Author Waubgeshig Rice to collaborate with string quartet to perform passages from his novel
CBC
Author Waubgeshig Rice will have help from the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra String Quartet to breathe new life into his 2018 novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow.
Rice will read passages from the book with musical accompaniment, as the string quartet performs Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 3 during a performance at the Sudbury Theatre Centre Saturday night.
"I was actually kind of blown away when I heard the piece because, you know, it's almost an ideal soundtrack to the story," said Rice, who hosted CBC Radio's Up North before he became a novelist full-time.
"It's sort of the sounds that I could sort of hear in my head when I was trying to conceptualize the story and then write it."
Moon of the Crusted Snow is a post-apocalyptic novel that follows characters from a small northern Anishinaabe community after everything goes dark.
The book gained renewed interest during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"My theory is that during the first year of the pandemic there was a lot of confusion, right?" Rice said.
"And a lot of mystery around how things were actually going to end, if it was at all. But in a lot of post-apocalyptic or dystopian stories, there is an ending, there is some kind of resolution."
Rice's sequel to the book, called Moon of the Turning Leaves, follows the same characters 10 years later, as they are forced to venture away from their community as they run out of resources. It will be published in October.
As for Saturday's performance, Rice said he welcomes the opportunity to work with other artists who can help elevate the book's passages with music.
"There's movement, there's expression, there's emotion and, you know, you can find these ways to naturally weave them with other media."
For Rice, the performance is also a chance to showcase northern Ontario artists after a period when live performances were shut down due to the pandemic.
Jennifer Grant, the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra's interim executive director, originally approached him before the pandemic about touring the book readings with a full symphony orchestra.
"But then the pandemic intensified and that obviously went totally up in smoke, right?" Rice said.
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