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For Samy Moussa, the Winnipeg New Music Festival holds a special place.
“In Canadian life, it’s a very special event. There’s no other festival like it. [It’s] probably the most important one in Canada.”
The Juno Award-winning composer and conductor officially kicked off the 2025 iteration of the festival on January 21 with a concert featuring two of his own works – Nocturne and Symphony no. 2 – as well as two Winnipeg debuts for composers Timo Andres and Huw Watkins. It marks the third time that the Berlin-based artist has graced the Centennial Concert Hall stage for the festival.
Listen to Samy Moussa's conversation with Nolan Kehler here:
While Moussa acknowledges the festival’s importance and its impact, he finds it difficult to name why it is so impactful in his own musical journey. “I cannot tell precisely,” he says. “It’s kind of a process of sedimentation. With time, with different places you go and then you accumulate something, but you don’t know what comes from where. I cannot answer [that] concretely… but it’s important to do it, and then at some point, something comes out of it.”
Where Moussa can see more tangible musical growth and development in his festival experience is in his work as a conductor. “The art of conducting is much more concrete. There’s the practicality of the instruments and so on, but there’s also the programming and how things should come together.”
This clarity comes from one simple factor: a distance from the scores that he can achieve not only from the works of others, but from himself. “My older works – I have more distance with them by definition and I think I can understand them better or not be so emotionally involved with them and therefore can see things more clearly. And, of course, when it’s the music of my colleagues… I can only see it from my own eyes.”
Moussa’s eyes have been well-informed to see the music performed in the festival in relationship with the music of the past. His studies at the Université de Montréal to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and his conducting more canonical works by composers like Nielsen and Shostakovich with the Orchestra Svizzera Italiana and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra all form the bedrock for the work he does in the contemporary classical music sphere. He’s also quick to point out that the work he does is in service to his art.
“The bottom line for me as a composer is I write not for an audience listening, but I write for the players,” he explains.
While Moussa is not considering the audience in his creative process, this does not mean that he doesn’t respect them or their experience in venues like the Winnipeg New Music Festival. “To have the freedom of creation is not a license, in my case, for experimentations on stage. I believe that my work is to complete finished products… put all my energy into writing something that I’m convinced will function and will not be an experiment that will create what was intended and not to use the audience as laboratory animals.”
“The music itself is for them, but I don’t write for them.”
The Winnipeg New Music Festival continues until January 24. For tickets and more information, patrons are invited to visit the festival’s website.