October/November 2024 containing our 30th annual presenter directory (25th under the Blue Pages name) is now available for viewing. Also first four instalments of ART OF THE ARC -- a concert curators' Q & A, with more to follow online and in print throughout the fall. Also View from Up Here parses the difference between a two lane highway and a two-way street; Choral Scene digs into singing and health; Music Theatre taps joy-fuelled offerings at London's Grand Theatre and elsewhere; In with the New looks at Letters to God; Classical and Beyond tackles a 212-listing 68 days; thirteen new recordings in our listening room and more.
The WholeNote VOLUME
The WholeNote VOLUME 30 NO 2 OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 2024 IN THIS EDITION STORIES AND INTERVIEWS Wendalyn Bartley, Angus MacCaull, Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Sophia Perlman, Colin Story CD Reviewers Larry Beckwith, Max Christie, Sam Dickenson, Daniel Foley, Raul da Gama, Richard Haskell, Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Pamela Margles, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, Cathy Riches, Terry Robbins, Stephen Runge, Michael Schulman, Andrew Scott, Melissa Scott, Andrew Timar, Yoshi Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman. Proofreading Ori Dagan, David Olds, Ted Parkinson, John Sharpe Listings Team John Sharpe, Kevin Harris, 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, Mark Zayachkowski DEADLINES Weekly Online Listings Updates 6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting for Volume30 No. 3, OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 2024 Print listings deadline: 6pm Tuesday, November 12, 2024 Print advertising, reservation deadline: 6pm Friday November 8, 2024 Web advertising can be booked at any time PUBLICATION DATES OUR 30th ANNIVERSARY SEASON includes 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 Renewals, urban(e) and otherwise For once I had this Opener carefully planned. It was going to be called Sankofa – at the crossroads. But, something came up just yesterday (September 25) – the announcement of profound organizational change at Toronto Consort, one of Toronto’s flagship musical presenters. So now I have something extra to talk about. Renewals, urban and urbane “Urban renewal,” was a catch phrase here and elsewhere from a few years after WW2 to around 1970, with housing initiatives, public and private, as a major component. It became synonymous in the sixties with the attempted or actual erasure of whole neighbourhoods, and has now graduated to the status of subject of earnest academic debate on topics such as “Public endeavour as a means of urban improvement.” With this city, for the first time in decades, getting directly back into the business of building affordable housing, it’s worth taking note of those italics, especially if your own definition of “public endeavour” and “urban improvement” include funding for the arts. The current out-of-control rise in cost of housing and workspace, is the “no-one-to-blame,” velvet glove equivalent of the bulldozers of the ’50s and ’60s. Sankofa and the art of social renewal Very few readers of this magazine will be unaware of recent City of Toronto efforts to rename Yonge-Dundas Square, with many opinions on the subject, and lots of people trying, or refusing, to wrap their minds and tongues around the name proposed as a replacement. Just remember that the SAN- in Sankofa is like the KAM- in Kamala, and you’ll be ok. Pronunciation isn’t the main problem here. Observably the loyalists doing the complaining about tampering with the Yonge-Dundas name, were also the chief complainers about how changing “all our sons” to “all of us” in the National anthem was an erasure of “our” history. The irony is that the Ghanaian saying in which the word sankofa is embedded translates as “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten” i.e. permission for all of us to do that, before it’s too late to pass it on. It’s what you do with it when you have recovered it that counts. Make it food for thought? Or wait till it rots? The fundamental question is how long will it be before a city like Toronto starts signalling to its people that our street and park names, overwhelmingly reflective of colonial heritage, are not sacrosanct: and that renaming them (when a beautiful and inclusive name is put forward) can be an act of reconciliation? Sankofa and the art of time The upcoming performances of Sankofa: the Soldier’s Tale Retold take Stravinsky’s 1918 work, dripping with relevance in its own time, out of the realm of sacrosanct classical safety. “I believe in this project with all my heart,” says Andrew Burashko, founder of Art of Time Ensemble, “Re-envisioning Stravinsky’s work with a new narrative and staging that speaks directly to one of the most pressing social and political movements of today allows for new ownership, new authorship, and new audiences. It is an important and opportune T'KARONTO The Sankofa symbol: A bird with its head turned backwards while its feet face forward, carrying a precious egg in its mouth. 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 | October & November2024 thewholenote.com
moment for such creative and radical experimentation.” The project also embodies Burashko’s philosophy in regard to what art councils like to call “succession planning.” Art of Time announced right from the start of their 2023/24 season that it would be their last, and that Sankofa would be the organization’s final show – not “passing the torch” but using the opportunity to fire up other people’s dreams: poet Titilope Sonuga who has interwoven a new libretto around Stravinsky’s work; director Tawiah M’Carthy; and each of the musicians from The Glenn Gould School who will now have this show in their memory banks as an example of what can happen when the classical “before” is carried into the “beyond.” Toronto Consort By contrast, “passing the torch” is sometimes the right way to go, especially for an ensemble labelling itself as a consort, where the whole is always creatively more than the sum of all its parts. I never knew the ensemble in its early years in a U of T setting, but I relished its work under David Fallis after severing its academic ties. Fallis always wore his learning lightly, relishing the startlingly relevant range of music – from the sacred to the naughty – in the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Baroque music the group explored. He also delighted in collaborative curation – a delight evident in the work of the seven or eight core artistic associates of the Consort who remained after Fallis stepped away in 2017/18, and shepherded the Consort through the COVID years, and the difficult pandemic aftermath. Late last year Consort suspended the latter half of its 2023/24 season to regroup. Mid-September we became aware of an unsigned open letter jointly written by seven members of that 2018-2024 group of associates, indicating that they had stepped away from the Consort and wishing the organization well in its future endeavours. Then came the September 25 announcement, by Andrew Adridge, the Consort’s Executive Director and Heather Turnbull, Board Chair, stating: that countertenor Daniel Taylor, who spearheads the U of T’s Early Music Program, has been appointed General and Artistic Director with Dame Emma Kirkby as Honorary Patron; that the Consort will re-establish close ties with the U of T; that a full 2024/25 season will take place, commencing with a Renaissance program “The Muses Garden” on October 11; and that a new roster of Consort artists and associates is now in place. None of the seven associates who co-authored the open letter is part of that new roster. On our cover We at The WholeNote don’t often turn to abstract or semi-abstract images for our covers. Readers look at a cover and either recognize who’s on it, or best case scenario, are curious enough about the person looking back out at them to want to find out. But sometimes it’s not the individual but the idea that we need to be reminded of – that the desire to make music, alone or collectively, in private or in public, endures everywhere. It’s always a force. So how do we make it a force for the good? publisher@thewholenote.com THE ART OF THE ARC ARCS A CONCERT CURATORS’ Q & A Barely a week before going to press, we wrote to a handful of individuals responsible for planning concert seasons in our neck of the woods. We explained that we were thinking of launching this feature, ARCS, and were hoping to get enough of a response within the next few days to get it going in this Oct/Nov print issue and then continue it online over the course of the fall. As we explained in our letter the premise of the feature is to explore some of the ways in which the work of composing an individual piece of music parallels the work of putting together a whole concert, and even a whole season. And we offered the same three questions to all the individuals we invited to respond: QUESTION 1: As a rule, an individual piece of music has some kind of composed arc to it (beginning, middle, ending, for example). Is there a piece of music in your first/next show that is either a good example of this “rule”, or refutes it in an interesting way? QUESTION 2: Similarly putting together a whole concert could be seen as composing an event – the choice of works that will be presented, and the sequence in which they will be presented. Using the same concert you referenced for your first answer, or some other, speak to this. Note: not all reasons have to be highfalutin’. Lots of curatorial decisions are pragmatic and these also offer interesting insights for readers. QUESTION 3: Looking back at your responses to questions 1 and 2, how would you say the answers you gave there pertain to your whole season now getting underway, in terms of some overarching idea or guiding principle? Here’s how the first few individuals we contacted responded. SANKOFA:THE SOLDIER’S TALE RETOLD A uniquely Canadian reimagining of Igor Stravinsky’s iconic score – poetic, theatrical and timeless. FIVE SHOWS ONLY OCTOBER 24–27 HARBOURFRONT CENTRE THEATRE TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT artoftimeensemble.com Presented by Art of Time Ensemble in association with thewholenote.com October & November2024| 9
