Views
5 years ago

Volume 24 Issue 3 - November 2018

  • Text
  • November
  • Toronto
  • Jazz
  • Theatre
  • Musical
  • Arts
  • Orchestra
  • Performing
  • Symphony
  • Bloor
Reluctant arranger! National Ballet Orchestra percussionist Kris Maddigan on creating the JUNO and BAFTA award-winning smash hit Cuphead video game soundtrack; Evergreen by name and by nature, quintessentially Canadian gamelan (Andrew Timar explains); violinist Angèle Dubeau on 20 years and 60 million streams; two children’s choirs where this month remembrance and living history must intersect. And much more, online in our kiosk now, and on the street commencing Thursday November 1.

an Ontario government

an Ontario government agency The WholeNote VOLUME 24 NO 3 |NOVEMBER 2018 Centre for Social Innovation 720 Bathurst St., Suite 503, Toronto ON M5S 2R4 PHONE 416-323-2232 | FAX 416-603-4791 Publisher/Editor in Chief | David Perlman publisher@thewholenote.com Chairman of the Board | Allan Pulker directors@thewholenote.com EDITORIAL Managing Editor | Paul Ennis editorial@thewholenote.com Recordings Editor | David Olds discoveries@thewholenote.com Digital Media Editor | Sara Constant editorial@thewholenote.com Social Media Editor | Danial Jazaeri Listings Editor | John Sharpe listings@thewholenote.com jazz@thewholenote.com SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP Concert & Event Advertising / Membership | Karen Ages members@thewholenote.com Advertising Art /Production Support / Operations Jack Buell | adart@thewholenote.com Classified Ads | classad@thewholenote.com Website/Systems Support | Kevin King systems@thewholenote.com Circulation/Subscriptions | Chris Malcolm circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS per year + HST (9 issues)* *international subscriptions: additional postage applies THANKS TO THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS Beat Columnists Wendalyn Bartley, Brian Chang, Paul Ennis, Christopher Hoile, Jack MacQuarrie, Jennifer Parr, Lydia Perović, Colin Story, Andrew Timar, Steve Wallace, Matthew Whitfield Features Paul Ennis, Robert Harris, David Jaeger, David Perlman, Cathy Riches, Andrew Timar CD Reviewers Alex Baran, Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Roger Knox, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovic, Allan Pulker, Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Sharna Searle, Colin Story, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Ken Waxman, Dianne Wells. Proofreading Sara Constant, Paul Ennis, Danial Jazaeri, John Sharpe Listings Team Ruth Atwood, Tilly Kooyman, John Sharpe, Colin Story, Katie White Design Team Kevin King, Susan Sinclair Circulation Team Lori Sandra Aginian, Wende Bartley, Beth Bartley / Mark Clifford, Jack Buell, Sharon Clark, Manuel Couto, Paul Ennis, Robert Faulkner, Terry Gaeeni, Gero Hajek, James Harris, Micah Herzog, Jeff Hogben, Bob Jerome, Chris Malcolm, Luna Walker- Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison, Garry Page, Andrew Schaefer, Tom Sepp, Dagmar Sullivan, Julia Tait, Dave Taylor, Randy Weir BEAT BY BEAT 18 Classical & Beyond | PAUL ENNIS 20 Choral Scene | BRIAN CHANG 24 Early Music | MATTHEW WHITFIELD 27 Art of Song | LYDIA PEROVIĆ 29 On Opera | CHRISTOPHER HOILE 30 Music Theatre | JENNIFER PARR 32 In with the New | WENDALYN BARTLEY 34 World View | ANDREW TIMAR 36 Jazz Notes | STEVE WALLACE 38 Bandstand | JACK MACQUARRIE 60 Mainly Clubs, Mostly Jazz | COLIN STORY LISTINGS 40 A | Concerts in the GTA 56 B | Concerts Beyond the GTA 59 C | Music Theatre 61 D | In the Clubs (Mostly Jazz) 63 E | The ETCeteras DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 66 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 68 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 70 Keyed In | ALEX BARAN 74 Classical and Beyond 75 Modern and Contemporary 77 Jazz and Improvised Music 80 Pot Pourri 82 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 83 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES MORE 6 Contact Information 7 Upcoming dates and deadlines 64 Classified Ads SPECIAL SECTION 65 THE BLUE PAGES – Supplement The WholeNote welcomes additional members to the 19th Annual Directory of Music Makers 72 Vocal 32 un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario an Ontario government agency 6 | November 2018 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN Harmonics, Artificial and Accidental Living composers quite often get invited, singly or in clusters, to the front of a concert hall to talk about a piece of music they have composed that is on the program of the concert in question. More often than not, this “pre-concert chat” or “illuminating introduction,” or whatever it is called, takes place 45 minutes to an hour before the performance itself and is supposed to end ten or 15 minutes before the concert starts in order to give audience members who showed up early to be enlightened time to dash out for a quick something or other. Whether or not, on balance, I end up enjoying these pre-concert chats depends on three or four things. On the negative side of the ledger, the thing I like least is when the interviewer/host “by way of introduction” starts out by parroting word for word from the concert program the stuff I already took the time to read (while the houselights were still bright enough to read by). Almost as bad is when the host avoids that trap and asks an interesting question, and the composer responds, word for word with what they wrote for the concert program. I say “almost as bad” because, if you think about it, being asked to talk about music you probably wrote because there were no words for the thing you wanted to express is not an enviable task. On the positive side of the ledger, when the dialogue works out, when there’s a genuine rapport between host and guest, the reward for coming 45 minutes early is getting to eavesdrop on what sounds like a spontaneous conversation between two people who care deeply (and know more than I do) about something I am genuinely interested in. I say “sounds like” a spontaneous conversation because I know a little bit about how much preparation it takes on the part of the host/ interviewer to have a chance of achieving that kind of flow, especially when your guest composer, as often as not, equates sitting on a chair looking into bright lights with being at the dentist. I particularly enjoy the pre-concert chats that Alexina Louie has hosted over the years for Esprit Orchestra. A composer herself, Louie more often than not manages to put her guest or guests at ease and to actually listen to what they say and respond to it, rather than spending the time while the guest’s gums flap checking the question she asked off her list and asterisking the next one. This past Wednesday, for example, I played hooky from WholeNote production to make it to Koerner Hall in time for the pre-concert chat ahead of the opening concert of Esprit’s 36th season, only to discover that none of the composers programmed were in attendance. Two of them, Charles Ives and Tristan Keuris, being dead, had a good excuse; the third, Unsuk Chin, South Korean-born and Berlinbased, was likely otherwise engaged, having just been awarded the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music at the New York Philharmonic, a 0,000 commission. And (proof that lightning does strike twice) the fourth, US composer Missy Mazzoli, was also likely busy, having just been commissioned to write a full-length opera by the Met, based on George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo. What could, therefore, have turned into the kind of 35-minute recitation from the concert program notes that is the pre-concert format I dread most, turned instead into a delightful variation on the usual theme, with Esprit concertmaster Stephen Sitarski, violin in hand, stepping in for a conversation (with his violin doing much of the talking), about the nuances and challenges, piece by piece, of the music we were about to hear. It was eye- and ear-opening. And from it, entirely by chance, I came by the title for this month’s opener. A warning: those of you expecting this editorial to turn erudite will be disappointed. I am no more equipped to use music to describe my worddriven brain than your typical composer is to use words to talk about their music. What the discussion of harmonics in that pre-concert chat gave me is a way to describe my greatest pleasure as editor of this magazine: reading through all the various bits and pieces it contains, most of them written, without knowledge on the part of the writers, of what else was being written for the issue, I find myself delighting in the way, over and over again, one thing happens to chime with another. What to make, for example, of the fact that in two unrelated stories in the issue (I won’t tell you which two) a composer is asked how they compose? Mahler answers the question with a question: “How do you make a trumpet? Hammer brass around a hole.” And American worldmusic pioneer Adam Rudolph is quoted as saying “Shoot the arrow and then paint a bullseye around it.” I will dine out on those two for years! Or what to make of the fact that, having scurried out to the Esprit concert this past Wednesday having just sent this month’s cover to the printer, I should discover (from the program I could still read because the houselights were up), that Kris Maddigan, subject of this month’s cover story, was toiling (almost invisibly) as third percussionist in the orchestra for the concert. Such is the life of the working musician. The great joy of a magazine like this, anchored as it is in the life of a functioning musical community, is that you can paint bullseyes around almost any topic of your choosing and find resonances. Four different stories about the role of music in community-building and the ways in which community, once built enables music and art to morph and change. Stories about reaching audiences – “60 million streams” or “thousands of gamers” – and bringing those audiences to music they might otherwise not have found. Stories about artists in different disciplines reaching out and finding each other and making living works of art that alone they could not have. Best of all, these are just the words about the music. This is just the pre-concert chat, and it’s over in time for you to dash out for a quick something or other. Let the music begin! publisher@thewholenote.com Upcoming Dates & Deadlines for our December 2018 edition Free Event Listings Deadline Midnight, Thursday November 8 Display Ad Reservations Deadline 6pm Thursday November 15 Advertising Materials Due 6pm Monday November 19 Classifieds Deadline 6 pm Saturday November 24 Publication Date Tuesday November 27 (online) Thursday November 29 (print edition) Volume 24 No 4 “DECEMBER & JANUARY” is our two month combined edition covering December 1 2018 – January 30 2019 WholeNote Media Inc. accepts no responsibility or liability for claims made for any product or service reported on or advertised in this issue. Printed in Canada Couto Printing & Publishing Services Circulation Statement OCTOBER 2018 30,000 printed & distributed Canadian Publication Product Sales Agreement 1263846 ISSN 14888-8785 WHOLENOTE Publications Mail Agreement #40026682 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: WholeNote Media Inc. Centre for Social Innovation 503–720 Bathurst Street Toronto ON M5S 2R4 COPYRIGHT © 2018 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com thewholenote.com November 2018 | 7

Volumes 21-25 (2015-2020)

Volumes 16-20 (2010-2015)

Volumes 11-15 (2004-2010)

Volumes 6 - 10 (2000 - 2006)

Volumes 1-5 (1994-2000)