Glenn Gould, in his television persona composer Karlheinz Klopweiser, identifies two kinds of musical silence: French silence, which is expressive, and German silence, which is structural. My work, Departures, considers two other varieties of silence common to all music: the silence which precedes a piece of music and the silence which follows it. In Departures, I am concerned with openings and closings, beginnings and endings. Northern silence?

Departures (2008) was commissioned by the Nieuw Ensemble through the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts.

- Rodney Sharman