Volume 22 Issue 4 - December 2016/January 2017

FOR OPENERS | DAVID

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN Bangs and Whimpers At some times of the year (and in some years more than others) I find myself thinking about my dear former neighbour, Ida Carnevali, founder of the Kensington Carnival Arts Society (KCAS). As I wrote in this spot, back in May 2006, the various projects of KCAS over the decades were “a living example in the art of throwing some transforming activity into the path of the ordinary, nowhere more dramatically and effectively than in the annual Kensington Festival of Lights which to this day takes the form, at sunset every winter solstice, of a hand-made lantern-lit Market-wide march, from scenario to scenario, re-enacting all the world’s yearning for light.” “Scenario ambulante,” she called it, organizing various scenes to be performed along the route of the march, enlisting everyone she could round up to participate and then leading the audience on a journey to discovery the story. As I wrote back then, “It is that potential for accidental discovery that I yearn for in the urban context. Urban art, it seems to me, should be judged by the extent to which it can be ‘come across’ by people engaged in the ordinary. And even more so by the extent to which the artists themselves are willing to go beyond ‘business as usual’ by availing themselves of the opportunities for chance encounters and spontaneous collaboration.” In the KCAS Festival of Lights solstice drama, during the Ida years, there were great battles in the streets between giant puppets representing forces of darkness and light, sometimes Hannukah scenes, always on a Market rooftop a Nativity (which annoyed the hell out of the solstice purists). Always there were real people, bystanders, simply going about the ordinary, stumbling across the extraordinary, being amazed, and by their amazed presence becoming, in turn, part of the spectacle. Most especially, always at the end, and usually in some empty wading pool in one or another local park, surrounded by hundreds and sometimes thousands of young and old, there was a giant fire sculpture representing the old year, which after a period of frantic drumming and dancing was set ablaze, sending the sparks flying upward. (I remember one year, sometime before global warming, we made snowballs, shivering round the wading pool as the sculpture burned, and on impulse threw them into the fire. “Why are you doing that?” someone asked. “It’s making a wish for the new year,” we answered. “It’s for luck.” So the person who had asked the question made a snowball and threw it into the fire. And someone asked them “Why are you doing that?” and they answered “It’s making a wish for the new year. It’s for luck.”) And after that it snowballed effortlessly into a tradition which rekindles without discussion every time there is snow at the solstice. It’s interesting to read what I wrote ten years ago about urban art and the need for accidental discovery, and about artists being willing to go beyond the ordinary. Much more than I felt back then, it seems as though these are things that willy-nilly are under way, and somehow they make more easily described sense this time round. Take the World View column in this issue (page 24), as an example, with its description of secret concerts, and how they have the potential to breathe life into ordinary space. “Ida knew that,” I say. But I have to confess that what got me thinking about Ida on this particular day was a gloomier thought – that sometimes a year The WholeNote VOLUME 22 NO 4 | DECEMBER 1, 2016 - FEBRUARY 7, 2017 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 Listings Editor | John Sharpe listings@thewholenote.com Club Listings Editor | Bob Ben jazz@thewholenote.com SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP Concerts & Events/Membership | Karen Ages members@thewholenote.com Record Industry Sales/Marketing | Thom McKercher thom@thewholenote.com Advertising/Production Support/Operations Jack Buell | adart@thewholenote.com Classified Ads | classad@thewholenote.com Website/Systems | Bryson Winchester systems@thewholenote.com Website/Systems Support | Kevin King kevin@thewholenote.com Circulation/Subscriptions | Chris Malcolm circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS per year + HST (9 issues) THANKS TO THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS Beat Columnists Paul Ennis, Wendalyn Bartley, Christopher Hoile, David Podgorski, Hans de Groot, Andrew Timar, Jack MacQuarrie, Ori Dagan, mJ buell, Bob Ben, Brian Chang Features David Perlman, Wendalyn Bartley, Andrew Timar, David Jaeger, Heather Wright CD Reviewers Alex Baran, Alison Melville, Allan Pulker, Andrew Timar, Barry Livingston, Bruce Surtees, Daniel Foley, David Olds, Dianne Wells, Hans de Groot, Janos Gardonyi, Ken Waxman, Lesley Mitchell- Clarke, Max Christie, Michael Schwartz, Raul da Gama, Richard Haskell, Robert Tomas, Roger Knox, Sharna Searle, Stuart Broomer, Ted Quinlan, Terry Robbins, Tiina Kiik, Vanessa Wells Proofreading Vanessa Wells, Jennifer Liu, John Sharpe, Paul Ennis, Sara Constant Listings John Sharpe, Bob Ben, Tilly Kooyman, Ruth Atwood, Simone Desilets, Jennifer Liu, Katie White Circulation Team Abram Bergen, Beth Bartley / Mark Clifford, Bob Jerome, Dagmar Sullivan, Dave Taylor, Garry Page, Gero Hajek, Jack Buell, James Harris, John Dodington, Jeff Hogben, Jonathan Spencer, Lorna Nevison, Manuel Couto, Micah Herzog, Patrick Slimmon, Paul Ennis, Robert Faulkner, Sharon Clark, Tiffany Johnson, Tom Sepp, Vanita Butrsingkorn, Wende Bartley Layout & Design Bryson Winchester an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario Upcoming Dates & Deadlines Free Event Listings Deadline 6pm Sunday January 8 Display Ad Reservations Deadline 6pm Sunday January 15 Classifieds Deadline 6pm Sunday January 22 Advertising Materials Due 6pm Wednesday January 18 Publication Date Wednesday January 25 (Online) Thursday January 27 (Print) Volume 22 No 5 covers February 1, 2017 - March 7, 2017 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 December 2016: 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 © 2016 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com 6 | December 1, 2016 - February 7, 2017 thewholenote.com

deserves to go out without any fanfare, especially a year as loud and globally destabilizing and politically topsy-turvy as 2016 has been. Maybe instead it should be sent slinking into the night with neither a wish nor a prayer, nor even a snowball hurled after it. “Not with a bang but a whimper,” as T.S. Eliot said? Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not. If I look around this room, change goes on here at The WholeNote, in lots of quietly methodical and interesting ways. One example: last month you could have accessed a flip-through edition of this print magazine three days before the print edition hit the street, and within a couple of days of the print magazine hitting the street you could have gone to the online listings on our website and used the Ask Ludwig search engine there for listings in any genre, geographic zone and date range we cover. (Ten years ago, by contrast, if you wanted to look at our live concert listings you would have waited for a copy of the magazine to arrive at one of the hundreds of places to which it was distributed in the thousands, by a dedicated crew of drivers and hoppers, most of them music lovers themselves. Just for you, dear reader, to pick up, free of charge.) We still do that, so you still can. (And a quiet thank you to all the drivers and hoppers who make that fact possible, month in and month out.) But this month if you’d known about it, you could have accessed the searchable online listings for December/January a full week before we went to press. And, all going as planned, if you go back to the website to Ask Ludwig for help at the beginning of January, you will find hundreds of listings already on line, clear through to the end of the season. More than ever, when the world feels dauntingly big, everything that adds to the potential for accidental discovery of art and music on a human scale is a victory of sorts. Throw a snowball in a fire and make a wish. publisher@thewholenote.com Ask LUDWIG! LUDWIG enables you, the reader, to better search our live concert listings. On our website you can search for specific text (like a performer’s or composer’s name). You can also refine your search to geographic zones or genres or date range. LUDWIG online! is brand new and still in what we call a "Beta" trial. This means there may be some bugs or errors that we are not yet aware of. We thank you for helping us "kick the tires" on this new service and apologize in advance for any problems you may encounter. Find what you like online at TheWholeNote.com/Ask-Ludwig INDEX OF ADVERTISERS 5 at the First Chamber Music Series 62 All Saints Kingsway Anglican Church 31, 38 Alliance Française 53 Amadeus Choir 46 Analekta 77, 81 Annex Singers 45 ArtsMedia Projects 68 Associates of the TSO 16, 54 ATMA 5, 73, 75, 79 Attila Glatz Concert Productions 4, 50, 61 Aurora Cultural Centre 53, 55 Bach Children’s Chorus/Chamber Youth Choir 42 Bassoon Out Loud 39, 48, 54 Bridge Records 81, 83 Canadian Opera Company 53, 56, 96 Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts 44 Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra 46 Chor Leoni Choir 73 Christ Church Deer Park Jazz Vespers 66 Church of the Holy Trinity 40 City of St. Catharines 59 Continuum Ensemble 81 Counterpoint Community Orchestra 41 Divine Art 75, 79 Don Wright Fac Mus Western U 63 Eglinton St. George’s United Church 43 Ensemble Vivant 17, 40, 49, 58, 59, 60 Exultate Chamber Singers 41 Flute Street 46 Grand Philharmonic Choir 59 Horizon Tax 68 I Furiosi Baroque Ensemble 51 Iain Scott (Opera IS) 28 Kindred Spirits Orchestra 46 Li Delun Music Foundation 51, 67 Living Arts Centre 25 Long & McQuade 17 Mississauga Symphony 47 Mooredale Concerts 54, 75 Music at Metropolitan 30, 32 Music at Metropolitan Noon at Met 40 Music at St. Andrew’s 50 Music Toronto 9, 15, 45, 51, 54, 57 NAC Young Artists Program 67 Nerossa Music 48 New Music Concerts 20, 37, 51, 57 No Strings Theatre 47 Ontario Philharmonic 13 Opus 8 49 Orpheus Choir/Hannaford Street Silver Band 19, 44 Pasquale Bros. Downtown 68 Pax Christi Chorale 11, 42, 45 Peggy Baker Dance Projects 21 Remenyi House of Music 17 Rhodes Piano 68 Roy Thomson Hall 15, 44, 47, 56 Royal Conservatory 3, 52, 54 Scarborough Philharmonic 37, 57, 95 Sony Centre 50 Soundstreams 23, 39, 56 St. Anne’s Music and Drama Society 26, 55 St. Michael’s Choir School 38 St. Michael’s College / Musicians In Ordinary 40 St. Olave’s Church 57 Stand Up Guy 68 Steinway Piano Gallery 15 Syrinx Concerts 22, 43 Tafelmusik 2, 37, 45, 53 Talisker Players 18, 55 Tarragon Theatre/Volcano Theatre 29 Temple Sinai 52 That Choir 48 Toronto Chamber Choir 45 Toronto Choral Society 44 Toronto Consort 23, 33, 41, 56 Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 40 Toronto Operetta Theatre 27 Toronto Symphony 52, 53, 93 U of T Faculty of Music 22 Universal Music 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83 Univox / Florivox Choirs 41 Victoria Scholars Men’s Choral Ensemble 48 VISHWAS THOKE 83 VOCA Chorus of Toronto 42 Voicebox - Opera in Concert 27 Whitney Smith 67 Windermere String Quartet 52 Yip’s Music Festival 67 Yorkminster Park Baptist Church 32, 43, 49 thewholenote.com December 1, 2016 - February 7, 2017 | 7