The Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (PSO) returns to Showplace Performance Centre in downtown Peterborough with its first in-person concert since the pandemic began, when renowned bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson joins the PSO on Saturday, March 12th.
The bluehaired bassoonist’s first home was a high-country ranch in British Columbia’s Bulkley Valley. Its 1,000 acres sprawled near the feet of a solitary mountain the Wet’suet’en people called Naydeena (anglicized in 1879 to Nadina).
Was it by chance, or prescience, that her parents named their daughter after that well-known landmark, whose name means “standing up alone”?
For four decades, Nadina Mackie Jackson has stood at the pinnacle of Canadian classical musicianship.
She is this country’s most-recorded solo bassoonist, an award-winning performer respected by conductors far and wide, a teacher, author, and founder of a national organization dedicated to promoting awareness of her unique instrument.
Mackie Jackson had never heard a bassoon until she was approaching her teens and living off-grid outside the logging town of Prince George. Not even as the voice of the grandfather in Sergei Prokofiev’s childhood classic “Peter and the Wolf”.
“I didn’t hear it until I had my first job as second bassoonist with the Montreal Symphony,” Mackie Jackson says. “I wasn’t taken to children’s concerts. There weren’t children’s concerts. Absolutely nothing of the kind.”
That Montreal job came after she’d been to university (starting at age 16) and had spent four years at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia — alma mater to the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Gian Carlo Menotti.
But let’s backtrack a bit. Mackie Jackson arrived at high school at the same time some “really fantastic” band teachers came to Prince George.
“And there was a huge infusion of cash into the system, so the high school got a nine-foot Bösendorfer grand (piano) … We got a concert hall, and instruments came,” she says.
“There weren’t bassoons right away. They came later, and I didn’t hear one until the band teachers in the district formed a quartet. My band teacher had a minor in bassoon from university, so he played bassoon in the group.”
Mackie Jackson quickly found her musical voice in an instrument often unfairly disparaged as the “clown of the orchestra,” or the offspring of a praying mantis and a giant bong.
“I think that kind of contempt comes from deep unfamiliarity. It is simply the most complex of the woodwinds. The number of keys that the thumbs have to operate, there’s no other instrument except the keyboard that has that demand.”
Far from brash, the dual-reed instrument is one of the sweetest and quietest voices in the orchestra. Its rich vibrato and three-octave range spanning that of the male human voice make it a favourite for both solo performance and ensemble colouring.
It’s an ancient instrument, dating back to the early 17th century, before orchestras existed. It’s also not cheap, Mackie Jackson points out.
“A professional-level instrument can be over $100,000. A very good professional instrument is at least $50,000. A good student instrument is around $8-10 thousand.”
By the time she acquired her first one in high school, there were no local bassoon teachers available, so she flew once a month to Vancouver for private lessons.
“There was a flight that left in the morning and came back the next day. So I would sleep in the airport and come back the next day.”
The musician’s late father, B. Allan Mackie, was an internationally acclaimed log builder, instructor, and author. He and his wife Mary were pioneers in the log-building renaissance of the 1970s and beyond.
When Mackie Jackson appears with the PSO on March 12, it won’t involve an airport sleepover. She now lives near Parry Sound, Ontario, in the last log house her father built at the age of 84.
The Peterborough concert, she says, will be a notable event in Canadian classical music.
“It’s the first time in the history of the world that a Canadian bassoonist is playing a Canadian-made bassoon and playing a piece of music written for her by a Canadian,” she explains.
“Culturally, this is a huge milestone that nobody cares about, but it’s significant in the development of a culture. Extremely significant.”
Mackie Jackson compares it to what it must have been like in Italy 300 years ago, the first time an Italian-born violinist appeared with an Italian orchestra, playing a concerto written by an Italian, on a violin made … let’s say … in Cremona.
“It gives you a sense of perspective in terms of our development,” she says. “And also the generosity of the orchestra to realize the value of this, and to stick with it (despite the challenges of the ongoing pandemic).”
For local symphony-goers, the significance strikes even closer to home.
Not only will she be performing with the hometown orchestra under the baton of hometown conductor Michael Newnham; she will also be performing on a striking new instrument made especially for her, not far from the venue where she will be playing it.
She calls it her Blue Bell after its creator, world-renowned bassoon-maker Benson Bell, who lives just outside Lakefield. Mackie Jackson has high praise for his expert understanding of an instrument she likens to a Formula One race car.
“It’s so mechanical it needs that kind of awareness. And he has the deep physical, mathematical understanding of them, so he can tell if it’s just slightly off. And it doesn’t take much. It does really require a lot of knowledge to support it.”
The work Mackie Jackson will present with a scaled-down PSO (due to physical distancing) is called the Odd Bird Concerto, which she commissioned from a former summer-camp student, Mathieu Lussier.
It’s one of 18 concertos (so far) that various composers have written specifically for her.
“It’s a wonderful concerto for audiences,” she says. “There’s a lot to do for the strings. It’s melodic and rhythmic, and it’s immediately accessible. But it’s quite challenging for the orchestra, too.”
“It starts with the bird as if it were a phoenix just rising in this flurry of sound. The percussion in this piece, to me, is very much like a phoenix rising and sparks flying, and then it launches into its journey.”
The motif of the second movement, Ending Worlds, is clear but not depressing, Mackie Jackson says.
“And the last movement sort of starts like a folk song, and ends theatrically, sort of tipping towards the music theatre side of the classical world.”
The concerto’s title also reflects the soloist’s second career as a visual artist, which often deals with avian themes.
“I’ve painted in all sizes, small to enormous, different kinds of birds. Partly how I’m surviving financially is that I’m selling bird paintings, and they are flying. I can’t keep up with it.”
VIDEO: “Oddbird Concerto” written by Mathieu Lussier for Nadina Mackie Jackson
The PSO will give two performances at Showplace Performance Centre on Saturday, March 12th at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. In addition to the Odd Bird Concerto, the program will include Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings.
Tickets are $45 ($10 for students) and are available online at tickets.showplace.org or by calling the Showplace box office at 705-742-7469.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra’s 2022 season.
