Volume 30 Issue 5 | April & May 2025

MUSIC THEATRE

MUSIC THEATRE ROUNDUPApril 8 - 26 MAHABHARATAPart 1: Karma: The Life WeInherit (Apr 8 - Apr 26)Part 2: Dharma: The LifeWe Choose (Apr 11 - Apr 27)Presented in two parts,Mahabharata is both a journeythrough the past and a compellingcall to a desirable future. Co-composer Suba Sankaran talksBased on an epic Sanskrit story about the music in Mahabharata,that is more than 4000 yearsalong with co-composer Johnold and foundational to SouthGzowski, and traditional musicconsultant Hasheel LodhiatyAsian culture, this contemporaryspectacle explores profound philosophical and spiritualideas: “How can one end the spiral of revenge when everyonebelieves they are right and their opponents wrong?” “In times ofdivision, how do we find wholeness?” “Are we destined to repeatthe mistakes of our ancestors?” “Can we build a new world?”Music and dance play a vital role. A six-piece band performs onstagein Part 1, while Part 2 features a digital soundscape and sopranoMeher Pavri singing an adaptation of the Bhagavad Gita Opera. Themusical team is John Gzowski, Suba Sankaran, Dylan Bell, GurtejSingh Hunjan, Zaheer-Abbas Janmohamed and Hasheel Lodhia.Created and written by Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes,using poetry from Carole Satyamurti’s Mahabharata: A ModernRetelling, originally commissioned and presented by the ShawFestival, in association with Barbican, London.A Why Not Theatre Production presented with Canadian Stageat the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto.April 22 - June 1 A STRANGE LOOPUsher is a Black gay man…who’s also writing a musical about aBlack gay man. He dreams of a full-time career as a successful playwright,while working front-of-house at Broadway’s The Lion Kingwhile grappling with his own artistic aspirations and personal identity.A “poignant, subversive, and unflinching exploration of identity, sexuality,self-expression, and the power of art to transcend barriers.”Book, music, and lyrics by Michael R. Jackson. Directed by Ray Hogg.Featuring Malachi McCaskill.A co-production between The Musical Stage Company,Soulpepper Theatre, Crows Theatre, and TO Live, at the YoungCentre for the Performing Arts, in Toronto.May 22-24 IDENTITY: A SONG CYCLEIn June 2020, Toronto baritone Elliot Madore opened up on socialmedia about his struggles with “unabashedly expressing [his] identity”as a biracial person. Joel Ivany and Madore in collaboration withcomposer Dinuk Wijeratne and acclaimed poet Shauntay Grant, havecreated a song cycle which sets new and original Canadian poetry tomusic that fuses classical music with an array of influences.Composer - Dinuk Wijeratne; Poet - Shauntay Grant; directed byJoel Ivany. Featuring Elliot Madore.Presented by Against The Grain Theatre, at Toronto’s El MocamboMay 27 - Jun 22 AFTER THE RAINWhen she accepts a mature piano student obsessed withmastering only one song, Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1, strugglingsongwriter Suzie’s life takes an unforeseen turn. A musical basedon a true story about the healing power of music. With Joe (Jojo)Bowden, Deborah Hay, Andrew Penner, and Sheamus Swets.Book by Rose Napoli, music & lyrics by Suzy Wilde, directed byMarie Farsi.Presented by The Musical Stage Company & Tarragon Theatre,at Tarragon Theatre (main space) in Toronto.BUT WAIT - THERE’S MORE!For a sumptuous array of additional Music Theatre, Opera andDance listings, please see page 49!DEVIN MCNULTY | CANADIAN STAGEEARLY MUSICReconstitution will takeyou far at the TorontoBach FestivalDAVID PERLMANWhile researching this piece, I stumbled acrossthis comment by John Terauds (founder andfirst editor of the blog Musical Toronto, nowLudwig van Toronto). “Earlier this year, we needed topity Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov as he wasattacked for quoting other composers’ music in hisown,[but] if we only look back two to three centuries,we find composers borrowing, quoting and parodyingthemselves and each other — proving that imitationonce was the sincerest form of flattery.”The comment came in a 2012 review of a just-released recordingof six concertos composed by University of Montreal Early Musicspecialist Bruce Haynes, who had died the previous year. Although“composed” is not exactly the right word.Haynes, in Terauds’ words, “had scoured 13 of Johann SebastianBach’s cantatas, the Mass in G Minor and the Concerto for 3Harpsichords in D Minor for material he could adapt into a set ofsix concertos in the style of the six original Brandenburgs. … [and]Eric Milnes and the period-instrument Bande Montréal Baroque …including Haynes’ widow, gamba master Susie Napper turned it intoglorious sound only a couple of weeks after his death.”The recording was released by ATMA Classique under the titleNouveaux “Brandebourgeous” Reconstitution/Reconstruction.Brandenbourgeous, indeed: We’ll be hearing the final one of thesesix Brandenbourgeous “reconstitutions” at this year’s Toronto BachFestival — Brandenburg Concerto No.12, as TBF is calling it in theirliterature. But it’s not there as an oddity. More like a musical keynoteaddress for the whole festival, first work in the festival’s Friday nightopening concert, titled “Brandenburg Reimagined”.“Bach re-imagined is not a new idea,” proposes oboist JohnAbberger, TBF’s Artistic Director. “Bach went about reimagining Bachall the time. Revising and revisiting himself, an inveterate miner ofhis own work, reusing bits like crazy. And that’s kind of my point ofdeparture for this year’s festival.From Left: Susie Napper; Bruce Haynes; Nouveaux“Brandebourgeous” Reconstitution/Reconstruction CD cover26 | April & May 2025 thewholenote.com

John Abberger“To me, this is what a Bach festival should do – play these thingsthat you’re not going to hear very often, or contextualized like this, inthe regular rest of the year.”Seen through this lens, the program for the May 30 opening concerthas an imaginative unity greater than the sum of its parts. Haynes’Brandenburg 12, drawn in its entirety from the congregationalintimacy of three of Bach’s sacred cantatas (BWV 163, 80, and 18)opens the concert, The intimate richness of Brandenburg No.6 drawsit to a close.Every note of Haynes’s reconstitution is pure Bach, but Abbergerconfesses to “tweaking things a little bit, with Susie Napper’sblessing, so as to emphasize even more Bruce’s conception of thepiece as a kind of doppelganger of the sixth Brandenburg. Bruce’swas a piece for four gambas. And I thought, well, wouldn’t it beinteresting if you could make that two violas and two gambas,just like Brandenburg No.6. So we did, and we changed the key tomake it work”The middle two works on the Friday evening program evoke thesame “sounds familiar but” feeling that the outer works do. “Theyare Bach’s own re-use of Brandenburg Concerto No.4 in a thrillinglyintimate version for harpsichord, with our beloved ChristopherBagan as soloist. And another harpsichord concerto will be heard,in its probable original form, as a soaring violin concerto, with JuliaWedman as soloist,” Abberger says.Lautenwerk: “Oneswallow doth not a summermake” as the saying goes.Similarly one should notassume that a festival’sopening concert necessarilysums up the festival. But inthis year’s TBF, “strangelyfamiliar” easily transposes tothe Saturday.Illustration of a Lautenwerk One of the constants ofTBF’s Saturday has been amidday recital that explores all of Bach’s keyboard music over time. Ittypically switches between organ and various precursors of the pianoin alternate years.This is a “piano precursor” year, and this year’sinstrument is the lautenwerk – a kind of lute-harpsichord.“We know Bach owned two of these instruments, but none ofthem have survived into the 20th century. Dongsok Shin, this year’skeyboard artist is a friend of mine for many, many years, back to myNew York days,” Abberger explains. “He is an expert on historicalkeyboards, and the instrument he will be playing is a replica built tohis needs and wishes. It doesn’t look much like the sketch you’ll findof a Bach era instrument, which looks like a giant lute on its side, butit’s absolutely gorgeous, and the sound is ravishing.”True to our reconstitutional theme, the repertoire for the recital drawson a wide range of Bach’s music, including works written for lute andfor harpsichord, and more, including a sonata for harpsichord and oboewhich gives Abberger the opportunity to get into the action.Kaffeehaus: Saturday’s other event, the Kaffeehaus, was a relativelylate addition to TBF, and has moved around a bit, but is now well andtruly entrenched in the welcoming downtown surrounds of Churchof the Holy Trinity. New this year is an extra show at 8pm for thisincreasingly popular festival centrepiece.“Join us again for our acclaimed Kaffeehaus concert, as we continueto explore Bach’s secular vocal music, headlined by his WeddingCantata, as well as instrumental gems by Bach and his contemporariesin the spacious acoustic of the Church of the Holy Trinity whichwill be transformed for our recreation into an 18th-century Leipzigcoffee house” proclaims the TBF website.But if it’s a reconstituted 18th century coffee house, you don’t knowfor sure who will come through the door, or what you will hear. Otherthan that, in the spirit of the time, you’d have been most likely toobserve (as John Terauds described it earlier), “composers borrowing,quoting and parodying themselves and each other. Imitation … as thesincerest form of flattery.”Especially, in Bach’s case, when imitating himself.The Passion(s) of St. John: Thereis an obvious usefulness to readersin describing a three-day event inchronological order. But Sunday’s “bigfinish” St. John Passion, with visitingdirector and Bach Scholar John Buttat the helm, would have been as gooda place to start in terms of the overarchingconstruct of the festival. In thefestival’s annual Sunday lecture (samevenue, Eastminster United, as theJohn Buttperformance but with time enoughbetween to stroll the Danforth), Butt will talk about Bach’s creativeprocess with particular reference to the St. John Passion, whichsurvives in no fewer than four distinct versions. This performance willbe the 1725 second version, which has striking differences from the1724 version – the one you’re most likely to hear performed.“It has a different opening chorus, and a different closing chorus,”Abberger says. “Well he actually retains the famous closing chorus butadds another, something that he’d previously tacked on to one of thecantatas that he played as his audition piece when he applied for theposition of Thomaskantor director of church music in Leipzig, whichwould have been, hmm, in February 20, 1723, and it’s a fantasticpiece. The new opening chorus shows up later, by the way, in theSt. Matthew Passion …”We’ll have to wait another year to see where that idea takes him!thewholenote.com April & May 2025 | 27