WORLD VIEW Wby Karen Ages hile much of the classical music season is winding down in anticipation of a summer hiatus, the world music community is gearing up for what promises to be an active spring and summer. There are too many events this month to ' discuss in detail, so I will focus on a few while summarizing the rest, this time organizing events by country or type of music (in no particular order). India: Firs.t, congratulations td Kiran Ahluwalia for winning the Juno award for best World Music album of the year. The award is for her latest CD, Beyond Boundaries, which presents Canadian compositions of an ancient Indian genre, the Ghazal: Ghazals are tra: ditionally love poems to whfoh music is added, a 700 year old song form that began in Persia and travelled to India, stylis.tically lying between the classical and popular. Kiran has gone beyond tradition by creating her own musical settings to poems by Canadians of indian and Pakistani background writing in Punjabi and Urdu. She can be heard in a concert of both traditional and original Ghazals on May 9 in the Brigantine Room at Harbourfront. May 9 also marks the beginning of a series of 6 concerts presented by Small World Music as part of the South Asian Heritage Festival. The opening concert will feature some oflndia 's foremost percussionists, including tabla master Zakir Hussain. Other concer~ take place May 13, 20, 21, 28 and 30, and will include female vocalist Subhra·G'uha, sarangi player Dhruba Gosh, a fusion of Indian and Western sounds with L. Shankar & Gingger · Sivamani, mandolin virtuoso U. Srinivas, Toronto mrdangam maestro Trichy Sankaran, vocalist Shahid Ali Khan, and others. Concerts take place at different venues, so please check the daily listings for details; a full cal- . endar of events is available at www .southasianheritagefestival.com On a smaller scale and free of charge, the Don Mills Library presents sarod player and Juno nominee Randev Pandit on May 8. The Raag-Mala Music Socie- 22 ty presents Tejendra Majumdar, sarod, and Subhankar Banerjee, tabla, in concert at the Medical Sciences auditorium, May 22. In a less traditional vein, Toronto contemporary violinist, composer and performance artist Parmela Attariwala can be seen and heard in a unique program at the Distillery Jazz Festival on May 29, along with her colleagues dancers/choreographers Gitanjali Kolanad and Keiko Kitano, and tabla player Ed Hanley. They will present "Piercing Embrace", a work for dancer and violin most recently performed in Chennai, India (Jan 2004), as well as a choreographed version of Robert Rosen's "La" for violin and tabla, a work commissioned for Parmela's first CD, Beauty Enthralled. Africa: No stranger to Toronto audiences, master drummer Frederick Kwasi Dunyo leads Kekeli African Drum & Dance Ensemble in a program of traditional works from. Ghana, May 16th in the Distillery's Cannery Building. Kwasi, who obtained Canadian citizenship a couple of years ago, has been active as a teacher and performer on this side of the globe for over ten years. He teaches at U of T's Faculty of Music, the RCM, Worlds of Music, and gives workshops across North America. Kekeli, his performing ensemble, is made up of enthusiastic professional and amateur musicians and dancers (including yours truly). Harbourfront's Milk International Children's Festival presents "Sunjata", combining West African acrobatics, dancing and drumming on May 28. At the Glenn Gould Studio on May 29, master of the African "thumb piano" Achilla Orru performs with Baana Afrique. South Africa's Polokwane Choral Society kicks off its Canadian tour (June 6-29), with a church service at Holy Trinity (behind the Eaton Centre), June 6, and concerts in Stratford, June·7. For full details and itinerary, see www.fosapa.ca. This adult community choir sings in most of South Africa's 11 official languages with a repertoire ranging from tribal songs to gospel and traditions from around the world. Jewish: May 13 at the Lula Lounge, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band celebrates the release of its music video, based on the song Shekhina: Cut from the Same Cloth (music by David Buchbinder, lyrics by Dave Wall, Kyo Maclear and Roula Said). Shekhina (in Judaism, the divine presence) is sung in English, Yiddish and Arabic. The Toronto Jewish Folk Choir presents its 78th annual spring concert, with guests Beyond the Pale, on May 16 at Lawrence Park Collegiate. Featured is the work Benyomin der driter by Max Helfman, with orchestration for six musicians, as well as songs in Yiddish, Hebrew, Judeo-Span~ ish, Russian and English. Shaatei Shornayim Congregation celebrates Kiran Ahluwalia receives Jww award Yorn Yerushalayim CARAS/JPttorn !Ne· (Jerusalem Day) ·with a concert May 19 featuring four World Music Chorus, Ghanaian world-renowned cantors in a pro- drumming, Taiko drumming, Bragram of Cantorial, Hebrew, Has- zilian Samba and Flamenco Guisidic and other musical genres. Can-' tar. Not to be missed, David Buchtors Yaakov Motzen and Shlomo binder's Shururri Burum Jazz Simcha Sufrin of Shaarei Shomay- Circus is back by popular demand im, and Naftali Herstik and Colin at the Distillery Jazz Festival on Schachat of Jerusalem will be ac- May 21. Last year's show featured companied by pianist cantor Dan- an eclectic band, a former Cirque iel Gildar of Philadelphia and the du Soleil hoop artist,, modem danc Shaarei Shomayimchoir. ers and an aerial ribbon artist who China: The Beaver Valley stole the show. I suggest booking Concert Society presents Vancouc tickets in advance. For more inforver's Orchid Ensemble in a pro- mation on the festival, which includes gram of Chinese and Persian mu- many world music related groups~ sic, May 8 in Thornbury. St. Tim- visit www.distilleryjazz.com. othy's Church presents the George Another Buchbinder presenta Gao Ensemble, in a concert fea- tioil, Feast of the East continues turing the erhu, May 29. its series of Wednesday evening Turkey: May 9 at the Music dance, dinner & concerts at the Gallery, the series Master Musi- Lula Lounge with a show titled cians of the East features a con- "Imagine the Sound of Peace", with cert of traditional Sufi music, per- Arabic ensemble Medina, and The fqrmed by vocalist Janis Orenstein Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, May and performers of traditional instru- 26. And finally, drumming enthuments. May 22 at U of T's Hart siasts should not miss the annual House Theatre, the Anatolian Folk Muhtadi International Drum Dancers present A Night of Turk- piing Festival which takes place ish Dance & Music. again at Queen's Park, June 5 & Miscellaneous: The Royal 6. It's free and runs noon to 8pm; Ontario Museum continues its ·visit www.muhtadi.com. free Friday night series May 7-June 4 with music from Korea, South Please consP'" .1e daily listings for Asia, Japan, and international details on alt of the above. If you drumming. The Royal Conserva- are a world music presenter or know tory of Music presents a show- of . events coming up, contact case concert of participants in its worldmusic@thewholenote.com. World Music Centre, May 12 . New this year, the Centre (through. Karen Ages is a freelance oboist who the RCM Community School) of- has also been a member of several fers instruction .to teenagers and world music ensembles. She can be adultsinavarietyofmusicaltradi- reached at 416-323-2232 or tions from around the world. The worldmusic@thewholenote.com concert will feature Game!an, a WWW. THEWHOL ENOTE.COM M AY 1 - JUN E 7 2004
JAZZ NOTES by Jim Galloway May-poll I n late April the TD Canada Trust Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival line-up was announced and a new era began. Government legislation had made tobacco sponsorship a thing of the past, but when the smoke cleared, out of the ashes, like a knight in shining green armour, TD Canada Trust emerged as a new sponsor of jazz. Butt out - bank in. And so, year 18 of the festival is in place, the headliners have been announced - Juno winners, Grammy winners - and some of the most famous names in jazz will roll into town, giving the event its "star quality" . The big names are a necessary component of the Festival because the numbers game plays an important role in sponsored events. There has to be a return for the buck. Some level of recognition is part and parcel of any successful financial investment. Why else would 'a sponsor, be it a bank, a car company or any other funding body, give thousands of dollars to anything? There are, to be sure, important elements of community involvement, of giving something back to society; and the return is the identification of the product, the institution, the government body in the eyes of that community. What follows may make for somewhat drier reading than usual for my monthly piece, but I hope you find it of some·interest. In 2003, Enigma Research Corporation conducted a survey of major events in Ontario and I'm going to quote some of the final report as it relates to the jazz festival. "The data collected was inputted into the Tourism Regional Economic Impact Model (TREIM), provided by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. This established model is used regularly by researchers at the Ministry to estimate economic impact of tourism. The model converted tourism expenditures into economic impact data, jobs created, and taxes generated." "Toronto Downtown Jazz attracted 628, 700 attendees in 2003, including 4 71,500 local residents and 157 ,200 visitors from outside Toronto. Among the 157 ,200 nonlocal attendees, the average visitor spent 0 per·person in Toronto on products and services. " "This total spending figure was entered into the TREIM model and the output calculated that the economic impact of Toronto Downtown Jazz on Toronto was ,403,000. The breakdown included ,454,000 in direct economic impact to "front line" businesses, ,103,000 of indirect impact, and ,846,000 of "induced" impact. ,514,000 of the ,403 ,000 economic impact went towards salaries and wages in Toronto, which created the equivalent of 541 full-year jobs. In addition, expenditures by nonlocals at Toronto Downtown Jazz resulted' in a total of ,336,000 tax revenue for all three levels of government, including ,064,000 in federal tax, ,228,000 for the province, and ,044,000 in municipal taxes." End of the dry spell. The figures are quite staggering, but don't get the wrong impression - the dollars listed above go to the community and government coffers - not to the Festival which has to beat the bushes for funding! A secondary objective of the study was to question the general population regarding their awareness of major Ontario events and factors which would make tbem more likely to travel to events taking place in Ontario. In total, 4000 respondents were interviewed in three separate telephone surveys conducted in each of Ontario, Canada, and the United States. Overall, 56 % of non-locals at Toronto Downtown Jazz indicated that the event "very much enhanced" their image of the region. Helping to enhance that image, this year Oscar Peterson, George Ben- · son, Wynton Marsalis, Michel Camilo and Oliver Jones are among the names guaranteed to sell tickets. But in some respects the soul of the Festival is found in the less heralded performances that take place every year. CONTINUES NEXT PAGE WYCHWOOD PARK ARTISTS STAR AT DISTILLERY JAZZ.FESTIVAL [)ec Kave Iborneka .; Jav111z Bee's Rov;il J' cUv Orchestra ,, , Sandra c:aldvvell Saturday May 22 Sunday May 23 Sunday May 30 1:30PM 9:00PM 1:00PM Saturday May 22 Sunday May 23 11:30PM MIDNIGHT Saturday May 22 Monday May 24 8:30PM 4:00PM www.\vychwoodparkproductions.cotn wychwood park PRODUCTIONS www~disti11c:rv1azz.com ',I C" M AY 1 - JUNE 7 2004 WWW. THEWHOLENOTE.COM 23
