Music Yukon's executive director shares songs that have stuck with him throughout his life

In one way or another, Scott Maynard has been involved in the music business for almost his entire life.

He's currently the executive director of Music Yukon, but he's been a musician, performer and composer since he was a child growing up in the U.K., and therefore a natural for our Music That Matters feature.

"As a lifelong music lover, I could have done five of these things without even blinking," he said. "So to try to narrow it down was immensely challenging ... but in that process, I identified there are pivotal moments in my life musically and experiences I have had and particular genres that I have an affinity for."

Maynard reached back into his past for his first selection, a choral piece called Jesus Christ The Apple Tree by Elizabeth Poston.

"As a child I was a professional musician at the age of nine, having joined a fairly prestigious church choir," he said. "We sang eight services a week at a very high level and it was different music each time ... and this is one of those pieces that has stuck with me ever since. It's absolutely gorgeous."

There's also an interesting side note regarding the composer of the piece.

"She had a radio show during the Second World War, and there's a rumour she was sending coded messages to the Allied forces on the continent by the choices of records she was playing on the radio show. I heard that story when I was in my twenties and I thought, 'that's as badass as it gets.'"

Maynard also chose a particular performance directed by Barry Rose, who was his director during this time.

Maynard's second choice was Bush Lady from Alanis Obomsawin, who is perhaps better known now as a filmmaker.

"I was in Montreal, and I like going into record stores," he said. "I did what I always do which is asking the person who works there which record I should be walking out of the store with, and he recommended this."

"For me it falls into an improv thing — it's a very strong political statement. There's a 20th century classical music composition aesthetic to it. It's very high art and I'm a huge fan of this record."

Maynard chose a piece by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina as his third selection, a piece of music he first heard when he saw its Canadian premiere.

"When the music started, I had this experience that was very foreign to me in that I had no idea how the music was being made ... I could not tell where the sounds were coming from, I could not tell who was making them. And what it made me do was sit down and put my rational brain on hold and just listen to the music ... It was an amazing experience."

Maynard's fourth selection came from Halifax band Rebecca West, a band he describes as indie rock before there was anything called indie rock.

"In my early explorations of the stripping away of the ego and how music can be spiritual and all these kinds of things, their piece stood out to me as a glorious piece of pop music that also said something really profound and was beautifully written."

"I recently fell down a bit of an internet wormhole and discovered I am a huge fan of grime," he said of his final selection. "It's a form of dance music that's influenced by a variety of things that comes out of southwest London."

Quarantine Speech is a new, and very timely, track by Lady Leshurr.

"She filmed this on her phone in her apartment, and it basically reads like a public service announcement ... This one made me laugh I think it's really relevant to what we've all been experiencing lately."