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Volume 19 Issue 8 - May 2014

  • Text
  • Choir
  • Toronto
  • Jazz
  • Arts
  • Concerts
  • Theatre
  • Musical
  • Choral
  • Singers
  • Festival
Includes the 2014 Canary Pages directory of choirs.

full of musical

full of musical surprises. (The evening also will include a new iterationof Surface Tension, an extraordinary collaborative work for disklavierpiano and live video by Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby.)The Afiara Quartet will also be premiering Torontonian ChristosHatzis’ String Quartet No.3 at the opening Koerner Hall concert onMay 22. The work spins together multiple musical influences – Greekcantorial and folk music, Indian ragas, Roma melodies, trance andimprovisation. As part of the rehearsal process, the quartet is workingalongside a community of young music lovers who will be the onlyones to have heard the quartet before the concert premiere. Otherpremieres happening on May 23 include Brian Current’s chamberwork Faster Still and Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s Anaïs Nin,a 40-minute work for soprano, film and mini orchestra, with thecomposer’s strict instructions that it not be conducted.The concert will also combine a belated celebration of MurraySchafer’s 80th birthday with a performance of his Quintet for Pianoand Strings, as well as a unique premiere – a call has been put out forshort YouTube submissions as a way of finding out what the youngergeneration is up to in their basement studios. The winning work willbe played on the screen that night and will thereby become the festival’s21st commission (another version of the 21C in the title.)Other events of the festival include works by John Cage, JenniferHigdon and Leo Ornstein on May 24 , and a rare performance ofMorton Feldman’s super-pianissimo For Bunita Marcus on May 25.The second “After Hours” concert on May 24 features works andpremieres by Shulamit Ran, Andrew Staniland and Michael Colgrass.The festival concludes, as it began, with a coproduction involving aleading established new music presenter, an Esprit Orchestra concertwhich spotlights world premieres by Canadians Zosha Di Castri andChristopher Mayo, alongside a recent work by Dutch composer LouisAndriessen.Soundstreams and Airline IcarusWholeNote readers may remember a cover story “Icarus Aloft” fromthe November 2012 issue featuring a conversation between BrianCurrent and Paula Citron on his opera Airline Icarus. At the time, hewas making a recording of the music and since then, the work hasbeen performed at the Fort Worth Opera’s New Frontiers Festival in2013. Now finally, after more than ten years’ worth of workshops andconcert-like productions, Soundstreams has come on board to givethe piece its definitive performance with full staging and a run fromJune 3-8. Current is excited to have the renowned British director TimAlbery at the helm, working alongside set designer and The Globeand Mail’s theatre artist of the year, Teresa Przybylski. It’s a difficultwork to stage, as the story takes place inside an airplane that keepsgetting brighter until it finally disappears. Based on the myth of Icaruswho vanishes in a blaze of light when he flies too close to the sun, thelibretto is a commentary on our fascination with technology and ourexpectations that nothing will go wrong ... until it does, and disasterinevitably ensues.The Music GalleryOn May 15, Nick Storring has curated a concert of music for the finalEmergents concert of the season that breaks down all musical classifications.The Thin Edge New Music Collective will perform a diverseprogram of music including Los Angeles-based noise/undergroundartist Sean McCann, Toronto improviser Colin Fisher and Persianmusic virtuoso Araz Salek. The evening also includes the performanceof a new work by composer Jason Doell and percussionist GermaineLiu as they “screech, rattle and creak” their way through a variety ofsounds and movements.May 30 marks the day for celebrating the pioneering legacy ofCanadian electronic music instrument builder and composer Hugh LeCaine. One of his most significant designs was the electronic sackbut,built in the late 1940s while working at the National Research Councilin Ottawa. The instrument was a sophisticated monophonic performanceinstrument that became the prototype for most of the synthesizerscurrently available. The multi-media evening will be hostedby composer/performer Gayle Young who wrote Le Caine’s biographytitled The Sackbut Blues. Special guest speakers will reminisceabout their memories of Le Caine and be joined by musical performancesto honour two of Le Caine’s signature creations: the SpecialPurpose Tape Recorder and a recreation of his most famous compositionDripsody.Additional concerts and events (see Listings for details):May 8: Thin Edge New Music Collective presents their collaborativeconcert exploring spoken and musical language. Works by Denburg,Kardonne, Kasemets, Monk, Steen-Andersen and others.May 9: TorQ Percussion Quartet performs the Canadian premiere ofrecent Pulitzer Prize-winner John Luther Adams’ epic enviro-fractalwork for percussion ensemble.May 17: An Evening with Pipa Virtuoso Wei-wei Lan. New MusicConcerts benefit .May 28: Quatuor Bozzini performing works by John Cage atGallery 345.May 31: The SING! Legacy Award will be presented to composer R.Murray Schafer at this year’s SING! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festivalalong with a concert of selections from his choral repertoire.Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto based composer and electro-vocalsound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.comwww.NewMusicConcerts.com© André LeducRobert Aitken artistic directorSaturday May 17, 2014 • 7:30pmGallery 345 | 345 Sorauren Avenue | SPECIAL EVENTProceeds to benefit New Music Concerts.Tickets 0, 2 for 0 | RSVP 416.961.9594Wednesday May 21, 2014 • 8pmMazzoleni Hall, Royal Conservatory | 273 Bloor Street WestNew Music Concerts Ensemble | Robert Aitken, flute and directionIntro. 7:15 | Concert 8:00 | Tickets / | Reservations 416.408.0208featuring new works commissioned by The Royal Conservatory and Roger D. Moore12 | May 1, 2014 – June 7, 2014 thewholenote.com

Beat by Beat | World ViewWorld Musics’Fourfold ReachANDREW TIMARThe sometime commercial music category and now broad notionI call world musics is manifest in many, ever-varied ways. It alsoappears to be spreading geographically to ever more communitiesin Southern Ontario. Concert presenters are a major vector forthis diffusion. It’s notable that aspects of the world’s musics thismonth and next appear in programs by presenters as different assupper clubs, conservatories of music, classical new music producers,colleges and universities, as well as not-for-profit societies andvenues. Yet they all claim to be presenting world music. Some ofthese presenters have a specific music genre, geographic or culturalconstruct as a focus, while others a much broader mandate, challengingreceived ideas of mono-ethnicity embedded in neighbourhoodand community by encouraging hybrid exchanges.I’ve explored in depth individual presenters such as Small WorldMusic in previous columns. This time I thought it would be both funand instructive to explore four disparate presenters for commonalitiesand differences, each promoting their event as a festival. Let’s seewhat Lulaworld 2014, the Mateca Arts Festival, Royal Conservatoryof Music’s 21C Music Festival – all in Toronto – plus Conrad GrebelUniversity College’s Sound in the Land in Waterloo have in store forour adventurous ears.Lulaworld 2014: Running from May 18 to June 7 Lulaworld 2014,the ninth such annual festival presented by the Lula Music and ArtsCentre, showcases Toronto’s top world, jazz and Latin musicians, oftenperforming alongside celebrated international colleagues. In a telephoneconversation with Tracy Jenkins, Lula’s co-artistic director, sheunderscored this year’s theme. “In anticipation of the Toronto 2015Pan Am Games, Lulaworld will focus on artists with cultural rootsin Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Haiti,Trinidad, Guadaloupe and Brazil.” She added that musicians withother musical influences, those “from Angola, Israel, Portugal, Turkeyand Italy” also have a place on this year’s roster. In addition, for “thevery first time, the festival will conclude with a day of free outdoorprogramming as part of the Dundas [Street] West Fest on June 7.”I counted 19 separate concerts in Lulaworld. On one date alone,Left: TrichySankaranTop: ZeynepOzbilenthe free Dundas West Fest where the street is closed to traffic, eightgroups have been programmed to play on the al fresco stage. I cantherefore only touch on a few of the concerts here. The opener onSunday May 18 kicks off with the Montreal-based singer, pianist andcomposer Malika Tirolien. Born in Guadaloupe, she soulfully mashesup Antillean, funk, jazz and gospel musical influences. Then the JunonominatedToronto group Kobo Town takes the Lula stage with theiralternative take on the venerable Trini calypsonian tradition.There are two shows on May 30. At 7pm the outstandingkeyboardist, Grammy-nominated, Juno Award-winning HilarioDuran takes over Lula’s piano for a rare solo concert in his homerepertoire of original works, Cuban and jazz standards. At 10pm theTurkish Latin vocalist Zeynep Ozbilen appears with Roberto LinaresBrown, among Canada’s most respected salsa bandleaders andcomposers, plus a nine-piece band. Ozbilen brings a new project,developed with Brown, which she evocatively describes as “Latin withMediterranean spices.”In the last in-venue concert on June 6, headliners Jimmy Boschand Ralph Irizarry with The Lula All Stars demonstrate an importantaspect of Lulaworld’s programing: mentorship of local musicians byinternational stars. Lula co-artistic director Jenkins pointed out that“Jimmy Bosch, a fiery exponent of the progressive sound he calls ‘salsadura’ (hard salsa) is New York’s most sought after [Latin music] trombonist.And NYC timbalero Ralph Irizarry [aka] the ‘Godfather of Lula’thewholenote.com May 1, 2014 – June 7, 2014 | 13

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