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Volume 27 Issue 1 - September / October 2021

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Blue pages and orange shirts; R. Murray Schafer's complex legacy, stirrings of life on the live concert scene; and the Bookshelf is back. This and much more. Print to follow. Welcome back from endless summer, one and all.

The WholeNote VOLUME

The WholeNote VOLUME 27 NO 1 | SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER 2021 WholeNote Media Inc. 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 EDITORIAL Managing Editor | Paul Ennis editorial@thewholenote.com Recordings Editor | David Olds discoveries@thewholenote.com Blog/E-Letters | Sara Constant editorial@thewholenote.com Social Media | Danial Jazaeri, Colin Story social@thewholenote.com Listings Editor | John Sharpe listings@thewholenote.com SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP Concert & Event Advertising / Membership | Karen Ages members@thewholenote.com Production & Operations / Advertising Art | Jack Buell jack@thewholenote.com, adart@thewholenote.com Classified Ads | classad@thewholenote.com Website/Systems Support | Kevin King systems@thewholenote.com CIRCULATION Sheila McCoy & Chris Malcolm circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions@thewholenote.com + HST (8 issues) single copies and back issues *international - additional postage applies Columns and Stories Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer, Paul Ennis, Robert Harris, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Colin Story, Andrew Timar STORIES & INTERVIEWS 21 JAZZ IN THE CLUBS | For the clubs it’s not a moment too soon | COLIN STORY 23 JAZZ NOTES | Something Else! + Watch it Burn at the Bay Series | STUART BROOMER 55 BOOKSHELF | When Words Sing | SOPHIE BISSON 56 REARVIEW MIRROR | The Desire to Move Forward on Full Display | ROBERT HARRIS 58 BACK IN FOCUS | Previously covered, topical again | STAFF LISTINGS 24 Events by date 28 Available online Blogs, pods & regular streams 28 Classified Ads 57 DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 31 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 32 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 34 Vocal 36 Classical and Beyond 41 Modern and Contemporary 45 Jazz and Improvised Music 49 Pot Pourri 50 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 52 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES 53 Other Fine Vintages Reviews Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Sam Dickenson, Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Roger Knox, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovic, Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Michael Schwartz, Adam Scime, Andrew Scott, Sharna Searle, Adam Sherkin, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Yoshi Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield Proofreading Karen Ages, Paul Ennis, John Sharpe Listings Team John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Colin Story Design Team Kevin King, Susan Sinclair Circulation Team Jack Buell, Manuel Couto, James Harris, Bob Jerome, Chris Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Luca Perlman, Tom Sepp. 29 - 30 Who’s Who The WholeNote Online Directories Index Blue Pages for 2021-2022 Directory of Music Makers & Arts Services Canary Pages for 2021/2022 Directory of Ontario Choirs Green Pages 2021 Summer Music Festivals and Series Summer Music Education 2021 Summer camps, Programs & Workshops Deadline for inclusion in the next print edition index: October 20 an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario 4 | September and October 2021 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS Blue Pages and Orange Shirts DAVID PERLMAN Fall can be either a rough time or a good one to start feeling hopeful, depending on your point of view. Just like “back to school” means a lot of different things, depending where you are coming from and who is taking you there. This year in particular, the season of first cold nights and falling leaves brings very mixed feelings. Alongside “fourth wave”pandemic dread that nothing will ever be “normal” again, is a glimmering hope that, yes indeed, there is a chance that some aspects of what we called normal are gone for good, because just like “back to school” what’s called normal depends on where you stand in relation to it. Blue Pages Normally, for more than 25 years in fact, the fall issue of The WholeNote has been “Blue Pages” time – a special supplement containing dozens of short profiles by music makers and presenters in our community, telling readers about themselves and their plans and hopes for the season underway. Individual profiles could be interesting or not to a reader, depending on your personal musical likes, but collectively they were always more than the sum of their parts, because they gave a comforting sense of who “we” were as a music community, chock-a-block with the familiar, but always offering up something new for the adventurous to explore. One thing you could count on: when our Blue Pages members – usually more than 150 of them – said in the fall they were planning to do something over the course of the season, that was usually the way it worked out. Not so simple these days, as we all know. So last year, instead of publishing one official October Blue Pages in the print magazine, we took the Blue Pages online, so music makers could wait till they were ready to announce their plans. Just as important, they’d be able to revise what they’d said if and when the COVID finger of fate summarily disposed of what they had bravely proposed. This year, we are doing the same. Encouragingly, there are already 40 or so presenters who have taken the plunge: there’s an index of directory members so far on page 29. As always they are more than the sum of their parts: this year reflecting the same mix of hope and dread, tentativeness and caution bravely thrown to the winds, that we at The WholeNote and probably most of you are still feeling too. Choosing a cover for the Blue Pages issue has always been a bit of a challenge: choosing a “flagbearer for the team” has never felt quite right. Why single out some particular ensemble or artist to grace the cover when the underlying message is that the community’s collective strength is greater than the sum of its individual parts, especially in these complex times? Collectively, our ideas of what putting on or attending a concert means are being challenged as never before, along with our most comfortable assumptions of what constitutes “our” musical community. The need for good questions is largely what this issue’s cover is about. Orange shirts Yesterday (September 14, 2021) the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Red Sky Theatre announced a joint project, titled Mistatim, in the works since late winter, to be launched on September 30, now officially Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. “[The show] is about a fast-paced horse who will gallop into the hearts of children” says Red Sky Theatre’s artistic director Sandra Laronde. “[It’s] a story of reconciliation that asks its audience, ‘Why tame and punish when we can learn to listen and seek to understand?’” Its release on September 30, she says, “is an opportunity to set the stage for children to dream about the kind of world they want to live in, and an opportunity for us to shift our perspectives in light of historical inequities, and equip young people with the vocabulary to continue these critical conversations about reconciliation and diversity.” It is a new name for the day, but not a new observance. Under the name Orange Shirt Day it came to be in 2013, intended to promote awareness in Canada about the devastating impact of Canada’s residential school system on Indigenous communities for over a century – an impact that continues today. As Orange Shirt Day it was a grassroots initiative arising organically from the testimony in spring 2013 of Phyllis (Jack) Webstad from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation (Canoe Creek Indian Band) about her orange shirt, given to her by her grandmother and taken from her on entering “the Mission School” at age six or seven in 1973. I suspect that Orange Shirt Day will not easily be dislodged as the name for the day. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation sounds too much like something you check off the calendar when it’s done – something maybe you only raise a glass to when there is finally, after all the promises, clean drinkable water in every tap. In my mind, I hear some baffled reader ask What does all that have to do with music? Or theatre, or dance or live art of any kind? Good question. Upcoming Dates & Deadlines Free Event Listings NEW! Weekly online updates 6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting For Volume 27 No. 2 NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2021 Print edition listings deadline Midnight, Monday Oct 11 Print Advertising, reservation deadline 6pm Tuesday Oct 12 Classifieds deadline 6pm Saturday Oct 23 Publication Dates Tuesday Oct 26 (online) Friday, Oct 29 (print) 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 July 2, 2021 6.500 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 © 2021 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com thewholenote.com September and October 2021 | 5

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Volumes 6 - 10 (2000 - 2006)

Volumes 1-5 (1994-2000)