Volume 29 Issue 6 | June, July & August 2024

The WholeNote VOLUME

The WholeNote VOLUME 29 NO 6 SUMMER 2024 IN THIS EDITION STORIES AND INTERVIEWS Wendalyn Bartley, Gloria Blizzard, Stephanie Conn, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Sophia Perlman, Andrew Scott, Colin Story, Andrew Timar, Michael Zarathus-Cook CD Reviewers Sophie Bisson, Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Daniel Foley, Edwin Gailits, Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell, Fraser Jackson, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Ivana Popovic, Allan Pulker, Terry Robbins, Michael Schulman, Andrew Scott, Andrew Timar, Yoshi Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield Proofreading David Olds, John Sharpe Listings Team John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Sophia Perlman, Colin Story Design Team Kevin King, Susan Sinclair Circulation Team Dave Bell, John Bentley, Jack Buell, Peter Chisholm, Jane Dalziel, Bruno Difilippo, Carl Finkle, Vito Gallucci, James Harris, Bob Jerome, Marianela Lopez, Miguel Brito-Lopez, Chris Malcolm, Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison, Janet O’Brien, Kathryn Sabo, Tom Sepp, Angie Todesco DEADLINES Weekly Online Listings Updates 6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting for Volume 30 No. 1, SEPTEMBER 2024 Print listings deadline: 6pm Tuesday, August 6, 2024 Print advertising, reservation deadline: 6pm Tuesday, August 13, 2024 Web advertising can be booked at any time PUBLICATION DATES OUR 30th ANNIVERSARY SEASON will include six print editions: September 2024 (Aug 27); October & November (Oct 1); December & January 2025 (Nov 26); February & March (Jan 28); April & May (Apr 1); Summer (June 3) Printed in Canada Couto Printing & Publishing Services an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario FOR OPENERS The Power of Tens Trust me, there’s always a bunch of dickering and bickering that goes on, mostly behind closed doors, between the purists and the pragmatists, when an arts organization is teetering on the edge of a significant anniversary of one kind or another. Do you start the hype right from the beginning of the season in which the milestone event will happen? Or do you wait for the exact anniversary date of the thing? The arithmetic purists will argue till they are purple that to start bragging about your “hundredth” (for example) right at the beginning of your 100th season is jumping the gun or worse: “You don’t invite people to come sing happy birthday with you when you are cutting the placental cord, you sing happy birthday when the first anniversary of cutting the cord rolls around.” The pragmatists (usually the ones who have to fill in the grant applications and/or answer to the organization’s board of directors) will argue that if you wait for the clock to tick over to the end of the magic 10th or 20th or 30th, etc., you run the risk that by the actual anniversary date (the completion of the 30th year for example) everyone who is anyone will be at the cottage by then, and if they can’t afford to get away won’t be be able to pay big bucks for the thing you are planning either. My own view? If you intend to use the fact that you’ve hit some magic multiple of ten as a way of asking the people who love what you do to demonstrate their love in even more tangible ways, you had better hit the ground running, right from day one! So, for example, this coming September will mark the start of The WholeNote’s 30th season of publishing, and we intend to start harping on that fact right from the day we publish Issue No.1 of Volume 30 (right around this coming Labour Day). And, yes, you’d better believe we are going to be asking for your support in ways we never have before. In return we will promise two things: one, that we will, come hell or high water, stay the course right up until the end of that anniversary year; and two that we will not succumb to the ridiculous rhetoric of talking about what we intend to do for our “next thirty years.” That particular piece of drivel drives me nuts –yea verily it doth set my teeth on edge, my dear dad would have said. T'KARONTO For thousands of years before European settlement, T’karonto (The Meeting Place) was part of the traditional territory of many Nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit River, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and remains their home to this day, as it now is for many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. This Meeting Place lies within the territory governed by the Sewatokwa’tshera’t (Dish with One Spoon) treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee – a Treaty which bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and Peoples, and all newcomers are invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship, respect and reconciliation. We are grateful to live and work here, helping spread the word about the healing power of music in this place. 8 | June, July & August, 2024 thewholenote.com

Think about it: as a piece of rhetoric it is only convincing in inverse proportion to the number of years you’ve been around for. I mean, really think about it. If you spend your organization’s 100th anniversary year, for example, talking about what you are planning to do with your “next 100 years,” at rock bottom, to my ears anyway, you sound, more than anything else, as though you know you’re not going to be around to keep your promises so you can say anything you damn well like. Rule of thumb: when you’ve made it through five years you can definitely get away with talking about your hopes for “the next five.” If you make it through ten? Talk about the next five unless some angel has bought you a building in the meanwhile. PART OF THE TORONTO SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL So, fair warning, once we hit August, in the lead up to the September formal launch of our 30th anniversary season, we will start talking about the things we are going to need from you to get through that anniversary season so that, if it all works out, we can look ahead to the year or two after that. All that being said, despite my more-than-slightly jaded view on the subject, I was struck and moved by the number of significant anniversaries that I noticed people latching onto in this issue. Andrew Timar talks about celebrating the 50th anniversary of his first Frog Bog sound walk. The Blyth Theatre is celebrating its 50th season with a remount of The Farm Show – the collectively created play that ushered in a whole generation of Canadian theatre. And rounding out the trio of 50s, the Toronto Arts Council is celebrating its half century by curating a day of music and more in David Pecaut Square in partnership with the Luminato Festival. (Kudos in passing to Luminato as well. Last summer, they hooked their wagon to “Walk with Amahl” partnering in organizing parades with grassroots coalitions across the GTA to welcome Amahl – a 12-foot-tall puppet of a ten-year old Syrian refugee girl who continues to walk the world. This year they have built on that kind of creative thinking by the beautifully simple expedient of inviting different organizations to co-curate each of the days of free events at David Pecaut Square that are at the heart of the festival.) Great lives – theme and variations: the power of ten and its multiples play out slightly differently in the music world when the anniversaries being commemorated are not to do with the number of years an organization has survived, but anniversaries of the pantheon of “greats” whose creative output is the organization’s bread and butter. In the classical world these anniversaries seem like no-brainers for thematic exploitation, but the list of those composers who can sustain a whole festival’s worth, let alone an entire season is, to revert to a variation on my earlier formula, inversely proportional to the size of the hall that must be filled. And the anniversary ship can only come round every so often without becoming tediously formulaic, especially since anniversaries of deaths are much less appealing to audiences. Take J.S. Bach for example: born in 1685, his 350th birthday won’t come around till 2035. And even with the most careful planning, fate can interfere with the best-laid plans. “Beethoven at 250” rolled around in 2020, and we all know where the 2020 concert season went. There are, of course, creative exceptions to the rule: Previous TSO Music Director, Peter Oundjian initiated “Mozart@249” in 2004/2005, setting up a kind of cheeky countdown to the main event. And then followed up after the de rigeur Mozart@250 with Mozart@251 etc. for a full decade. So there’s still some mileage in the “great lives” anniversary game, but not as much, perhaps, as the players of the game might think. After all the phrase “True history is the lives of great men” was penned, without much fear of contradiction by Joseph Johnson in 1862. But I’m not sure how many people would have celebrated the 150th anniversary of its writing in 2012. David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com JUL 11 - AUG 3 Vadym Kholodenko, piano Kerson Leong, violin with TSM Festival Orchestra Jonathan Crow, Artistic Director Concerts at Koerner Hall Opening Night! Georgia Burashko, soprano in The Fairy Queen Canadian Brass Buy tickets now! For Full Festival line up visit TOSUMMERMUSIC.COM 416.408.0208 thewholenote.com June, July & August, 2024 | 9