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Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

  • Text
  • Choir
  • Performing
  • Musical
  • Quartet
  • Jazz
  • Symphony
  • Theatre
  • Arts
  • Toronto
  • April
Arraymusic, the Music Gallery and Native Women in the Arts join for a mini-festival celebrating the work of composer, performer and installation artist Raven Chacon; Music and Health looks at the role of Healing Arts Ontario in supporting concerts in care facilities; Kingston-based composer Marjan Mozetich's life and work are celebrated in film; "Forest Bathing" recontextualizes Schumann, Shostakovich and Hindemith; in Judy Loman's hands, the harp can sing; Mahler's Resurrection bursts the bounds of symphonic form; Ed Bickert, guitar master remembered. All this and more in our April issue, now online in flip-through here, and on stands commencing Friday March 29.

Removal of “community

Removal of “community orchestra” as a loaded label from the Orchestras Canada member directory is an improvement there, but the word “community” itself remains fundamental to what Orchestras Canada is about. Orchestras Canada home page to keep their own information up to date on their websites.” As for the change from describing orchestras as ‘community’ or ‘regional’ to grouping them by annual revenues, she explains, the beginning of that shift goes back to project funding they got from the Ontario Arts Council. (“I’m not going to even try to put a year on it,” she says.) The money was given, in the terminology of the day, to study “the situation, interests and needs of smaller budget orchestras” in Ontario. “We started out, perhaps naively in retrospect, calling them community orchestras, and put together a research plan that involved travelling around to five or six parts of the province – and having regional meetings with folks from these orchestras.” It was an extraordinarily rich series of conversations, she says: What became abundantly clear was that there were more differences among orchestras with “small budgets” (revenues from ###COLUMNCONTENT### to 0,000 a year), than there were among orchestras with “large budgets” (revenues from 0,000 to million). “There was every shade of music making in that ###COLUMNCONTENT### to 0,000 range” she says, “from orchestras where only the conductor gets an honorarium through to fully professional ensembles with very short seasons, but all fitting within that so-called ‘small budget’ space we had preemptively defined as ‘community orchestras.’” It became clear, from this exercise, that trying to define the concept of a “community orchestra” based on budget ran the risk of making the designation so amorphous as not to be useful, or else trying to refine it further, to those groups with very little professional participation, with the danger that “community orchestra” would become almost a pejorative term – “taken as symptomatic of volunteer bumbling rather than ‘we are darned proud of being called that’.” The new way of designating orchestras in the directory, purely by annual revenue, removes a layer of artistic value judgment from the equation. Viewed in this light, the Orchestras Canada member directory in its current form becomes a much more nuanced resource, amenable to searching and sorting in all kinds of ways; and with orchestras rising to the challenge of keeping their own websites up to date, (something that, from my perusal of the 65 Ontario orchestras in the directory, the vast majority are managing to do) it makes for fascinating reading. Removal of “community orchestra” as a loaded label from the Orchestras Canada member directory is an improvement there, but the word community itself remains fundamental to what Orchestras Canada is about, as one digs through the resources and information on the website. The word may have ceased to be useful in describing what orchestras are, but that creates, if anything, an even greater responsibility for OC and the constituency it serves to dig even more deeply into what the term “community” is useful for in talking about continues to page 84 FREE NOON HOUR CHOIR & ORGAN CONCERTS Enjoy an hour of beautiful music performed by outstanding Canadian choirs and organists, spotlighting Roy Thomson Hall’s magnificent Gabriel Kney pipe organ. TORONTO MASS CHOIR The Glory of Gospel WED APR 17 ◆ 12 PM OAKVILLE CHOIR FOR CHILDREN & YOUTH Here’s to Song! THU JUN 6 ◆ 12 PM FREE ADMISSION FOR TICKETS VISIT ROYTHOMSONHALL.COM/CHOIRORGAN OR CALL 416-872-4255 Suitable for ages 6 and up. For groups of 15 or more, contact groups@mh-rtth.com. For more information call the box office at 416-872-4255. Made possible by the generous support of Edwards Charitable Foundation. 18 | April 2019 thewholenote.com

GREAT CHAMBER MUSIC DOWNTOWN STRINGS Oct. 17 Nov. 7 Dec. 5 Jan. 9 Jan. 30 Feb. 27 Mar. 19 Apr. 16 Quartetto di Cremona Vision Quartet Gryphon Trio Miró Quartet St. Lawrence Quartet with pianist Stephen Prutsman Schumann Quartett Pavel Haas Quartet Quatuor Ébène St. Lawrence Quartet PIANO Oct. 22 Dec. 17 Feb. 18 Mar. 10 Mar. 31 Piano 6 Gala Jonathan Plowright Francesco Piemontesi André Laplante Benjamin Grosvenor Benjamin Grosvenor FULL SEASON OF 13 CONCERTS 0, 9. Other combinations available. Subscription prices include Handling Charges and HST. All concerts at 8pm TICKETS: 416.366.7723 | www.music-toronto.com 27 Front Street East, Toronto

Volumes 26-29 (2020- )

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)