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Volume 25 Issue 2 - October 2019

  • Text
  • Performing
  • Orchestra
  • Symphony
  • Musical
  • Concerts
  • Arts
  • Jazz
  • Choir
  • October
  • Toronto
Long promised, Vivian Fellegi takes a look at Relaxed Performance practice and how it is bringing concert-going barriers down across the spectrum; Andrew Timar looks at curatorial changes afoot at the Music Gallery; David Jaeger investigates the trumpets of October; the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (and the 20th Anniversary of our October Blue Pages Presenter profiles) in our Editor's Opener; the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at 125; Tapestry at 40 and Against the Grain at 10; ringing in the changing season across our features and columns; all this and more, now available in Flip Through format here, and on the stands commencing this coming Friday September 27, 2019. Enjoy.

an Ontario government

an Ontario government agency BluePages2019.indd 1 2019-09-22 10:23 AM The WholeNote VOLUME 25 NO 2 | OCTOBER 2019 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 Social Media Editor | Danial Jazaeri dan@thewholenote.com Listings Editor | John Sharpe listings@thewholenote.com jazz@thewholenote.com SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP Concert & Event Advertising / Membership | Karen Ages members@thewholenote.com Advertising Art /Production Support / Operations Jack Buell | adart@thewholenote.com Classified Ads | classad@thewholenote.com Website/Systems Support | Kevin King systems@thewholenote.com Circulation/Subscriptions | Chris Malcolm circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS per year + HST (9 issues)* *international subscriptions: additional postage applies THANKS TO THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS Beat Columnists Wendalyn Bartley, Paul Ennis, Jack MacQuarrie, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Lydia Perović, Colin Story, Menaka Swaminathan, Andrew Timar, Steve Wallace, Matthew Whitfield Features Vivien Fellegi, Robert Harris, David Jaeger, David Perlman, Andrew Timar CD Reviewers Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Roger Knox, Barry Livingston, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, David Olds, Ivana Popovic, Cathy Riches, Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Sharna Searle, Adam Sherkin, Colin Story, Bruce Surtees, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield Proofreading Sara Constant, Paul Ennis, Danial Jazaeri, John Sharpe Listings Team Ruth Atwood, Tilly Kooyman, John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Colin Story, Katie White Design Team Kevin King, Susan Sinclair Circulation Team Lori Sandra Aginian, Wende Bartley, Beth Bartley / Mark Clifford, Jack Buell, Sharon Clark, Manuel Couto, Paul Ennis, Robert Faulkner, Terry Gaeeni, James Harris, Micah Herzog, Jeff Hogben, Bob Jerome, Chris Malcolm, Luna Walker-Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison, Garry Page, Andrew Schaefer, Tom Sepp, Julia Tait, Dave Taylor un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario BEAT BY BEAT 22 Classical & Beyond | PAUL ENNIS 24 Art of Song | LYDIA PEROVIĆ 26 Early Music | MATTHEW WHITFIELD 28 On Opera | DAVID PERLMAN 30 Music Theatre | JENNIFER PARR 32 In with the New | WENDALYN BARTLEY 34 Jazz Notes | STEVE WALLACE 36 Choral Scene | MENAKA SWAMINATHAN 39 Bandstand | JACK MACQUARRIE 57 Mainly Clubs, Mostly Jazz | COLIN STORY LISTINGS 41 A | Concerts in the GTA 52 B | Concerts Beyond the GTA 53 C | Music Theatre 57 D | In the Clubs (Mostly Jazz) 59 E | The ETCeteras 20 TH ANNUAL BLUE PAGES PRESENTER PROFILES 2019/20 B1-B28 DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 62 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 64 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 66 Keyed In | ADAM SHERKIN, JANOS GARDONYI, RAUL DA GAMA, RICHARD HASKELL 68 Vocal 69 Classical and Beyond 70 Modern and Contemporary 72 Jazz and Improvised Music 76 Pot Pourri 78 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 79 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES MORE 6 Contact Information 7 Upcoming dates and deadlines 60 Classified Ads SPECIAL SECTION IN THIS ISSUE B1-B28 The Blue Pages Annual Directory of Music Makers It’s not too late to be included! Additional profiles will appear in November contact: Karen@thewholenote.com 6 | October 2019 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN Anniversaries In Blue & Velvet Back in 1999, the feeling of collective millennial fervour and/or impending doom, as the thousand-year clock ticked toward midnight, is something that any of our readers old enough to remember Y2K will be able to relate to. And literature and everyday discourse are rife with examples of phrases like “100th birthday” and “turn of the century” being used in ways which take for granted that the reader or listener will understand, without any need for any further explanation, why the odometer clicking from 99 to 100 always has special significance. I am, however, starting to think that any time the calendar threatens to click over from nine to ten, people are suddenly galvanized into getting something important done “before it’s too late.” How else do we explain the rash of earth-shakingly important events in years, like this one, when the moving finger of fate is pointing to a nine? And this in turn leads to subsequent rashes of anniversary celebrations, every ten years after that. Like this year’s 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969; or the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; or … drum roll please! ... the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the WholeNote Blue Pages directory! That last example is of course entirely flippant; the other two are not, although I must confess that while I listened in 1969, with half the world, over a crackling transistor radio, to Neil Armstrong flub his big line, and forgave him, I couldn’t care less at this point what Buzz Aldrin thinks about Armstrong, 50 years later. More than anything else I find it depressing that, 50 years later, the same old loony theories about the moon landing being a hoax still refuse to go away. As for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, I still think that one is worth celebrating (as, I notice, Orchestra Toronto will do in their upcoming October 27 concert). There’s another 30th anniversary concert in our listings this month also worth celebrating, and since it hasn’t been picked up by any of our writers, I am going to do a shout-out for it here, for three reasons. Titled “Freedom Reborn,” it takes place at 5pm on Sunday, October 27 at St. Andrew’s Church at King and Simcoe, across the road from Roy Thomson Hall. As the organizers explain, the freedom it celebrates is “the 30th anniversary of the return of democracy and freedom to Central Europe” – namely the rollback of Soviet political domination, throughout 1989, in Hungary, Poland, and what was then Czechoslovakia. I won’t pretend to have either a deep historical understanding of the ebb and flow of that year, or the visceral memory of what it meant for citizens of the countries in question, many of whom experienced it from places like Canada where they had taken refuge, or sought firm ground on which to take a stand. I do remember, though, the phrase “The Velvet Revolution” to describe the astonishing, largely nonviolent series of events in Czechoslovakia between the middle of November and the last days of December 1989, culminating in the swearing in of Vaclav Havel – an artist for crying out loud! – as president on December 29, just before the clock ticked over. I also understand a little bit better now than I did then, the extent to which, in the absence of the momentum building through all the other Warsaw Pact countries over the course of that year, that astonishing outcome would have been entirely impossible. One of the things I like most about this particular concert is that it is a joint venture among the Consulates General of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in Toronto along with the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Canada – the four member nations in the so-named Visegrad Group of Central European countries. Cooperation to make happy noise is almost invariably a good thing. The second thing I like about it is that the artists involved reflect all the countries concerned: Alicja Wysocka, soprano; John Holland, baritone; Jan Vaculik, baritone; Sophia Szokolay, violin; Daniel Wnukowski, piano; Imre Olah, organ; Novi Singers Toronto; the St. Elizabeth of Hungary Scola Cantorum; the Dvořák Piano Quartet; and Toronto Sinfonietta, under Matthew Jaskiewicz, music director. And the third thing I like is that the repertoire chosen (again representative of the four countries involved) is for the most part beautiful – joyful and familiar, stirring and celebratory, so that the people attending (and it’s free, so expect a crowd!) have a good chance of coming away without the kind of ambivalence that dogs us all every day, in the fishbowl of awareness of the negative consequences of our own actions and inactions, intended or not. Moments of hard-won escapism. Maybe that’s the message. Let’s hope the organizers don’t feel like they have to wait another ten years to wade in our town’s musical waters. Our Blue Pages directory is full of examples of people working collectively on an ongoing basis for art’s sake. In the mean times we live in, beauty needs all the help it can get. publisher@thewholenote.com Upcoming Dates & Deadlines for our NOVEMBER 2019 edition Free Event Listings Deadline Midnight, Tuesday October 8 Display Ad Reservations Deadline 6pm Tuesday October 15 Advertising Materials Due 6pm Friday October 17 Classifieds Deadline 6pm Saturday October 26 Publication Date Tuesday October 29 (online) Thursday October 31 (print edition) Volume 25 No 3 “NOVEMBER” will list events November 1 to December 7, 2019 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 SEPTEMBER 2019 24,000 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 © 2019 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com thewholenote.com October 2019| 7

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