a stick on the ground - will be debuted at this year’s Winnipeg New Music Festival.
These kinds of opportunities are things that Bray is still wrapping his mind around. A music student at Brandon University, Bray pursues both composition and jazz performance studies, blending jazz and classical music together in his works. “I have spent the majority of my life focusing on my progress within [jazz],” explains Bray. “There aren’t a lot of institutions or programs set up to support emerging jazz artists... I think as a composer, there certainly are those institutions set up to have these supports like this competition.”
When it comes to the blend of classical music and jazz, Bray turns to the early 20th century French masters for inspiration, composers like Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc who were inspired by the burgeoning sounds of jazz and incorporated them into their works. “I really started to hear that same kind of really intricate musical interaction,” says Bray of the similarities between jazz improvisation and early 20th century French classical music. “There’s something very similar about both these musics that are both very appealing to me.”
“Spruce” will be featured on the final night of the Winnipeg New Music Festival in a program that also includes music by John Adams and Juno Award nominee Keiko Devaux. Bray anticipates that the night will be an emotional and overwhelming one as he sees his goal of writing for an orchestra come to fruition. “It’s really the opportunity of my lifetime so far,” he says. “I think I will feel the connection to some of these composers that I so admire."
You can hear “Spruce” at the Winnipeg New Music Festival’s Absolute Jest concert, which takes place on January 25 at 7 p.m. For tickets and more information, you can visit the festival’s website.