Just another Saturday in Toronto?  Not really.  I was at two shows/events a few blocks apart; one in the morning, one in the evening, and the experiences were very different.  In the morning I was at Roy Thomson Hall for a “conducting masterclass” under the auspices of the Women in Musical Leadership programme.  I don’t think such events are at all common and it was certainly a first for me.  The set up was that four young women conductors (Maria Fuller, Jennifer Tung, Naomi Woo and Juliane Gallant) got to rehearse the TSO in standard repertoire with principal conductor Gustavo Gimeno providing feedback and suggestions.  Two of the ladies worked on Brahms’ First Symphony and the other two on Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.

All these ladies have quite a lot of conducting experience but a lot of it is with students, scratch orchestras for indie opera shows and the like.  The TSO is a different animal.  It’s a bit like putting someone in a Ferrari on a race track rather than asking them to navigate a Chevy Volt through downtown traffic and so it was fascinating to watch the different approaches.  What do I think I learned?

• You need a ton of confidence (or the appearance of it) to “boss” an elite orchestra, all of whom are top musicians.  This probably isn’t made any easier when the teacher keeps stopping you to suggest stuff, though of course that’s what he’s there for.

• Have a clear vision for the music and be able to communicate it.  As Gimeno demonstrated early on the TSO can play this stuff without a conductor (and cynics would say that for years they did!).  As conductor, you need to be seen to add value.
• Concentrate on the stuff that matters.  The orchestra is only going to remember so much.
• Make sure every gesture is deliberate and has meaning.  This seems to be a bit of an obsession of Gimeno’s and it’s notable that when he conducts he is absolutely stationary from about the nipples down.  One doesn’t need to do an interpretive dance on the podium!
• Eye contact, eye contact, eye contact (and not just with the violins).

All in all it was very educational and great fun and an excellent addition to Tapestry’s WiML programme.

And it was at 10 am on a Saturday morning and King Street was tranquil, traffic was tolerable and the streetcar was not very full at all.

And so to the evening when I was back in much the same neighbourhood for the first of New Music Concerts’ MAKEWAY concert for early career creators at St. George by the Grange.  Besides the geographical proximity there was another connection.  Half the programme was conducted by Maria Fuller.

There were four, unusual and very different works in the lineup.  First up was Kalaisan Kalaichelvan’s Ahata:Anahata for eight cellos.  Yep, eight cellos.  The piece is designed to evoke the deliberate and accidental soundscapes of Chennai and it uses the various ways that cellos can produce sound in a very interesting and engaging way.  A cool concept brought off rather well.

The main reason I was there came next with scenes from Rebecca Grey’s WIP opera, Bus Opera.  I saw this in workshop at the CMC a few weeks ago and liked it a lot.  It’s growing on me too.  It’s weird and disturbing (a bit like Rebecca… or me really).  It intersperses dream sequences with the slightly surreal “reality” of long distance bus travel.  The dream sequences really do evoke those disorienting fragmentary dreams that happen when you drop off fitfully on a bus, a plane or a train.  Great performances again from all concerned with Maria conducting this time.  I really want to see this in final form.

Rashaan Allwood’s piece(s) Deep Sea Sand was next.  This actually consists of two separately composed pieces played together with separate conductors!  One is a brass quintet and the other is scored for soprano, violin and piano.  The inspiration is the deep sea coral off Canada’s coasts and the damage done to it by human sea bed activity such as trawling.  Both music and text are fragmentary to evoke that destruction.  It’s an evocative and compelling piece.

The final piece was a string octet by Florence Tremblay called Récréation which celebrates games for their own sake as rejuvenators.  I totally get this.  Playing rugby got me through a lot of work related stress and I think this is, at least in part, what Florence is getting at in this playful piece.

Besides the actual music making there was an informative introductory talk with all four composers MC’d by Brian Current (who also conducted the bits Maria didn’t) with his customary skill.  I believe new music is important and, equally, so are new musical voices so I think MAKEWAY is a brilliant idea.  I hope it has legs.  And so a big thank you from me to Brian and Maria, the composers and all the singers and instrumentalists who performed last night.

So we emerged from the church grounds at elevenish into Toronto’s clubland on a Saturday night.  So different from the morning.  Noisy, chaotic traffic (what kind of nutter tries to drive downtown on a Saturday night?), marijuana smoke everywhere and the crowded streetcar fighting the (mostly illegal) King Street traffic.  Just another Saturday in Toronto.