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Volume 28 Issue 3 | December 2022 - January 2023

  • Text
  • Thewholenotecom
  • Faculty
  • Arts
  • Theatre
  • Musical
  • Jazz
  • Orchestra
  • Symphony
  • January
  • December
  • Toronto
Creative Collisions offer land-use hope for community and arts space; "Take Dec 10 for Example" -- Orchestral Explosion; Landmark novel finds music theatre form; Behind the scenes at Salute to Vienna; Collaborative serendipity on the joint-concert front; Amnesia and the alternative: QSYO's take on "Comfort and Joy". A bumber crop of record reviews (and not a Holiday compilation among them)! All this and more...

IN WITH THE NEW November

IN WITH THE NEW November 19 - The Music Gallery, Toronto: (from left) Bill Parsons (Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan), Caelia Lunniss (Spindle Ensemble), Harriet Riley (S), Jo Silverton (S), Daniel Inzani (S), Dan Morphy (E); Yang Chen (E), Andrew Timar (E), Blair Mackay (E), Jonny Smith (E), Christopher Hull (E). COLLABORATIVE SERENDIPITY On a cold snowy night last November 19, I was happy to be in the warmth of the Music Gallery at 918 Bathurst Street, listening to the bright pulsating music of an inspiring collaboration between Toronto’s Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan and the Spindle Ensemble from Bristol, UK (a collaboration that arose from a chance meeting in Bali between Evergreen member Christopher Hull and Spindle member Harriet Riley, we had been informed). I was curious. WENDALYN BARTLEY Chris Hull: Hull’s connection to gamelan music, he told me, began when he was an undergraduate percussion student at Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2013, the University of Waterloo hired ethnomusicologist Dr. Maisie Sum who subsequently began a gamelan ensemble. Encouraged by his father to check it out, and despite his initial hesitation, Hull found himself falling in love with the sound and the experience of playing a very different kind of percussion music. Eventually Sum’s husband, I Dewa Made Suparta I Dewa Made Suparta – an internationally renowned Balinese performer and composer who co-founded one of EDWIN GAILIT UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO RAVEL INSPIRATIONS BY ENSEMBLE CORDÂME JANUARY 21 AT 8PM ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE TORONTO 26 | December 2022 - January 2023 thewholenote.com

Bali’s most innovative gamelan ensembles named Çudamani – took over the group. Interacting with Suparta really “sparked the flame for me,” Hull said. “He was such a joy to play with and answered a lot of questions I had about Western percussion music, which really hasn’t found its identity yet. In comparison, gamelan music has a context in the history that makes it feel more worthwhile.” Suparta encouraged Hull to apply for a year-long scholarship program to study in Bali, but Hull decided to pursue a master’s degree in percussion performance at the University of Alaska first. It was only after he returned home to Waterloo and heard the gamelan rehearsing that he decided he just had to go to Bali and “see the place that made this music.” Harriet Riley: Riley found her way to the same program in Bali midway through the year, albeit only for a few weeks, and the two musicians made a strong connection, remaining friends after they returned to their respective homes. I reached out to Riley to learn more about this fortuitous meeting in Bali. “Darma Siswa is a year-long course which Chris and Saj Landley, my UK gamelan teacher did. I just went, on Saj’s recommendation, for three weeks, on the way to a gig at Perth International Arts Festival, Australia. Chris and I met at a gamelan group called Narwastu which was mostly made up of people from the Darma Siswa program but was open to anyone.” She and Hull became instant best friends, she says, “along with another amazing gamelan player, Tom Nolan, also from England. I became particularly interested in a ‘chamber music’ style of gamelan, which Chris and Tom were studying, called Gender Wayang, which is used for many ceremonies in Bali as well as the Wayang puppet shows.” Serendipity: Another “crazy story of serendipity,” as Riley described it, moved the story along. It happened a few weeks after Riley’s return to Bristol from Perth. During a Spindle Ensemble concert at St Denpasar, Bali, in 2019: (L-R) Harriet Riley, Chris Hull, Thomas Nolan and I Komang Astita. George’s Bristol, a world-class independent music venue in Bristol, a man from the audience asked a question (about Frank Zappa/Ruth Underwood) during the Q+A. “We got chatting after the performance,” Riley explained, “and he said his nephew was studying gamelan in Bali, and the penny dropped. I knew that Chris had an uncle in Bristol, but I had no idea who he was, and now there he was! I’d just been spending every day with his nephew, Chris, for three weeks playing gamelan together, haha!” The idea for a concert collaboration however was still down the road. Hull had been hired at the last minute by Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan to perform during their 2018 tour to Germany CHRIS HULL THE ROSE ORCHESTRA MAGIC OF THE MOVIES The excitement of lights dimming, theme music filling the theatre in “surround sound”, who can deny that feeling of exhilaration we’ve all enjoyed as we wait to watch our favourite actors come alive on the big screen? The Rose Orchestra welcomes you to re-live some of those moments as they present a collection of movie melodies sure to spark that excitement all over again. FEBRUARY 11, 2023 7:30PM THE MARC JORDAN SHOW JAZZ @ LBP HOSTED BY JAYMZ BEE Join Performing Arts Brampton for another performance of Jazz @ LBP hosted by Jaymz Bee. This performance is an intimate one featuring Marc Jordan as he plays songs from all facets of his long career -- from the early Yatch Rock to jazz recorded with producer Lou Pomanti. Other familiar hits will feature songs from artists such as Joe Cocker, Cher, Bonnie Raitt, Amanda Marshall, Bette Midler, Josh Groban and more! BOOK TICKETS THEROSEBRAMPTON.CA FEBRUARY 14, 2023 8:00PM thewholenote.com December 2022 - January 2023 | 27

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