Volume 26 Issue 2 - October 2020

an Ontario government

an Ontario government agency BluePages2020.indd 33 2020-09-27 5:43 PM The WholeNote VOLUME 26 NO 2 | OCTOBER 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 Artwork | adart@thewholenote.com 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 & Sheila McCoy circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS per year + HST (9 issues)* *international subscriptions: additional postage applies THANKS TO THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS Wende Bartley, Brian Chang, Paul Ennis, Robert Harris, Jack MacQuarrie, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Adam Sherkin, Marie Trotter, Steve Wallace, Luke Welch, Matthew Whitfield CD Reviewers Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson,Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Adam Scime, Andrew Scott, Adam Sherkin, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Yoshi Wall, Ken Waxman, Mathew 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. MORE STORIES 21 REFLECTIONS | Life as a Classical Unicorn| LUKE WELCH 22 CONCERT REPORT | Box Concerts Takes Opera Outside | MARIE TROTTER 28 JAZZ NOTES |Caught Between Jazz and a Hard Place | STEVE WALLACE 24 EARLY MUSIC | Kingston’s Bader Centre: Multiplatform Alacrity | MATTHEW WHITFIELD 25 CHORAL SCENE | Lessons from Skagit Valley and Beyond | BRIAN CHANG 31 BANDSTAND | Fall Fare | JACK MACQUARRIE 30 IN THE CLUBS | Something Resembling Fall | COLIN STORY 44 LISTINGS: Live & Hybrid, Livestream, ETCetera MORE 6 Contact Information 7 Upcoming dates and deadlines 49 Classified Ads 21 DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 51 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 52 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 54 Vocal 58 Classical and Beyond 60 Modern and Contemporary 62 Jazz and Improvised Music 65 Pot Pourri 66 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 67 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES 68 Other Fine Vintages SPECIAL PRINT SECTIONS IN THIS ISSUE, PAGES 33-43 The 21st annual BLUE PAGES Presenter Profiles 2020/21 Upcoming in NOVEMBER 2020 and DECEMBER 2020 Additional BLUE PAGES Profiles PRESENTER PROFILES 2020/21 21st ANNUAL DIRECTORY OF MUSIC MAKERS Welcome to Part 1 of The WholeNote’s 21 st annual Blue Pages directory of our region’s music makers. It’s been a bumpy ride getting to this point, and we hope you’ll enjoy perusing the profiles that follow, submitted both by presenters who are forging ahead with pandemically appropriate plans for 2020-21, or whose detailed plans are still uncertain. Thanks to all those who have once again opted in with a WholeNote membership and profile: for your faith in and support for what we do; and for having faith in yourselves, finding the resilience needed to move forward in these very uncertain times. And thanks to you, our readers, in print, and online at kiosk.thewholenote.com (where you can also find our four issues since April 1. (If you missed any of those four print issues and would like copies, please contact us. You’ll notice there are fewer profiles than would normally appear in our October Blue Pages; this is because, to allow 21 st ANNUAL BLUE PAGES presenters and artists whose plans are still uncertain a bit more time to figure things out, we will continue to publish them in our November and December/January issues as well. The cumulative three-part Blue Pages directory will be kept alive online at thewholenote.com under the “Who’s Who” tab (see page 36 for details). Profiles will be kept up-to-date there, as new ones arrive or more information is available for those already here. For information on the benefits of a WholeNote membership (of which a Blue Pages profile is a feature), please contact Karen Ages at karen@thewholenote.com or 416-323-2232 x26. BLUE PAGES TEAM 2020/21 PROJECT MANAGER: Karen Ages PROJECT EDITOR: Danial Jazaeri LAYOUT AND DESIGN: Susan Sinclair WEBSITE: Kevin King Cover photo: Aga Khan Museum by Janet Kimber un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario 6 | October 2020 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN WHICH WAY TO TURN SHARON LOVETT. My father would have instantly recognized this For Openers title as a line from Flanders and Swann’s song “Misalliance” (a cautionary tale about the dangers of potential cross-breeding among vines that turn in different directions as they climb). It is on the comedy duo’s live album, At the Drop of a Hat, recorded in glorious mono on February 21 1957 at the Fortune Theatre in London’s West End. It was perhaps the one of their songs, not all of which have stood the scrutinies of time, in which my father took the greatest delight, singing along with the last stanza and watching, in the faces of anyone who happened to be listening along with him, for some mirroring of the glee the lines gave him every time: Poor little sucker, how will it learn Which way it’s climbing, which way to turn. Right? Left? What a disgrace. Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face. It’s a cautionary tale we would be well advised to apply to this fall’s socially distanced dance of choice – the pivot. It’s not just about changing direction, it’s about what direction you turn. Take the transparent mask I am wearing in this photograph, for example. I got the mask a few months back from Laura Mather who runs a small company called powhearing.com, providing services and products which allow businesses to be accessible for persons who need hearing support during customer interactions, at live events, and in workplaces. It is, incidentally, the very same one that is hanging around my neck in the photograph on page E7 of the Toronto Star on Saturday August 29. (That photo was by René Johnston; this one photo is by Sharon Lovett in the newly grassed backyard of the home she shares with WholeNote recordings editor David Olds.) I get asked about the mask dozens of times a week – we none of us realized quite so clearly before how much we rely on being able to read other people’s lips and for other people to be able to read ours. (Think about this observation, for example, when you read, in Choral Scene in this issue, Brian Chang’s comments about trying to rehearse pronunciations and languages while wearing a mask; or when you are planning a visit to the relative who, these days, finds it hard to hear what you’re saying, even at the best of times.) As much of a difference-maker as the mask itself is, is Mather’s fight now under way – not, as you might think, to stop people from stealing “her idea”, but to stop anyone from trying to patent it in order to corner the market on something so clearly in the common good. A turning point in thinking? Yes I think so. As soprano Measha Brueggergosman says elsewhere in this issue (in the sprawling conversation I had with her and violinist/composer Edwin Huizinga from her Halifax kitchen): “If we circle our wagons together, kind of in the same direction, we might just not only come through it, but come through it on the right side of history.” Remembering Ida Carnevali I have written over the years in this spot, about how, at some times of the year (and in some years more than others), I find myself thinking about my dear former neighbour, Ida Carnevali, founder of the Kensington Carnival Arts Society (KCAS). Never more so than now, hearing of her recent death, in Italy, at age 82. What I wrote back in May 2006 seems particularly resonant right now, so I offer it again: “[Her] projects over the decades were a living example in the art of throwing some transforming activity into the path of the ordinary, nowhere more dramatically and effectively than in the annual Kensington Festival of Lights which to this day takes the form, at sunset every winter solstice, of a hand-made lantern-lit Market-wide march, from scenario to scenario, re-enacting all the world’s yearning for light.” ‘Scenario ambulante,’ she called it, organizing various scenes to be performed along the route of the march, enlisting everyone she could round up to participate and then leading the audience on a journey to discover the story. “It is that potential for accidental discovery that I yearn for in the urban context. Urban art, it seems to me, should be judged by the extent to which it can be ‘come across’ by people engaged in the ordinary. And even more so by the extent to which the artists themselves are willing to go beyond ‘business as usual’ by availing themselves of the opportunities for chance encounters and spontaneous collaboration.” So here’s to Ida Carnevali. And here’s to accidental discovery, chance encounters and spontaneous collaboration. And to figuring out, all of us, the right directions to turn. publisher@thewholenote.com Upcoming Dates & Deadlines for our NOVEMBER 2020 edition Free Event Listings, deadline Midnight, Thursday, October 15 Display Advertising, reservation deadline 6pm Friday, October 16 Display Advertising, artwork due 6pm Monday, October 19 Classifieds deadline 6pm Saturday October 24 Publication Date Tuesday October 27 (online) Thursday October 29 (print) Volume 26 No 3 “NOVEMBER 2020” will list events November 1 to December 7, 2020 and include The 21st Annual BLUE PAGES, part 2 for info: members@thewholenote.com WholeNote Media Inc. accepts no responsibility or liability for claims made for any product or service reported on or advertised in this issue. 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