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Volume 22 Issue 9 - Summer 2017

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CBC Radio's Lost Horizon; Pinocchio as Po-Mo Operatic Poster Boy; Meet the Curators (Crow, Bernstein, Ridge); a Global Music Orchestra is born; and festivals, festivals, festivals in our 13th annual summer music Green Pages. All this and more in our three-month June-through August summer special issue, now available in flipthrough HERE and on the stands commencing Thursday June 1.

FOR OPENERS | DAVID

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN It Always Seems to Go, Don’t It? The seventh song of Peter Maxwell Davies’ groundbreaking monodrama, Eight Songs for a Mad King, is titled “Country Dance.” In it, the mad king (George III) seizes a violin from one of the ensemble players, goes through the motions of playing it, and by the end of the song has smashed it to smithereens and is walking around among its remnants, muttering “comfort ye my people,” before exiting at the end of the next song howling “howling, howling, howling.” Presented first in Toronto in the mid-nineties by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess’s Queen of Puddings Music Theatre at the very beginning of their 19-year existence as one of Canada’s most significant creators of new opera, it was somehow fitting that a riveting rendering of the work by baritone Bruce Kelly, May 17, at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, signalled the end of the final concert in the Talisker Players 16th and final season of their groundbreaking Journeys in Words and Music. Titled “A Mixture of Madness” the final concert had all the hallmarks of the Taliskers’ inimitable style, honed under violist Mary McGeer’s guiding hand: a carefully curated, thought-provoking mixture of vocal chamber music, some old and some new, interwoven with carefully chosen and always impeccably delivered readings on the theme of the day. By all accounts Talisker will not completely disappear from the map - reverting for a while at least to its original identity as a top-class, versatile chamber ensemble, available to accompany choirs - something they did for a full five years before starting this series and have continued to do. But as for this extraordinary series, which has, throughout its existence defied, conventional labelling as one art form or another, the announcement has been made, and the die is cast. They are going to leave us wanting more. At a somewhat melancholy after-party in the Trinity-St. Paul’s gym, someone I know, himself the curator of a small-venue series, who was attending his very first Talisker concert, came up to me with a look of almost accusatory chagrin on his face. “So how come I never heard of these guys?” he asked. Paraphrasing Joni Mitchell (“Always seems to go that we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone”) was the best I could muster in reply. But don’t get me wrong: sometimes it’s a fine thing to re-invent arts organizations, presenters, publications even. Arts councils call this succession planning and aging wrists get slapped for not doing enough of it. But sometimes you just need to know when a fine thing has run the course of its natural life. Talisker, it seems, was one of those. It’s never too late for early: In the third of three “Meet the Curators” profiles near the front of this month’s editorial lineup, Tamara Bernstein, now heading into her 17th year as programmer of Summer Music in the Garden at Harbourfront, talks about how the venue, by its very nature as a horticultural and topographical expression of a Bach cello suite, has meant that early music and historically informed performance practice, have always been part of the Summer Music in the Garden programming mix - and quite a mix it is! In my experience, passionate devotees of particular genres of music The WholeNote VOLUME 22 NO 9 | JUNE 1, 2017 - AUGUST 31, 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 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, Lydia Perović, Andrew Timar, Jack MacQuarrie, Ori Dagan, mJ buell, Bob Ben, Brian Chang, Jennifer Parr Features David Perlman, Stuart Broomer, Peter Goddard mJ buell, Paul Ennis, David Jaeger CD Reviewers David Olds, Terry Robbins, Alex Baran, Janos Gardonyi, Michael Schulman, Tiina Kiik, Hans de Groot, Austin Clarkson, Max Christie, Roger Knox, Nancy Nourse, Andrew Timar, John Carnes, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Raul da Gama, Stuart Broomer, Ken Waxman, Cathy Riches, Sharna Searle, Bruce Surtees 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, Sharna Searle Circulation Team Beth Bartley / Mark Clifford, Bob Jerome, Dagmar Sullivan, Dave Taylor, Garry Page, Gero Hajek, Jack Buell, James Harris, Jeff Hogben, Lorna Nevison, Manuel Couto, Micah Herzog, Patrick Slimmon, Paul Ennis, Robert Faulkner, Sharon Clark, Tiffany Johnson, Tom Sepp, Wende Bartley, Lori Sandra Aginian, Christine Vespa Upcoming Dates & Deadlines Free Event Listings Deadline 6pm Tuesday August 8 Display Ad Reservations Deadline 6pm Tuesday August 15 Classifieds Deadline 10pm Friday August 25 Advertising Materials Due 10pm Thursday August 17 Publication Date Wednesday August 30 (online) Friday September 1 (Print) Volume 23 No 1 covers September 1, 2017 - October 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 Summer 2017: 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 an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario COPYRIGHT © 2017 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com 6 | June 1, 2017 - September 7, 2017 thewholenote.com

(contemporary art music or early music, for example) are apt to express frustration around this time of year at the extent to which the year-round presenters of their preferred genres seem to fold up their tents en masse around the end of May, leaving their disciples no way to easily carry on as usual. One could, perhaps, as an excuse, make the mathematical case that the presence of particular niche genres of music during the summer is inversely proportional to the presence of air conditioning in the venues that typically host such niche genres. Be that as it may, I would venture to say that, if those disciples were to drill down into the listings of the scores of festivals and series that mushroom all over the summer landscape, you could assemble a list of concerts featuring your preferred genre long enough to keep you just as busy in your usual ways right through June, July and August. Granted, you’d probably have to use up all your accumulated Air Miles to do it, and that would be a waste, especially since you can donate said Air Miles to a musical presenter of your choice to help defray the cost of bringing in the musicians who will grace their tents and stages and barges and quarries this summer. More to the point, I think, would be to diligently search the available listings and identify series or events or festivals that include at least one type of music (or musician) that delights you. Then, having done so, give the rest of the lineup at that event a chance. Think of it this way: if the festival or event was curated by someone with the smarts to include something you already know you like, then maybe they’ve also included other stuff you never knew you were going to like! I can hear the objections already: “If you think I am going to sit with this magazine and go through 47 festivals-worth of listings to look for concerts with violins tuned to A415, you’re dreaming in technicolour!” Which brings me to my point: you don’t have to! You can just ASK LUDWIG. LUDWIG and the Haystack LUDWIG stands for Listings Utility Database for WholeNote Information Gathering. It powers our online listings and is just a click away under the Listings tab on our website. To paraphrase the unshaven guy on telly who does the hotel reservation commercials: just select date (day, week, or the whole summer, if you like!), region, musical type or keyword…and…search. I stopped writing this long enough to ask LUDWIG for all listings over the summer tagged Early Music. The response came up, in einem Augenblick as Ludwig might say, with dozens of events, little and large. Here’s just a sampling: May 30 to June 11: do not miss the five free concerts in the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Festival; June 2: I Furiosi is having their last concert of the season; June 4: the Tudor Consort has a concert at Leaskdale Church in Durham Region titled “For the Lover of Madrigals” with works by de Wert, Marenzio, Monteverdi, Lasso, de Rore and others; June 5, in the Music Mondays series, there is a concert titled “J.S. Bach - Rebel with a Contrapuntal Cause” with Penny Johnson, piano. I could go on…June 16, the Vesuvius Ensemble; June 25, Rezonance Baroque at Gallery 345…but you get the idea. So, as I said, if you want to stay in your usual groove for the summer, pack your toothbrush, and do so! Or you could boot on down, Aug 24, to the Three Dog Winery, on Fish Lake Road in Picton for a concert titled “Brass Burst” which includes Bach’s Fugue in G Minor BWV578 (the “Little Fugue”), along with brass quintet arrangements of Morning Song by tuba virtuoso J. Scott Irvine; selections from West Side Story; film composer Sonny Kompanek’s Killer Tango, and an arrangement of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. At this point you can say “Thanks for the warning” Or you can say “What the hell! It’s the summer.” Yes, indeed! May yours include a bunch of the music you like and some fine bouts of the unexpected! publisher@thewholenote.com INDEX OF ADVERTISERS Adelphi Vocal Ensemble................................56, 59 Amadeus Choir................................................ 35, 71 Arts Media Projects............................................. 70 Associates of the TSO...........................................52 ATMA..........................................................................5 Avery Raquel................................................... 66, 75 Beaches Jazz Festival.......................................... 38 Canadian Children’s Opera Company...............72 Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra............ 29 Christ Curch Deer Park Jazz Vespers.............. 65 City of Toronto Historic Museums........... 2, 51, 57 Classical Unbound............................................... 29 Clear Lake Chamber Music Festival................. 44 Contact Contemporary Music............................ 18 Counterpoint Community Orchestra............... 53 Elora Festival....................................................37, 44 Esprit Orchestra................................................... 92 Festival of the Sound.............................................22 Folk Camp Canada............................................... 69 Hannaford Street Silver Band............................ 41 Harbourfront Centre............................................ 19 Highlands Opera Studio.................................15, 45 Honens....................................................................75 Horizon Tax............................................................ 70 Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.93 Jack Gallagher.......................................................75 Jubilate Singers......................................................71 Kindred Spirits Orchestra............... 30, 53, 56, 57 Lark Ensemble...................................................... 54 Li Delun Music Foundation................................. 56 Long & McQuade.................................................. 69 Lulaworld Festival..................................................17 Mississauga Symphony Orchestra................... 29 Mooredale Concerts............................................27 Music and Beyond..........................................45, 46 Music at Metropolitain........................................ 28 Music Mondays.......................................... 51, 57, 59 Music Toronto..........................................................9 Nagata Shachu..................................................... 53 Nathaniel Dett Chorale...................... 23, 39, 47, 55 New Focus Recordings........................................ 77 New Horizons Bands........................................... 68 No Strings Theatre...............................................47 ORMTA - Central Toronto Branch..................... 70 Ottawa Chamberfest............................................ 13 Patrick Jordan....................................................... 77 Prince Edward County Music Festival...............25 Quinn Bachand...................................................... 77 Remenyi House of Music....................................... 11 Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra........... 55 Roy Thomson Hall.................................................. 91 Something Else! Festival of Creative Music.....47 St. James Cathedral............................................ 58 St. Joe’s Artsfest...................................................60 St. Olave’s Church................................................. 54 Stand Up Guy......................................................... 70 Steinway Piano Gallery........................................ 19 Stratford Summer Music.............................. 24, 48 Summer in the City Flute Festival................ 43, 44 Summer Opera Lyric Theatre............................. 31 Sweetwater Music Festival................................ 48 Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra............................4 Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute............ 48 TD Sunfest ’17 (London)........................................ 18 TD Toronto Jazz Festival...................................... 21 Toronto Children’s Chorus...................................57 Toronto City Opera............................................... 69 Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.............................. 36 Toronto Operetta Theatre.................................. 33 Toronto Summer Music Festival..... 27, 49, 73, 94 Toronto Symphony Orchestra.................3, 50, 54 Univox / Florivox Choirs.......................................52 Voicebox - Opera in Concert.............................. 34 Yorkminstrels Show Choir...................................71 Young Voices Toronto..................................... 53, 71 thewholenote.com June 1, 2017 - September 7, 2017 | 7

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