Volume 28 Issue 6 | Summer 2023

An agency of the

An agency of the Government of Ontario Un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario JASON DOELL Jason Doell The Tone Festival Among the many summer music festivals happening in Toronto will be the Tone Festival which runs June 2-28 and features an eclectic mix of experimental musics curated by Karen Ng and Tad Michalak. Among them, on June 18, there will be a celebration of Jason Doell’s latest album entitled Becoming In Shadows ~ Of Being Touched which was released in late April. In my conversation with Doell, he explained that the June 18 performance will be similar to the music on the album, but not identical – an interesting detail which has everything to do with his creative process. The initial stages of the project took place while he was at the Banff Centre in early 2020, working on an entirely different project. Each morning he would improvise at the piano as a way of beginning his day. When it came to lockdown time, he listened to what he had recorded during that time and decided it wasn’t something he would want to release on an album. Instead, he began working with those sound files using a computer programming language called ChucK, and in the process created his own composition assistant tool, designed to make decisions about the ordering and layering of the sounds. The results were “interesting and strange, weird and kind of beautiful,” he said. After some editing and “composerly nudging,” the album was born. In the Tone Festival however, Doell will perform live on the piano, with the software recording in real time and “giving back in unexpected ways something for me to improvise with,” he explained. Doell has plans to take these experiments further with a series of collaborations with other artists “whose practices aren’t quite the same as mine and who have different relationships to sound. We’ll explore how we as collaborators interact with the system and what sort of results it yields.This could take the form of music for recordings, for use in installations, or the basis of a live performance. If I tried to write a chamber work for some of these folks I don’t think we’d be as successful or as fulfilling for my relationship to music.” The Tone Festival will also include performances by White People Killed Them on June 24, a trio made up of electronic noise artist Raven Chacon, guitarist John Dieterich (both of whom are part of Doell’s collaborative project) and drummer Marshall Trammell. The festival closes on June 28 with the Sun Ra Arkestra, renown for music that combines big-band swing, space-age jazz, singing, dancing and chanting, as well as its bright colours and Afro-pageantry. From top: Raven Chacon, John Dieterich, Marshall Trammell WHITE MEN KILLED THEM Isidore String Quartet Photo Jyang Chen JUL20 JUIL— AUG 3 AOÛT CHAMBERFEST2023 CARISSA KLOPOUSHAK Artistic Director / Directrice artistique chamberfest.com 16 | Summer 2023 thewholenote.com

THIS IS OUR SOUND JULY 19 – AUGUST 5, 2023 JAMES CAMPBELL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Rituaels, performed at Montreal’s St. Pierre Apôtre Church, Nov 2022 FRÉDÉRIC CARDIN/PAN360 Luminato Festival This year’s Luminato festival highlights the world premiere of Dragon’s Tale with music by Chan Ka Nin and libretto by Mark Brownell (June 15-18). Celebrating the origins of Dragon Boat racing, the piece intersects two different timelines and their protagonists as they struggle for freedom and independence: Qu Yuan in ancient China and Chinese-Canadian Xiao Lian in present-day Toronto. The setting, on Toronto’s waterfront, will include the beating drums of dragon boat racing, a sport that emerged 2500 years ago among fishing communities along the Yangtze River in South-Central China. There are a number of origin stories related to the Dragon Boat Festival, among which the legend of the poet Qu Yuan is the best known. CLASSICAL | OPERA | JAZZ | FOLK | PARRY SOUND festivalofthesound.ca Collingwood Music Festival On July 13, at the Collingwood Music Festival, the Montreal-based string ensemble collectif9 will perform RITUAELS which brings together works ranging from the Middle Ages to the 21st century – with music from Hildegard von Bingen to Arvo Pärt to Canadian composers Nicole Lizée and Jocelyn Morlock. On the following day, July 14, Olivier Messiaen’s epic work Quartet for the End of Time will be performed by the Gryphon Trio joined by clarinetist James Campbell. This spiritually moving work premiered at the Nazi prison camp Stalag VIIIA in 1941, and explores Messiaen’s relationship with the divine. This same work will also be performed by Mark Fewer (violin), Angela Park (piano), James Campbell (clarinet) and Thomas Wiebe (cello) at Stratford Summer Music on August 12. The Elora Festival On a final note, I couldn’t resist mentioning a special July 8 program from Confluence Concerts, curated by Larry Beckwith. The story of the 19th-century virtuoso pianist and composer Clara Schumann will be brought to life with performances of her solo piano music and songs, narration by Tom Allen, and a performance of Clara’s letters and diaries by actor Alison Beckwith. Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com thewholenote.com Summer 2023 | 17