Visiting Quartet to Premier Work by Janke

by Dan Davidson

When the Penderecki String Quartet arrives in Dawson city for its concert on January 17, a couple of Yukon connections will be made.

The Family connection is that Gwen Bell, a Grade 3 teacher at Robert Service School and member of the performing arts committee with the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, will get to spend some time with her brother, Jeremy, who is one of the two violinists with the quartet.

The second is that Whitehorse musician Daniel Janke’s first composition for string quartet, which is so far just called “String Quartet number 1”, will receive its premier performance at the Oddfellows' Hall.

The PSQ, as the group refers to itself on its website, has been in existence since 1986, formed in Poland at the urging of the preeminent Polish

The Penderecki String Quartet: Simon Fryer, Jerzy Kaplanek, Christine Vlajk and Jeremy Bell. Photo taken from the group’s online newsletter.

composer Krzysztof Penderecki. For the past 15 years, however, the group has been the quartet in residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener, Ontario, maintaining a busy schedule of touring (both Italy and China were on the fall tour schedule), teaching, organizing special events, and recording in several genres.

Their latest CD is a collaboration with jazz saxophonist Jane Bunnett, but they will soon be releasing a two CD set of the six Bartok Quartets, the third of which will be one of the items on their Yukon program, along with Beethoven’s Op. 131 and the new work by Janke.

Janke, who has played bass orchestrally in Toronto and has written extensively for violin, has produced a composition in the modern classical style, allowing space to showcase each instrument during the approximately nine minutes of the piece.

“It’s a little hard to describe,” the composer said in a recent interview. “It’s a modern sounding piece but still accessible.”

Janke was placed in contact with the quartet through KIAC and through Gwen Bell.

“I’d heard of them before,” he said, “and Jeremy had heard of me, because I’ve worked with friends of his.”

The contact was made last summer and Janke completed the commission, which was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, in November/December, in between working on scripts for his television venture, “Northern Town”.

Janke, who received his Master of Music degree from York University in Toronto. is described by the Canadian Music Centre as a “composer and pianist with a strong interest in African improvisational traditions”. In the Yukon he is known for playing in many genres, including jazz with the Paul Lucas Trio, many seasons with the Longest Night Ensemble, and appearances at many of the territory’s summer music festivals, where he performs on the kora, keyboards, bass and almost anything else he can lay hands on.

This is not his first concert composition. He has also written dance scores for Yuri Ng, Badu Dance Company, and the National Ballet of Canada.

He considers the string quartet a difficult form to write for and found the experience a welcome break from the television work which has been absorbing his interest lately.

“A string quartet is like a collection of soloists. They want to have something that everybody can enjoy. Everybody wants to play, not just the first violin. I tried to give a little bit of gymnastic agility to it ... but also to give the full sound to it.”

He says the work is influenced somewhat by the work of John Cage and that people will detect a Middle Eastern sound in it due to the mode in which it is written.

Janke is not sure he’ll be able to make the Dawson premier due to his commitments for “Northern Town” but he’s looking forward to hearing his work.

The quartet will be travelling to Whitehorse after the Dawson performance, with a masterclass planned for January 18 and a concert at the Yukon Arts Centre on Jan 19.

Dawson couple is Mr., Mrs. Yukon

Press release

Percy and Mabel Henry of Dawson City are Mr. and Mrs. Yukon for this year’s Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous festival.

Officials made the announcement late Thursday afternoon.

Percy was born to Joe and Annie Henry in 1927 where the family was living with Gwitch’in relatives between the Wind and Hart rivers on the Ogilvie.

The family moved to Moosehide, near Dawson City, in the early 1930s, where schooling and employment were available.

As well as developing early skills in family hunting, fishing and trapping during his formative years, Percy enjoyed a natural ability for river travel. He spent some time working aboard the S.S. Klondike and S.S. Whitehorse, as well as on the Brainstorm barge freighting into Old Crow with Sgt. Kirk, Frank Burchart, Mike Stutter and Benny Warmsby.

Other marine attributes included his appointment as captain of the George Black and McQuesten ferries, and, in later years, piloting the M.V. Anna Maria back to Whitehorse after an exciting trip downstream. Percy also contributed to cutting and skidding logs for the United Keno Hill Mines silver mines near Elsa and the Mayo dam.

Percy met the love of his life, Mabel, born in 1940, when she was working at the Penguin Café in Dawson.

They soon married and have since raised a family and celebrated 46 years of marriage.

Mabel’s mother, Martha Taylor, was from the Las Tetlin people, and her father, Dave Taylor, was from the Han at Moosehide.

Percy’s many significant accomplishments include a term as chief of the Dawson-area aboriginal band and contributions to early land claim settlement negotiations which led to the landmark production of Together Today for our Children Tomorrow. That’s the document Yukon native leaders went to Ottawa with more than 30 years ago to press then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau to negotiate land claim settlements.

Percy has served on the geographic place names committee and the Health and Human Rights Commission.

He is now an executive elder for Yukon first nations and is a serving member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers.

Locals from both Eagle and Dawson City were present for the launching of the Klondike Spirit in October. Photo by Jon Magnusson

Klondike Spirit Waits for Spring

by Dan Davidson

The Klondike Spirit is berthed and waiting for spring. No, that’s not a mixed pun and metaphor for Dawson City in the winter. The Spirit is a diesel powered side paddle wheeler which will be plying the waters around Dawson City after it arrives here in June 2005.

For the moment, however, it is spending the winter in Eagle, Alaska, where it was built, and its builders, Nick Turner and Charlie House, are finalizing plans to move both their boat and their families to the gold rush capital to begin tour operations in the summer of 2005.

Nick Turner’s journey from Wisconsin businessman to Eagle boat builder began with a summer trip to Alaska in 1997. It was just an adventure for him and another buddy, but he ended up linking with Charlie House, a fellow he had known in the south, in Eagle.

“He put us up in one of his cabins for the summer,” Turner recalled, who had begun to get the northern bug by then. Later in the season his wife, Jean, came up for a short stay and she loved the place too. They moved there in 1998.

Charlie House had been running a forty foot boat for tours and trips to Dawson when Turner got there, and he knew that he needed a bigger boat to make it a commercial success.

“I knew quite a bit about metals and construction methods, so we decided to build the big boat,” Turner recalled.

Why a metal boat? According to Turner, wood just isn’t used for large passenger vessels any more. They considered aluminum, but Turner was more familiar with working in steel, and the US Coast Guard told them that the lighter metal presented more problems with welding and with seals cracking under use in the water. Fiberglass wasn’t an option because the boat was going to be too big.

All this came to light during the two years they spent researching and drawing up various sets of plans, as well as building the boat house in which they would do the actual construction, as well as the tools needed to handle the big sheets of metal.

“It had to be a real long term deal for us,” Turner said, “because we had to do a lot of reading on design and building methods.”

Most of the boats on Yukon waterways were sternwheelers, but the Klondike Spirit ‘s builders decided on side paddles. According to their research the first paddle boat at the mouth of the Yukon River was a paddle wheeler from England.

“What we’ve found in our research is that the side paddle is faster,” Turner said. “Anything that would help us if we took any kind of journeys on the river, that would be better for us.”

They hope the Spirit will travel at about 15 knots.

Sternwheelers, they discovered, could shift their loads to keep the paddle at the most efficient depth. For a passenger boat that doesn’t work as well, so it’s better to have wheels in the middle. This was confirmed through discussions with a sternwheeler outfit that runs trips in Fairbanks and has that problem.

“Also,” said Turner, “the paddles on a side paddle boat operate independently of one another, so in theory steerage of the boat should be very good. You can reverse one paddle and power the other paddle forward and the boat should spin around more or less on a dime.”

Those decisions having been made, the actual construction took four more years.

The Spirit was launched the first weekend in October. According to a report on Maritime Link.com posted on January 20, 2005, the Klondike Spirit passed stability and calculation tests then, just before freeze-up. The report describes the boat as follows:

“The side-wheeler is 88 ft long with 18 ft beam and a 4 ft hull depth. Maximum draft is 30 inches. The hull was fabricated by Eagle Boat Company and the Northern Lights 20 kW generator was furnished by Alaska Diesel Electric. The main engine is a 400 HP Cat 3406 that drives Denison hydraulic pumps. Hydraulic motors power each side wheel through a separate Brevini gearbox and 3:1 chain reduction drive. Paddle wheel speed is 40 RPM.”

Turner says that sea trials still have to be completed for the US Coast Guard as well as some tests for the Canadian Coast Guard. He has been told that the tests and regulations are quite similar.

The decision of where to base the boat had been made long before, according to Turner.

“We always had it in the back of our minds to see if it would be possible to run the boat out of Dawson, mostly because it’s such a hub for tourism. We’d do a lot better in Dawson than any place else.”

The name Klondike Spirit was actually chosen by the students of the Robert Service School from a short list of proposals that House and Turner supplied.

The Dawson business community is quite excited by the prospects of the Spirit working here, and the chamber of commerce staged a trip to Eagle to attend the launch.

“That was just so great,” said Turner. “You just can’t know how much we appreciate the feedback. The people from Dawson have just been great. The encouragement we’ve gotten ... has really been something.”

Locally, Wendy Burns has been hired to do promotion for the company. Mike Mancini has relocated from Mayo to Dawson to be general manager. Turner also expects to be employing Martin Gehrig in some capacity.

Tentative plans call for one and a half to two hour trips, dinner cruises and interpretation cruises, and special events cruises out of Dawson. The Spirit can carry up to 100 passengers on these trips.

The owners are also hoping for an annual run from Dawson to Eagle and back, probably on the 4th of July, American Independence Day. In addition they hope to do a trip to the Forty Mile townsite and back.

In the meantime Mancini and Burns are working on details on this side of the border while Nick and Jean Turner and Charlie and Marylis House and their families are preparing to move to Canada under a program which favours those bringing a business to the country.

“Hopefully we’ll both prosper,” Turner said.