Every year Soundstreams has a competition to find a young artist to curate a main stage concert.  This year’s lucky winner is Brad Cherwin, who will need little introduction to readers of this blog, and the concert took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday night.

It was, in many ways, a typical Cherwin programme.  Some works were played in their entirety while others had their individual movements spread through the programme.  The overall theme was “Love and Death” and the programme was divided into four cycles with somewhat enigmatic titles.  Twelve instrumentalists, plus soprano Danika Lorèn and conductor Gregory Oh were used in various combinations.

First up was Shawn Jaeger’s Letters Made with Gold that sets Burns’ “My luve is like a red, red rose”, Wesley’s “And am I born to die?” and the traditional song “My dearest dear” collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians.  It’s a really interesting piece with complex atonal settings infused with blues and maybe even bluegrass; there’s banjo in the mix, and it uses Appalachian vocal styles.  Brilliant technical singing from Danika here and some fine playing.  I think Burns might have liked it (at least after a couple of pints of wine), Wesley I’m not so sure.  Then we got the first parts of the two “interspersed” works.  There was the first movement of Oliver Knussen’s Songs without Voices; another atonal piece for eight instruments, and Matthew Ricketts’ Endless Play I; a more lyrical piece for piano played by Kevin Ahfat.

The second cycle started with more Knussen before Danika appeared to sing her own composition Tell Everyone accompanied by Kevin with some help on the lyre from herself.  This piece sets fragments of Sappho and we heard seven of the ten component songs.  It’s quite varied in mood though always preoccupied with love and loss.  It’s mostly quite gently lyrical but in places it becomes much more insistently declamatory and the last song has the piano used percussively and a kind of chanting.  I’d like to hear it again.

After the break Danika was back with Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs; a piece that manages to pack a huge range of technique into four songs for unaccompanied voice; from spoken word (a very nice reading of Elisabeth Barrett-Browning’s Sonnet 34), through the awkwardly phrased but very effective “O mistress mine” and a sort of finger snapping rap number in “Doves IV”.  Another Knussen movement; this time shimmering and ethereal, closed out the Third Cycle.

The Fourth Cycle began with a striking piece by Tansy Davies; the four part The rule is love.  The drum kit on stage should have been a clue.  “MUSIC BEGAN” had Danika on drums and staccato vocals accompanied by strings, low woodwinds and tuned percussion.  As it moves through the sections it becomes more lyrical before the finale “SPINNING IN INFINITY” which involves some truly weird noises and lots of drums!  More Ricketts and knussen closed things out with the final movement of Songs without Voices especially striking with some melodic interplay between piano and cor anglais adding other instruments along the way to form some complex textures.

It was a very challenging programme but the incredibly multi-talented Danika Lorèn and some of Toronto’s finest chamber musicians made it sing (for some value of “sing”).  It was a very interesting and rewarding evening.

Photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann