Staircases is an unusual and interesting show currently being presented at Trinity St. Paul’s by Tafelmusik. The show is the brainchild of Alison Mackay collaborating with baritone Jonathan Woody. Who knew a “simple” set of stairs could carry so many meanings? We are taken from ceremonial staircases at Versailles and the Vatican to the banks of the frozen Thames to the hidden meanings of the Monument to the Great Fire and more to a most surprising conclusion. All of this rooted in the idea of the rock staircase on Mount Parnassus that leads to the home of Apollo and the Muses.
You might have noticed I’ve been expanding my horizons a bit recently. Saturday night was no exception. I was at The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival at the Theatre Centre for a double bill of sketch comedy. I don’t think I’ve seen sketch comedy live since university so I really didn’t know what to expect.
Iconic British countertenor James Bowman passed away last March. On Sunday night at Trinity-St. Pauls the Early Music folks at UoT presented a tribute to the man and his career. It was very well done. Music associated with Bowman; mostly Purcell and Britten, was interspersed with video and personal recollections/testimonials that fully reflected the considerable influence Bowman had on the English music scene and on the more widespread acceptance of the countertenor voice in the classical music world generally. 
Previous concerts from the Happenstancers have typically featured fairly conventional chamber music either arranged or combined in unusual ways; sometimes mixed with more modern/contemporary material. Saturday night’s concert at Redeemer Lutheran was a bit different. Titled Future Pastorale it was built around Claude Vivier’s 1968 work Ojikawa plus the text of Psalm 131 (also used, in French, by Vivier) and text from the “Introduction” to Blake’s Songs of Innocence; “Piping down the valleys wild. Piping songs of pleasant glee” etc with lambs, shepherds and clouds.
operaramblings 