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Volume 26 Issue 8 - July and August 2021

  • Text
  • Events
  • Listings
  • Opera
  • Jazz
  • Sound
  • Orchestra
  • Festivals
  • Reviews
  • Summer
  • Music
Last print issue for Volume 26. Back mid-September with Vol 27 no 1. And what a sixteen-month year it's been. Thanks for sticking around. Inside: looking back at what we are hoping is behind us, and ahead to what the summer has to offer; also inside, DISCoveries: 100 reviews to read, and a bunch of new tracks uploaded to the listening room. On stands, commencing Wednesday June 30.

JAMES CAMPBELL ARTISTIC

JAMES CAMPBELL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN AUGUST VIRTUAL CONCERT SERIES & MUSICAL CRUISES Vol 19 No 1 CONCERT LISTINGS | SEPTEMBER 2013 WORK IN PROGRESS! Jeanne Lamon, Tafelmusik THE SOUL OF VIENNA CARMEN ON YOUR COUCH PASSING THE BATON MON AUG 9 WED AUG 11 MON AUG 16 Russell Braun, Carolyn Maule & many more! Hip opera experience with Julie Nesrallah & Guy Few The Piano Quintets of Brahms & Dvorˆák AIR'LETH AODHFIN Music Lover’s TIFF by Paul Ennis Breaking Down Barriers with Simon Capet Composer Leap Frog with Austin Clarkson VIVALDI THE FOUR SEASONS Featuring Mark Fewer with Penderecki String Quartet and more! THE ELORA SINGERS COVER STORY Folk-songs from Canada & abroad, and covers of popular music ANTICS & ARIAS WED AUG 18 MON AUG 23 WED AUG 25 ISLAND QUEEN CRUISES JUL 1 JUL 18 JUL 25 AUG 1 Canada Day: End of the Road Blues: Rick Fines Trio Celtic: Scantily Plaid Jazz Canada: Michael Dunston An evening of Italian opera with Leslie Fagan, Guy Few & friends FOR TICKETS & INFORMATION www.festivalofthesound.ca or call 1.866.364.0061 1 Avenue Rd., Parry Sound “I’ve been walking around in a fog this week, trying to process Jeanne Lamon’s passing. Such a vital force in my life and the lives of so many others. I hope you’ve managed to celebrate her in this edition?” Larry Beckwith Remembering Jeanne Lamon Very few of our readers who became faithful followers of Tafelmusik during almost four decades under Jeanne Lamon’s musical direction, will be hearing about her all-too-sudden death here. The shock waves have spread, and, as Larry Beckwith says in his note, you are likely, like us, in a bit of a fog, trying to process her passing. As for celebrating her in this edition, it all feels a bit too soon and sudden and sad and raw for that – a bit presumptuous even – at a time when those whose musical lives were most closely intertwined with hers, need most to speak, and are doing so. We took this cover photo (hard hats all round!) for a September 2013 story in which Larry Beckwith, himself a long-time member of the Tafelmusik Choir, chatted with Jeanne about what lay ahead. What jumps out at me is how she is setting the tempo for what she sees ahead, looking with clear eyes not just to life for Jeanne after Tafelmusik, but life for Tafelmusik after Lamon. You can find it in our archive at kiosk.thewholenote.com (Vol. 19). And tafelmusik.org/watch/video/allegro-concerto-2-violinsd-minor-bwv-1043 takes you to a moment of music from House of Dreams – music it took her particular kind of leadership to elicit from her brave and merry little band. For now we mourn. Let the moments of celebratory remembering begin, so tears of joy can follow. 6 | July and August 2021 thewholenote.com

The craft that will see us through “You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” That line of poetry smacked me between the eyes early in 2018. It is from a poem, “Home” by Somali- British poet Warsan Shire, London’s first Young Poet Laureate. I heard it in the context of a Tafelmusik concert titled Safe Haven, created by ensemble member Alison Mackay, “exploring the influence of refugees on the music and culture of Baroque Europe and Canada today.” In that one line of poetry those two worlds, 400 years apart, collided: waiting on beaches for frail craft in search of safety and giving back to the places where they found safe haven as much as they got. The 400-yearold version of it fits nicely into a settler version of history. The 21st-century eastern Mediterranean version, maybe not so readily for the people already settled here. It was an interesting construct, but what did it take to transform it from a notional exercise into a raw truth that could not be rationalized or equivocated – into a truth we accepted no matter how uncomfortable? Part of it, as in Warshan Shire’s poem, was the indelible memory for most of us of one photograph, three years earlier, of one child lying dead on an eastern Mediterranean beach – Alan Kurdi – that defied abstraction, gave a name and a face to a truth, and took inaction off the table as an option. How many more children’s graves will have to be found, here, today, for the truth to take general hold the same way? Wendalyn Bartley’s conversation with Claude Schryer this issue digs into a parallel point: how do you practise your craft at something with an esoteric name like “acoustic ecology” in the face of a climate crisis demanding action? “Valorizing nature” is part of the answer, Schryer says. “Valorizing art” is the other part, I’d say. It means artists taking all those tricks of the trade they’ve learned these past 16 months – new ways to get their voices out there; to feel alive; to work together; maybe even make a difference or two. And now’s the time to lash all those newfound competencies to the mast of some big truths that need to be shouted to the treetops. So here we are, dry land maybe in sight: stowaways, refugees, hostages, passengers and crew (depending on the craft we’re in). Thanks as always for reading what we have made. It’s bristling with wit and grit and inventiveness. (Oh, and music.) Hang in. We intend to do the same. publisher@thewholenote.com SUMMER 2021 Worth the (virtual) drive … ? That’s the big question So here we are again, on the cusp of summer, with what has to be the most eccentric collection of listings information ever assembled for the festivals section of our summer print issue. Listings In other years, we’d have painstakingly separated out summer festival/series listings from one-off concerts. And we’d have had separate sections for GTA and Beyond GTA listings. And for concerts, music theatre, clubs, workshops, etc. This year? Gone. Gone too is our most fundamental principle: that we only list events that have a live musical component. What you get instead is a reflection of the ways our musical community is coming up with to stay in touch with you, their audiences. So, for the time being anyway, it means that, rather than our print listings being the wheelhouse of what we do, it’s our online weekly listings updates that give you the best chance of keeping up. Sign up for our weekly listings updates, and every weekend we send you updated listings covering the following six weeks or so, reflecting everything we found out since the Tuesday before (including changes and cancellations). Good news. It’s good news for musicians and presenters too. If a musical event fits our niche (and our range is getting wider), it qualifies. As long as it is a public event, with a specific date and start time attached to it, it can be live, livestreamed, on-demand … or any combination of these. Bottom right hand corner of our website homepage is where you sign up. See Green Pages, page 24 August 5 to 29 Isabel Bayrakdarian/ Gryphon Trio, August 5 Infusion Baroque, August 21 TorQ Percussion Quartet, August 22 Stewart Goodyear, August 28 Jens Lindemann, August 29 519.271.2101 / 1.866.288.4313 stratfordsummermusic.ca thewholenote.com July and August 2021 | 7

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)