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Volume 25 Issue 8 - May / June 2020

  • Text
  • Choir
  • Performing
  • Performances
  • Orchestra
  • Musicians
  • Jazz
  • Recording
  • Toronto
  • Musical
  • Concerts
"COVID's Metamorphoses"? "There's Always Time (Until Suddenly There Isn't)"? "The Writing on the Wall"? It's hard to know WHAT to call this latest chapter in the extraordinary story we are all of a sudden characters in. By whatever name we call it, the MAY/JUNE combined issue of The WholeNote is now available, HERE in flip through format, in print commencing Wednesday May 6, and, in fully interactive form, online at thewholenote.com. Our 18th Annual Choral Canary Pages, scheduled for publication in print and flip through in September is already well underway with the first 50 choirs home to roost and more being added every week online. Community Voices, our cover story, brings to you the thoughts of 30 musical community members, all going through what we are going through (and with many more to come as the feature gets amplified online over the course of the coming months). And our regular writers bring their personal thoughts to the mix. Finally, a full-fledged DISCoveries review section offers cues and clues to recorded music for your solitary solace!

Beat by Beat | Choral &

Beat by Beat | Choral & More Maybe Soon? Or Maybe Not BRIAN CHANG Andrew Timar (left) plays suling gambuh with members of Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan at International Gamelan Festival, Munich, Germany 2018. The screenshot is from the Rainforest video on ECCG’s YouTube channel. Gamelan Meetups, they can theoretically resume when the Array studio reopens and social distancing measures are lifted. I’ll have my work cut out for me to ensure a safe and welcoming meeting environment: attending jams after months of entrenched social distancing could be an issue. Part of the issue is that gamelan is a collective noun, gamelaning an interactive music activity that happens in person. In one way different from most orchestras, individual gamelan musicians don’t typically own their instruments; rather they are collectively owned (like ECCG’s set) or owned by a single individual or institution. They stay together in one place. ECCG’s degung (a kind of West Javanese gamelan) follows this model. This means that unlike musicians in a symphony orchestra, chambre ensemble, soloist, jazz or rock band (or a DJ), there’s no easy way for ECCG to pivot to live online ZOOM-type video shows to reach our audience. We don’t have the instruments at home and of course can’t meet in our studio to play on our degung and also maintain socially distancing requirements. On the other hand ECCG has begun to address our online presence. In preparation for our composer workshop, percussionist and ECCG core member Mark Duggan and I prepared quick and simple degung instrument demos. Along with ECCG concert videos, they’re hosted on our YouTube channel. ECCG has also launched a new website which we’re gradually populating with content useful to composers writing for the group such as this ECCG degung instrument range sheet. I invite readers to view this video of my composition Open Fifths, Opens Hearts (2018). It’s an introspective exchange of improvised transcultural melodies over three successive drones. The work was performed by the Timar Parsons Duo, and Amely Zhou & Friends at the Small World Music Centre in celebration of Asian Heritage Month 2018. The soulful mixed-culture Kidung was performed by Jessika Kenney (vocal), Eyvind Kang (viola), Bill Parsons (kacapi) and me on Central Javanese suling at a live The Music Gallery concert at the Jam Factory. You can view the 2015 video here. As for the best place for gamelan-curious fans to get their live fix? Visit ECCG’s new YouTube channel to hear recently uploaded music such as this exciting, freewheeling rendition of Canadian composer Paul Intson’s Rainforest recorded at a live Munich concert. In addition, a quick internet search will result in numerous ECCG audio recordings and albums, such as Sunda Song on Naxos. Let’s stay safe, and let’s keep our ears, minds and hearts open. Andrew Timar is a Toronto musician and music writer. He can be contacted at worldmusic@thewholenote.com. Come What May Readers of The WholeNote know me primarily as the Choral Scene columnist and an active participant in choral music in Toronto. My involvement and experiences in the rich cultural offerings of Toronto isn’t purely journalistic though, I’m also an avid theatregoer and it feels strange to me to go more than a few weeks without live art of some kind. This month I’m expanding our “What May Be” exploration beyond the choral world for some other touchpoints in the world of performing arts that I will miss. What was, and yet again may be, thoroughly enjoyed The biggest theatre event of the year, hands down, was the Toronto arrival of the touring production of Hamilton. Toronto was home to the “Phillip” cast of the tour, and this was the biggest selling, most expensive set of tickets ever released for a Toronto music theatre show. The state of emergency happened a month into the Toronto run. I had early tickets in February, a trick of luck with the subscription my mom and I have had for a decade. And then I was lucky enough to catch it again when a friend’s tickets became available and my boyfriend snatched them up so he could see it as well. I’m lucky, so very lucky to have experienced this magnificent theatre magic twice. The Ed Mirvish Theatre at its brim, all the way to the stools, with the truncating wall behind the mezzanine removed, holds 2300 patrons. In a week, Hamilton would have played to 23,000 people. Over the course of its three months this would have translated to 276,000 theatregoers. The magnitude of the loss is striking in numbers, and totally inconceivable in loss of experience. The ramifications for theatre continue with the two-part Harry Potter and the Cursed Child openings planned for the fall of 2020 now postponed into the nebulous 2021. The all-Canadian cast was announced just before the state of emergency hit us in Ontario. The Wizarding World will stay beyond our reach for a little longer. Meridian Hall has the Toronto Symphony Orchestra still engaged for the film concert of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the end of October. It’s still to early to know whether this will proceed or not. It’s unusual to think this might be the next time I’ll be in the seat of one of our Toronto theatres enjoying a remnant of the pre- COVID-19 world. One thing is sure, the appetite for Hamilton is still powerful. And Mirvish has said they will endeavour to bring it back. Maybe they will, with a permanent production next time, filled with Canadian talent. What may still be a while away It’s no secret the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (of which I am a member) has been without an artistic director for two years now. This choir is an important artistic partner to many arts organizations in the city, but also an important cultural treasure. Our entire season has been cancelled and this will have lasting effects as the artistic director search is also now postponed. The painstaking, resource-intensive work of assembling a search committee, actioning the search, conducting interviews, narrowing a short list, and presenting candidates to the Choir and stakeholders for contention, is a long and arduous journey. This process began well over a year ago and is unlikely to conclude before a year from now. Mid-sized arts organizations like the Mendelssohn Choir are vital to the way that music sounds in Toronto. The musicians that make up this choir are found in every part of our cultural life. They are the teachers that empower young musicians in schools, the soloists that you hear in church every Sunday, the actors that liven up 24 | May and June 2020 thewholenote.com

your stages, the doctors at the frontlines of pandemics, the journalists who toil at getting to the stories that affect everyday people. I was hoping that my September column would be a feature interview with the new artistic director of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. But that too, like so many others, is somewhere into the future. Eventually it will happen. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir will have a new artistic director for audiences to get to know and the Choir to get to love. There’s a magical connection between a conductor and musicians. Our colleagues at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra get to explore this new relationship with their new Maestro, Gustavo Gimeno. Soon enough, the TMC will get to know the gestures and facial expressions of their new conductor. After a time, the choir will learn to cohere around the meticulous downbeat of the hands, emotional flow along the lines and arcs, and create some truly beautiful music. What you may have missed The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has been performing some innovative and creative concerts that bring us closer to some beloved-worldwide cultural icons (while at the same time, bringing new audiences to the TSO). At the beginning of May, the TSO was to take on the bombastic score of the first of the newest trilogy of Star Wars films with 2015’s The Force Awakens. There are kids alive today who experienced Episode VII as their first Star Wars film. Followers of sci-fi epic sagas continue to fall in love with this series and the TSO started its play-through of the films in January 2019. On April 10, 2020, Square Enix released a completely remade version of Final Fantasy VII. The cultural impact of this game is inseparable from the incredible power of its musical score. Nobuo Uematsu, the original composer, is one of the biggest composers in video-game music. The span of his talents covers boisterous opera, vicious Latin chorales, rock-infused riffs alongside 100-plus players in an orchestra and the simplest, loveliest of piano solos. For the remake, Choral Scene columnist Brian Chang at home recording a vocal part for a virtual choir project with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. composer Masashi Hamauzu has taken the reins, enhancing and resetting the beloved music. Video games often have 30 hours or more of fully orchestrated music. Japanese composers like Uematsu and Yoko Shimomura may be unfamiliar to Toronto audiences, but are worldwide video-game icons. Final Fantasy VII has sold almost 13 million copies since it came out in 1997. The remake is already at a third of those sales at the time of writing, ten days after it was released. At the end of June, the TSO was to perform the score for the new film at Roy Thomson Hall. This concert has been postponed indefinitely. So, stay tuned readers of The WholeNote. What may be may still be far off, but then again, maybe not so far. Follow Brian on Twitter @bfchang Send info/media/tips to choralscene@thewholenote.com. JEFF SLATER A SEASON OF STORYTELLING— Subscribe and Save 25%! Music by Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, Paul Frehner, Robin Dann, Huang Ruo, Christopher Mayo, Claude Vivier, and more! Soundstreams.ca/subscription Or call (416) 504-1282 ext. 104 thewholenote.com May and June 2020 | 25

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)