Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

Simms, and a popular

Simms, and a popular classic of the (admittedly limited) bona fide flute quintet repertoire, Derek Charke’s Raga Terah. The show will also feature David Heath’s flute septet Return to Avalon, where the Finches will be joined by soloists Kelly Zimba and Camille Watts, from the flute section of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I ask if there’s much repertoire available for five flutes. He laughs. “When we started, we started with almost nothing,” he says. “But I’m pretty involved in the flute community, so I asked friends. And then there were a whole bunch of arrangers and composers who decided they would arrange things for us without charging anything, which was really helpful in the beginning when we had no money. That’s how we started building up our repertoire. And each year we try to commission a new piece. Bekah’s piece on June 17 is our second commission.” “Which was the chicken and which was the egg?” I inquire, in connection with Avalon [Heath’s flute septet]. “Did you find the piece and say oh good, let’s ask Kelly and Camille to play it with us, or did you say it would be great to play with Camille and Kelly, and then start looking for a piece to play?” “Actually I found this piece last year,” he says. “in fact it’s originally written for two flutes and piano, which Heath arranged for two flute soloists plus five flutes. I found the piece on YouTube and listened to it and thought, ok, this piece could work. And that was around the same time that Kelly won the principal flute position at the TSO. She lives a couple blocks away from me, so we go out for lunch and stuff like that. So I asked her if she was interested and then I thought, Camille would be perfect. Because this piece actually requires the soloists to play both regular flute and either piccolo or alto flute as well. So Kelly is going to play the part with alto flute and Camille is going to do the one with piccolo. So it worked out perfectly. Even better, they both play Burkart flutes, so Burkart will be sponsoring the event.” For this upcoming concert, as with all their others, programming and the rehearsal process are intense and thoughtful. “There would be no point if we didn’t take it seriously. All of us have really different schedules. So sometimes it’s almost impossible to find time. Normally we rehearse every week, once a week. We book it about a month or two in advance. And for me, even doing once a week is not enough. To get all of the details in and everything, I find that it’s almost impossible. But all the musicians are great. A lot of experience with solo, contemporary music, orchestra. So it just brings many different ideas all the time. And we do fight. In rehearsal we argue all the time! That’s a kind of fun part of chamber music.” Seven flutes sounds like an abundance of riches, I comment. “People think, oh, seven flutes, that’s weird” he replies. “But I grew up in Vancouver where I was used to doing ten-flute contemporary work, every year in different groups out there. And with top-notch players from the Vancouver Symphony, all pro, and a couple professors from UBC, so very, very high level playing. That’s what I’m used to seeing, whereas it’s not quite as common out here. So five or seven flutes is not that unusual for me.” And large ensemble doesn’t necessarily mean less challenging repertoire either: “I think with flute ensemble, people automatically think of lighter music. But we wanted to make sure that people think of us as a serious chamber ensemble. Chamber music is a different kind of playing - much more difficult.” In the final analysis, this is a group that exists in some ways because of the high level of orchestral profiency and involvement of its members, but also as a foil to the particular rigours and constraints of orchestral playing. It’s an outlet for all kinds of things - chamber music, commissioning, community projects and, yes, good oldfashioned arguing back and forth on the path to collective creative discovery - that an orchestra-size ensemble typically cannot manage. So it’s a story about flutes and flute players - but it’s also about more than that: it’s about the small ensembles that grow within the musical community of our city, in each fertile nook and cranny. “We keep trying new things,” Lim says. “Finding what works.” Concert note: for the June 17 concert Amelia Lyon will be replaced by Anh Phung, who has worked with the group previously. There will be a masterclass by Kelly Zimba as part of the event prior to the performance. David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com. FEATURE Jerram’s Moon Shines Over Miller’s Stratford MJ BUELL Museum of the Moon at OORtreders Festival, Netherlands Sharp-eyed readers may already have spotted John Miller’s Hitchcockian cameo appearance as a satyr, silhouetted against the moon, on the cover of this year’s Stratford Summer Music program book. It’s a distinctive profile, almost as distinctive as his artistic fingerprint on the festival itself – one that he’s curated for 18 years – and this year for the last time. The moon is a fitting backdrop for Miller’s final appearance as SSM artistic director, heralding as it does the upcoming appearance at Stratford of Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon. It will be the third Jerram creation to be part of Stratford Summer Music; the relationship cultivated with Jerram over the years is quintessential Miller. He finds talented people, notices that essential something in them that works for him, and then having forged the relationship he maintains it. Artists and performers come back, and so do audiences. In a recent visit to The WholeNote Miller talked about Jerram’s first SSM visit in 2007, describing Jerram as “an inventor … a futurist … a guy who has experiences and then leads them in directions that most of us would never think of going.” That first visit was with a project called Sky Orchestra, Miller explains. “It was inspired by a trip to the Middle East and Jerram’s first experience of hearing, from several imams simultaneously, the call to prayer; suddenly the sound of compelling music was everywhere.” Back in the UK Jerram collaborated with composer Dan Jones to create eight hot air balloons, each with two speakers attached, which take off at dawn or dusk and fly across a city of sleeping or waking people. Each balloon plays two different tracks of a 16-track orchestral score, creating a huge audio landscape. In the case of Stratford Summer Music the music of Sky Orchestra flooded the early morning sky as it took off from Stratford and flew towards St Mary’s. Jerram’s popular Play Me I’m Yours project – artist-decorated street pianos, for anyone to play – came to Stratford for the first time in 2012, and returns in 2018 for a fourth time. So this summer’s Museum of the LUKE JERRAM 16 | June | July | August 2018 thewholenote.com

Moon is Jerram’s third project at Stratford and its premiere Ontario appearance. Jerram’s 23-foot balloon, illuminated from within, is a reproduction of the exact surface of the moon: an assembly of actual photographs taken by NASA cameras from lunar space craft. As part of its world travels it will float over Stratford’s Tom Patterson Island for ten August days and nights. “Since the moon shines everywhere all over the world we will have heritage world music every night under the moon, including First Nations artists Jeremy Dutcher, Laura Grizzlypaws and Tanya Tagaq,” says Miller. “It somehow feels fitting to characterize a festival that embraces music, dance, literature, movies, family celebrations, photographic and astrological ideas as being ‘everything under the moon.’” Jerram’s presence at SSM reflects aspects of how the festival’s own identity has evolved during the Miller years in two ways particularly important to Miller. One is about putting music and performance art in public spaces – like the Jerram projects or Murray Schafer on Tom Patterson island or the BargeMusic series. The other is the cultivation of SSM’s own loyal audience, drawn by SSM’s earned reputation for attracting the finest Canadian and international artists, not just once but on an ongoing basis. Artists come back because they feel part of a community: not just as part of a festival circuit. Sometimes it’s their only Canadian appearance or else one of very few. And their Stratford experience is not typical of the daily grind of a tour: they walk and rest, go to the theatre or other performances, enjoy the restaurants and café brunches and the generally relaxed atmosphere. Miller has always believed that it was better for music in Stratford to be its own festival, with its own board, personality, experience and sense of accomplishment in spite of the original vision of a consolidated theatre and music festival. He credits his friend, Stratford Festival’s Richard Monette, for believing in and encouraging variety. Today SSM both has its own faithful audience and manages to put itself in the path of the tens of thousands of people who come to Stratford for “that other festival.” to perform JS Bach’s entire Well Tempered Clavier in two concerts over one weekend. Jan Lisiecki takes time out of a now very international career to make his ninth consecutive appearance, and Jean- Michel Blais will be featured for a second consecutive year. Musicologist, music writer/broadcaster Robert Harris returns for the fifth year of illustrated lectures “Music That Changed the World”; this July SSM will release their newly published book The Stratford Lectures: Ten Perspectives about Music by Robert Harris which includes ten of the Harris lectures in an expanded form. The book initiative is another example of the kind of artistic relationship building, and audience building, that is a Millerian hallmark. Equally a tribute to Miller is the fact that SSM won’t be going out in a blaze of glory with its founder. There has been nothing last minute or ad hoc about the process of going about finding a successor. The orderly process is already complete with the announcement earlier this year that violinist Mark Fewer will succeed Miller in the post. Miller will continue in an advisory capacity for a couple of years only: Fewer will take the helm as artistic director in October. Stepping down, Miller said, is a little bit like how he imagines walking one’s daughter down the aisle. “But it feels as though I’m giving her away under the best possible circumstances” he says. If Miller’s face on the satyr in front of the moon is this year’s opening salvo, then perhaps the BargeMusic finale, with the Border Cities Caledonia Pipe Band, is another whimsical Miller autobiographical touch. Learning to play the bagpipes has always been on his bucket list, he explains. Fittingly, SSM’s final evening festivities – the “J.A.M.boree” – will be a picnic on Tom Patterson Island with another Miller favourite – the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, under the August 26 full Sturgeon Moon, and the Jerram moon. And with J.A.M. (Miller’s initials) as one last sly signature touch. MJ Buell, a regular contributor to The WholeNote, can be reached at musicschildren@thewholenote.com SCOTT WISHART John Miller “It somehow feels fitting to characterize a festival that embraces music, dance, literature, movies, family celebrations, photographic and astrological ideas as being ‘everything under the moon.’” — John Miller METROPOLITAN UNITED CHURCH’S HISTORIC 54-BELL CARILLON Miller reflected that during these formative 18 years it was good that he is not, himself, a musician, because he was able to bring an open appetite to the task. “It might not have been like that if I’d had a particular instrument or history that I was bringing along. With music if you only program what you enjoy then you shut the door to all sorts of other people. Variety is what a real festival is about.” Visitors this year can look forward to re-encountering, or meeting, some returning SSM favourites: the Blind Boys of Alabama, Orchestre de la Francophonie, John MacLeod’s Rex Hotel Orchestra, the Langley Ukuleles, the Mzansi Youth Choir of South Africa, to name a few. And while this year, more than any, Miller is going back to the well in terms of inviting or re-inviting the artists who have helped make SSM what it has been over the last 18 years, there will also be artists he’s finally “landed” after hoping to present them for years. Four important Canadian pianists who will be featured are a striking example of this range. Marc André Hamelin makes a longanticipated SSM debut. Angela Hewitt, featured last summer, returns Summer Carillon Recital Series FRIDAY, JUNE 15 THURSDAY, JUNE 21 FRIDAY, JUNE 29 Scott Allan Orr (Toronto/Oxford) John Widmann (City Carillonneur, Frederick, Maryland) Gordon Slater (former Dominion Carillonneur, Ottawa) Listen to these free outdoor noon recitals on the front lawn of Metropolitan United Church Feel free to bring your lunch. No ticket is required. Donations welcome toward Metropolitan’s upcoming carillon renovation project 56 Queen Street E., Toronto • 416-363-0331 (ext. 26) • www.metunited.org thewholenote.com June | July | August 2018 | 17