Volume 25 Issue 9 - July / August 2020

an Ontario government

an Ontario government agency The WholeNote VOLUME 25 NO 9 | JULY & AUGUST 2020 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 Brian Chang, Sara Constant, Paul Ennis, Robert Harris, Jack MacQuarrie, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Lydia Perović, Colin Story, Andrew Timar, Steve Wallace CD Reviewers Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Sam Dickinson, Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Roger Knox, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Adam Scime, Andrew Scott, Sharna Searle, Adam Sherkin, Colin Story, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield Proofreading Karen Ages, Paul Ennis, Danial Jazaeri, David Perlman, John Sharpe Listings Team Ruth Atwood, Tilly Kooyman, John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Colin Story 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, Soudy Gaeeni, 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 24 WORLD VIEW | One More Pivotal Moment for Small World Music | ANDREW TIMAR 26 JAZZ NOTES | Playing Changes | STEVE WALLACE 28 BANDSTAND | How to Fight Pandemic Fatigue? Practise! | JACK MACQUARRIE 35 IN THE CLUBS | Small Venues – Surviving Suspension, and Moving Forward | COLIN STORY 36 LISTINGS: Online, Livestream, ETCetera MORE 6 Contact Information 7 Upcoming dates and deadlines 39 Classified Ads DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 40 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 42 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 44 Keyed In 45 Vocal 48 Classical and Beyond 50 Modern and Contemporary 55 Jazz and Improvised Music 57 Pot Pourri 58 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 60 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES SPECIAL PRINT SECTIONS IN THIS ISSUE, PAGES 31-34 The 16th annual GREEN PAGES Summer music as it begin to flower SEPTEMBER 2020 AND ON The 18th annual CANARY PAGES All things choral in southern Ontario. OCTOBER 2020 AND ON The 21st annual BLUE PAGES directory of music makers 35 6 | July and August 2020 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN “Exquisite Corpse” and Other Coping Strategies “Basically how it works is that each participant records material while only partially knowing what other participants have made. The full musical piece is revealed without knowing how all the parts will intersect.” – Ben Finley Exquisite Corpse, Wikipedia says, comes to us from the French Surrealists in the 1920s. As Surrealism founder Andre Bréton put it, “It started in fun, became playful and eventually enriching.” As a game or technique it is similar to the game Consequences, where players in turn write something, folding the page to hide part of what they have written before passing it on. The sometimes enriching fun comes when the whole thing is presented, with the missing parts in place. The name itself came from a sentence co-created during an early Surrealist round of the game: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau” (The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine). As a technique for collaborative creation, it continues to show up all over the arts spectrum: in the 1940s, composers John Cage, Virgil Thomson, Henry Cowell, and Lou Harrison, composed a set of pieces this way, each writing a measure of music plus an extra note or notes, then folding it on the bar line and passing it on to the next person. (Party Pieces is what the published end result was eventually called.) From post-punk English goth rock, to comic book frame-by-frame co-creation, to music theatre, parody novels, film, TV, art and architecture. The key to the game is that the full piece is revealed without any of the participants having had prior knowledge of how the parts would intersect. Exquisite COVID? Come to think of it, if one substitutes “it started as no fun at all” for Breton’s “it started in fun” life feels a whole lot like le cadavre exquis right now, including not having the foggiest idea what, or when, the “big reveal” will be. As Kevin King writes in “On Our Cover” (page 5), “to everyone things seem to be ‘buffering’ in one way or another now, … waiting for the next Zoom meeting or Facebook live stream to start, waiting for your favourite venue to re-open, waiting for someone to invent a face mask you can play an instrument through, waiting for the curve to flatten, or for a vaccine, or for social reform.” And while we wait, we chip away, each of us, at coming up with strategies and approaches that work for the part of the picture that each of us has to deal with, wondering how (or even if), as Ben Finley says in the quote at the top of this piece, “all the parts will intersect” and what kind of whole they will make when they do. continues on page 30 STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER Black Lives Matter. Many arts organizations and musicians in Ontario, whose activities are the main focus of The WholeNote’s work, are joining the call for urgent and concerted action to bring an end to systemic and deeply entrenched racism in society and the arts, especially, at this moment, as it relates, within the larger framework of racial inequity, to anti-Black racism. As publisher of The WholeNote I add my own voice to that call. But beyond expressions of solidarity, we have much work to do. For 25 years, our aim has always been to support the musical life of our community by painting as comprehensive a picture as we could of that collective musical life. But calling something comprehensive does not make it so, and in fact makes us complicit in maintaining an inequitable and unjust society. If we are to be part of the solution and not the problem, we must, individually and collectively, answer some fundamental questions: From whom do we actively seek information about their musical activity? How do the methods we use for gathering that information, and the structures we impose for presenting it, hinder inclusivity? How do we decide what types of music merit coverage? Who and how do we hire? How do we decide not just what stories are worth telling but who the storytellers need to be? As with the arts organizations and musicians whose activities are the main reason for our existence, joining this call for action is a necessary first step. But, moving forward, what we actually do about the things we are saying here is what we will all be judged by. That will be the real story. David Perlman, publisher@thewholenote.com Upcoming Dates & Deadlines for our September 2020 edition Free Event Listings Deadline Midnight, Saturday, August 15 Display Ad Reservations Deadline 6pm Saturday August 15 Advertising Materials Due 6pm Monday August 17 Classifieds Deadline 6pm Saturday August 22 Publication Date Tuesday August 25 (online) Friday August 28 (print) Volume 26 No 1 “SEPTEMBER 2020” will list events September 1 to October 7, 2020 AND INCLUDE The 18th Annual CANARY PAGES Canary Pages deadline: Tuesday, August 4 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 MAY 2020 5,000 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 © 2020 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com thewholenote.com July and August 2020 | 7