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Volume 16 Issue 2 - October 2010

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full academic and dance

full academic and dance curriculum she wasexpected to study elocution and sing in thechoir. Poise and musicality were valued andencouraged. And some of her teachers mentionedhistorical dance. They could see shewas too tall to be a conventional ballerina.After high school, Jeannette studieddance at Toronto’s Ryerson PolytechnicalInstitute (now Ryerson University), whereshe met her husband and co-artistic directorMarshall Pynkoski. oskiwas a Tafelmusik concert.“Yes, Marshall and I discovered Tafelmusiktogether. It has always offered sucha lovely happy intimate atmosphere. I havenothing against the symphony … I enjoy thattoo, but it’s not the same thing at all. This issomething very special.”As young dancers Zingg and Pynkoskitravelled to Paris, France in order to undertakein-depth studies of Baroque dance fromoriginal source material. During this periodthey danced at the Moulin Rouge to subsidizetheir studies. live music “was Moulin Rouge, which wasawful: two shows a day, seven days a week.That music was terrible. It was not art, butrather entertainment, and not very good entertainment,either. But real live music?I’ll never forget it. It was when we startedOpera Atelier, for a performance we gaveat the ROM in the spring of 1985. PeggySampson helped us from the very start. Sheput together an early music ensemble for us– played in it herself – it was utterly delightful.I loved it! Couldn’t believe the enhancedtogetherness of it. Suddenly there was thisperfectly symbiotic relationship between thedance and the music. Jeanne Lamon wasthere too, from the very beginning. And thewonderful Tafelmusik people have been withus ever since.”In addition to being Opera Atelier’sco-artistic director, Zingg is a consummateteacher and mentor. The School of AtelierBallet was founded at the same time asOpera Atelier, both to train dancers andsupplement their income. Today their youngeststudents are aged 10.“Only about 20% of the students whocome to the school have prior musical experiences.Children with no musical trainingat all can be musical dancers… but we tryto make sure they come to understand, on amore intellectual level, aspects of music. Allof our students are offered singing lessons– some have even gone on to become singers.Dancers must have an understanding ofcounting and rhythms. They must know howa rest works. If you don’t know music withsome intellectual understanding, you will notbe musical as a dancer...Continued online at thewholenote.comMusic’s Children gratefully acknowledgesKaren, Nancy, APTNDigitalNations, Linda,Francine, and SN Bianca.The WholeNote’sBeginningsThis being the start of our sixteenth year(well, close enough) I thought it mightbe fun to start looking back ... waaaaaay(when we were still called Pulse.)The issue had no cover photo, as you cansee, just an A to Z (almost) of the Torontomusic scene, made up of words and phrasesin that issue. It’s all in one of those proudlyillegible fonts that WordPerfect irresponsiblyput in the hands of people, like us, with evenless design sense than money! But I hope youcan read it. It tells an interesting tale.Of the 20 presenters named on the cover,13 are still with us, by the same name. Butthe fate of the other seven can’t be summedup in a single simple sentence.Baroque by the Grange was actually BaroqueMusic Beside the Grange, as founderAlison Melville was quick to point out.First correction we ever had to run, that onewas! Founder Melville is still going strong,though, with Ensemble Polaris and the wonderful“Bird Project,” among other things.Ruth Morawetz’s Classical Cabaret isalas no longer with us. But Ruth certainly is!Deer Park Concerts, along with DeerPark United Church, is no more, although itscongregation is still intact, just a block northat Calvin Presbyterian. And its wonderfulRathgeb Casavant Organ has a new, andsome say even sweeter, lease of life, at HolyTrinity Church downtown.Livent? Don’t know what happened toLivent. But the North York Symphony, albeitunder another name, still holds on, phoenixlike,to philharmonic life in the wonderfulhall Drabinsky built.We lost track of Richard Birney-Smith’sTe Deum Concerts sometime around 2002.As for Youth Singers, I can only thinkwe meant the Mendelssohn Youth Singers.They lost the battle a few years back. But theparent TMC continues to thrive, as anyonewho attended the TSO’s wonderful seasonopening Mahler Symphony No. 2 last Thursday(Sept 23) will attest.And as for the individuals named in Vol.1 #2’s quirky abecedarius, there’s a similarmix of names and fortunes; those thatare still with us, and those that though goneneed not be forgotten.Not only did Vol 1 #2 not have photo onthe cover, it remains the only issue of themagazine ever published not to have a singlephoto anywhere. As I said at the outset: nodesign sense, and no money! A single “stat”D A C A P ODAVID PERLMANBut even if it lacked for photos, it had onething we’ve found it hard to match in theintervening years, namely reader input.Under the heading “Hear Say: Our ReadersWrite” there were no fewer than sixpithy letters. It was the early days of fax machines,don’t forget. Remember? Didn’t needa stamp, and the knife went in instantly! Itwas heady stuff. Loathenew’ tagline,” snapped L.F. “To me classicalmeans dead western european white men’sconcert music. Don’t strangle a good ideawith too narrow a focus.” sical’is wide enough to include medieval,Rick Sharpe wanted an index of groups.Ben Scott wanted to know why Black CreekLibrary in North York had Pulse but City ofToronto libraries didn’t. And perhaps the mostprophetic letter of all came from Chris R.“Hope you’ll eventually make room forevents outside Metro ... (Unless you bombyou will certainly outlast Metro, so youshould be thinking about it.)”I’ll be dipping back into the archives, asspace permits, throughout this anniversaryyear. So get those letters rolling again if youlike. The fax is always on!David Perlmanpublisher@thewholenote.com58 thewholenote.comOctober 1 - November 7, 2010

Book ShelfPAMELA MARGLESIn Montreal recently I saw two museum shows that featuredmusicians - composer Iannis Xenakis and jazz trumpeter andcomposer Miles Davis. I came home with two interesting catalogues,and one question.We Want Miles was a huge, extravagant affair on view at theinstitution seemed an incongruous setting, it worked so well that bythe time I reached the last room the venue felt entirely appropriate.The show was packed with people of all ages when I visited. NoMiles’s music. Scores and parts written out by Miles, as wellas by colleagues like Canadian arranger Gil Evans covered thewalls. There were trumpets from all different periods of his career,lacquered in bright colours with his name engraved on the side.Sketches of Spain, as well as one of John Coltrane’s saxophones.before his death in 1991.I was thrilled to see one of the orange leather-bound Hermèsnotebooks which Pannonica de Koenigswarter had used to recordanswers from jazz musicians to her question, “If you were givenThree Wishes: An intimate Look at Jazz Greats. An image of thenotebook wasn’t included in the catalogue of the show, We WantMiles: Miles Davis by Frank Bergerot, but it’s packed with photosand informative text.Publicity, press kits & image consultingfor performers416.544.1803 www.lizpr.comOctober 1 - November 7, 2010 thewholenote.com 59

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