Saturday evening in Walter Hall saw the conclusion of this year’s Toronto Summer Music with a concert that showcased different parts of the festival programme.  There was the community element.  The Community Choir, with their professional section leads and conductor Jamie Hillman produced very competent versions of Mozart’s Veni Sancte Spiritus and Lydia Adam;s arrangement of the rankin Family’s We Rise Again.  The omnicompetent and omnipresent Rachael Kerr accompanied on piano.

The community chamber programme also contributed  with Fabian-DE’On Fulsom on piano for an arrangement of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, the Allegro from Spohr’s Nonet, Op.31 and the Larghetto from Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds K.452.  It’s intriguing and rather gratifying that TSM can find amateur musicians who, with some mentoring, can produce some pretty fine music making.

Most of the Art of Song programme participants went home a couple of weeks ago but we did get to hear soprano Ella Falinger and Michelle Kim produce a rather good account of Resphigi’s “Egle”.  The festival staff also got a break from moving chairs and making speeches to produce a rather lovely version of Strauss’ Morgen.

And so to the young artists (and their mentors) of the Chamber Music Institute.  Dabin Zoey Yang, Joshua Morris and Michelle Cann produced a spectacular account the first two movements from Dvořák’s “Dumy” trio before Lauren Conroy, Andrew wan, Molly Wise and Kelcey Howell produced, for me, the highlight of the evening; four movements from Ana Sokolović’s Commedia dell’arte.  This is a wonderfully quirky where weird tonalities and a plethora of extended technique take the string quartet to some very weird but satisfying places.  Great skill and playfulness in full measure from the musicians.

We also got excerpts from a Ravel quartet and the Weber clarinet quintet plus a statistical round up from Jonathan Crow.  There’s not been a whole lot to cheer abot statistically on the Toronto arts scene since the pandemic but there was good news here.  Record attendance overall and over 20 sold out performances were highlights.  I’m inclined to credit (beside the hard working staff and performers) a willingness to innovate, to operate on a sensible scale and to show agility and flexibility.  Perhaps TSM shows how to be a mammal in post-Cretaceous world. Dinosaurs take note!

And that’s it until July 11th next year.

Photo credits: Lucky Tang