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Volume 27 Issue 2 - November 2021

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  • November
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Live events on the up and up while creative live-and livestreamed hybrids continue to shine. October All-star Sondheim's Follies at Koerner Hall headlines the resurgence; Zoprana Sadiq brings MixTape to Crow's Theatre; Stewart Goodyear and Jan Lisiecki bring piano virtuosity back indoors; Toronto Mendelssohn Choir's J-S Vallee in action; TSO finds itself looking at 60 percent capacities ahead of schedule. All this and more as we we complete our COVID-13 -- a baker's dozen of issues since March 2020. Available here in flipthrough, and on stands commencing this weekend.

The WholeNote VOLUME

The WholeNote VOLUME 27 NO 2 | NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2021 WholeNote Media Inc. 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 EDITORIAL Managing Editor | Paul Ennis editorial@thewholenote.com Recordings Editor | David Olds discoveries@thewholenote.com Blog/E-Letters | Sara Constant editorial@thewholenote.com Social Media | Danial Jazaeri, Colin Story social@thewholenote.com Listings Editor | John Sharpe listings@thewholenote.com SALES, MARKETING & MEMBERSHIP Concert & Event Advertising / Membership | Karen Ages members@thewholenote.com Production & Operations / Advertising Art | Jack Buell jack@thewholenote.com, adart@thewholenote.com Classified Ads | classad@thewholenote.com Website/Systems Support | Kevin King systems@thewholenote.com CIRCULATION Sheila McCoy & Chris Malcolm circulation@thewholenote.com SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions@thewholenote.com + HST (8 issues) single copies and back issues *international - additional postage applies COLUMNS AND STORIES Max Christie, Paul Ennis, Jennifer Parr, Lydia Perović, David Perlman, Colin Story, Matthew Whitfield CD Reviewers Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Roger Knox, Barry Livingston, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovic, Cathy Riches,Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Adam Scime, Andrew Scott, Melissa Scott, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Yoshi Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield Proofreading Karen Ages, Paul Ennis, John Sharpe, Listings Team John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Colin Story Design Team Kevin King, Susan Sinclair Circulation Team Wende Bartley, Jack Buell, Sharon Clark, Robert Faulkner, Soudy Gaeeni, Terry Gaeeni, James Harris, Bob Jerome, Chris Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison, Tom Sepp, Julia Tait, Dave Taylor. STORIES & INTERVIEWS 16 MUSIC THEATRE | Sondheim’s Follies – live and indoors! | JENNIFER PARR 19 INSIGHTS | Pocket Concerts’ evolving paradigms | MAX CHRISTIE 21 MAINLY CLUBS, MOSTLY JAZZ | Fall with a spring in its step | COLIN STORY 58 BACK IN FOCUS | Previously covered, topical again | STAFF LISTINGS 22 Events by date 28 Available online Blogs, pods & regular streams 29 In the Clubs (mostly Jazz) 30 Classified Ads 31 - 32 21 DISCOVERIES: RECORDINGS REVIEWED 32 Editor’s Corner | DAVID OLDS 34 Strings Attached | TERRY ROBBINS 37 Vocal 39 Classical and Beyond 42 Modern and Contemporary 48 Jazz and Improvised Music 52 Pot Pourri 53 Something in the Air | KEN WAXMAN 55 Old Wine, New Bottles | BRUCE SURTEES 56 Other Fine Vintages 56 New in the Listening Room, INDEX Who’s Who The WholeNote Online Directories Index Blue Pages for 2021-2022 Directory of Music Makers & Arts Services Canary Pages for 2021/2022 Directory of Ontario Choirs an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario 4 | November and December 2021 thewholenote.com

FOR OPENERS TOPIC FOR A TOPICAL PIECE DAVID PERLMAN There are those who turn the lack of a topic into a topic for a journalistic piece. The choice is absurd in a world like ours where things of incalculable interest are happening. Someone who thinks of sitting down to write about nothing need only flip through the day’s newspaper to make the initial problem turn into its exact opposite: how to know which topic to choose out of the many on offer. See, for example, the front page of your average newspaper. “Two children burned while playing with flying saucers.” Light a cigarette. Look over, very carefully the scrambled alphabet of the Underwood and begin with the most attractive letter. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera made his literary start, from 1950 to 1952, under the name Septimus, grinding out a 700-word column, usually whimsically scathing, for El Heraldo, the local paper in Barranquillo, Colombia. “I’d write a piece and they’d pay me three pesos for it,” he later recalled, “and maybe an editorial for another three.” The title I have pirated for this opener, roughly translated, is his, from a column, “Tema para un tema”, written on April 11 1950. So, in the spirit of that column, as we emerge from our own many weeks of solitude in times of plague, here is my three-pesos-worth – on a bit of this and a bit of that. And having got the above bit of whimsy out of my system, I will, for once, stick to being helpful. Under construction Regular readers will notice that, for the first time in many months, the yellow UNDER CONSTRUCTION warning sign at the beginning of our Listings Section, which starts on page 22, has disappeared from that location, because we are a lot further ahead than we were when the sign went up. Please check out the revised notice that appears in its stead. Whether you are looking for live music to attend now that restrictions have eased, or are still not ready to take in live performances again (no matter what the authorities say), you will still find the music (and musicians) you know, here in these listings – live, livestreamed and, best of all, in hybrid forms of live and digital, the best of which will, I am sure, be here to stay. So I have a suggestion: rather than treating the listings as printed in this edition as “a concert bible,” as so many of you have called it over the years, think of them instead as evidence of what’s going on, meriting further investigation. One reason is that we are on a slightly reduced schedule this year (eight issues instead of nine). So the publication date only matches the start of the calendar month roughly every two issues. Next issue after this one, for example, will come out in the middle of December and cover events roughly to the end of January. And the second reason is that things continue to change so rapidly that anything we say about events could have changed by the time you read it. An example: the TSO fall season was cautiously designed on the assumption that live attendance would be impossible or, at the very best, severely constrained. Now, all of a sudden, 60% capacity attendance at Roy Thomson Hall is a reality, which means 1,500 or so tickets available for live attendance at November concerts. Music makers are gradually getting into the habit of sending us new info or changes in time for our weekly listings updates (details are on page 22); so, readers, please make it worth their while by signing up to receive those updates every weekend. Baker’s dozen I recently had an email from a longtime WholeNote reader who had just picked up the previous issue of the magazine (Vol 27, no 1). “It’s been a busy and distracting period, but I’m so glad to see WholeNote is up and running again,” they said. Fact is, since the 2020 mid-March lockdown we have published 13 times (including this one). But no hard feelings! We have all to a greater or lesser extent fallen prey to “refrigerator syndrome” – where nothing exists till one opens the door and the light comes on. We do have back issues though and will be delighted to send them out to you while our increasingly limited supplies last (see page 58). And as restrictions on mainstreet indoor activity are lifted, so too our network of what we call our “legacy” distribution points – places where complimentary copies are available – is steadily growing again. There’s a list and map, updated weekly, under the “About Us” tab on our website. So, back at you, dear reader: “Thanks for the note. As you say, it’s been a busy and distracting period, but we’re so glad to see that you’re up and running again!” Up and running again, indeed! Based on the buzz in the issue, it sure feels like it. publisher@thewholenote.com Upcoming Dates & Deadlines Free Event Listings NEW! Weekly online updates 6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting for Volume 27 No. 3 DECEMBER 2021 & January 2022 Print edition listings deadline Midnight, Monday Nov 22 Print advertising, reservation deadline 6pm Tuesday Nov 23 Classifieds deadline 6pm Saturday Dec 4 Publication Dates Tuesday Dec 7 (online) Friday, Dec 10 (print) 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 Sept 17, 2021 6,500 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 © 2021 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC thewholenote.com thewholenote.com November and December 2021 | 5

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