To Think like a Composer

Directed by Michael Ostroff (Pegi Nicol: Something Dancing About Her (2004)) and produced by Mary Sexton (Gemini Award Winning Tommy… A Family Portrait (2001)), and Heather Eustace, To Think Like a Composer is a joyful and exuberant introduction to the world of Canadian composer, conductor, educator and renaissance man Stephen Hatfield. A documentary that reveals the creative collaborative excitement and tension as Hatfield and Susan Knight and Shallaway Youth Chorus of St. John’s produce an opera performed by youth for adults. An opera based on the novel Ann and Seamus by Kevin Major. There are no patronizing platitudes in Hatfield’s work. The opera deals with sadness, heartbreak, and the joy of existence – the Newfoundland ethos – as interpreted in a story of shipwreck, survival, and love on the Isle Aux Morts off the southwest coast of Newfoundland in 1828.