Last night saw the first of two performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Trinity-St. Paul’s. It was a collaboration between the UoT Schola Cantorum and the Theatre of Early Music though where one starts and the other ends I’m none too sure! Before the Purcell we got a fine performance of an early solo violin piece; Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s Passacaglia in G Minor played by Adrian Butterfield.
Slow Rise Music (Tristan Zaba and McKenzie Warriner) presented a concert called here be sirens on Saturday night at the Tranzac. Apparently it’s their third concert but they are new to me and I’m really happy to find a new collaboration of young musicians putting on quite experimental shows of the kind I saw last night. It’s something that was common enough before the plague but has been slow making a comeback.
To Redeemer Lutheran Church last night for the first of two Friday evening concerts in the West End Micro Music Festival. This one was an exploration of baroque music and its derivatives though to quote co-curator Brad Cherwin, “What is baroque music? I don’t even know anymore”. Amen to that.
The first section of the programme consisted of three pieces for strings and harpsichord conducted by Simon Rivard run together as one. I found Linda Catlin Smith’s Sinfonia a bit formless and hard to get into especially when contrasted with the “attack” of the Vivaldi pieces (Sinfonia RV 169 and Concerto for Four Violins RV 580). Excellent playing though and I did like the Vivaldi.
Nahre Sol claims that all her music derives from the baroque; Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau. Who am I to argue? I can hear those influences but also others. Minimalism for sure, but where is that not an influence today? Also jazz, but not, as perhaps more typical, “the blues”. It’s more a cool jazz, sort of like John Dankworth. It flirts with schmaltz but recoils (in horror?) just when you think the saccharometer is going to go off the scale. It was interesting to hear it come together especially in the pieces scored for keyboards (variously piano, electronics, harpsichord with Sol often playing two at once), bass (both double and electric played by Ben Finley), with John Lee on Korean percussion. This section consisted of five pieces; three by Sol, one by Finley, one a collaboration. Tides (Sol) and Unexpected Turn (Finley) set the tone but it was the collab; Leaping Lightly and Sol’s Roundabout Bach that caught my attention most. They both use percussion in quite a visceral way with echoes of military march and tribal dance spiking the jazz/baroque soundscape to dramatic effect.
Soundstreams’ concert on Friday evening in the new TD Music Hall at Massey Hall was inspired by the Rothko Chapel in Houstion, Texas. It featured two works; Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, commissioned for the opening of the chapel, and Cecilia Livingston’s mark, commissioned for Friday’s concert. Both featured chorus (Soundstreams Choir 21), viola (Steven Dann), celesta (Gregory Oh) and percussion (Ryan Scott). mark also featured baritone Alex Samaras). Both were staged by Tim Albery with lighting by Siobhán Sleath and projections by Cameron Davis.
Belle Cao
VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert opened their 50th anniversary season at the Jane Mallett Theatre with the first of three Verdi rarities. Un giorno di regno was Verdi’s second opera and it premiered at La Scala in 1840 to no great acclaim. It’s a curiously old fashioned piece for its time. Perhaps the fact that it sets a libretto written over twenty years earlier accounts for some of that. It’s very much a bel canto work. It’s sort of a comedy though it’s not actually all that funny; being largely concerned with machinations about who marries whom played around a somewhat implausible impersonation of the King of Poland by a minor French aristocrat. It’s no sillier than many Donizetti operas but perhaps by 1840 that formula was wearing rather thin. Continue reading
Seven years ago Tapestry Opera premiered Gareth Williams and Anna Chatterton’s Rocking Horse Winner at the Berkeley Street Theatre. Last night they opened an eight show re-run at Crow’s Theatre, once again directed by Michael Mori. There are lots of similarities and a some differences between the productions and I’m going to concentrate on the latter so if you aren’t familiar with the piece you might want to read my 2016 review.
There’s quite a lot to like in Opera Atelier’s current production of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice currently running at the Elgin Theatre. It’s elegant and refined with some pretty good singing but maybe it’s a bit too refined. It’s at its best in things like “The Dance of the Blessed Spirits” where there’s an effective pas de deux danced in pointe shoes though I’m not sure it was really necessary to use enough “smoke” to fill the entire auditorium! Unfortunately, the production doesn’t make much of the potentially more dramatic moments. Orphée’s confrontation with the Guardians of Hell is pretty low key. The demons are just dancers in slightly stripey body stockings and there’s no sense of menace. It’s all a bit Robert Wilson. Until the ending, which suddenly switches aesthetic with glitter and streamers and dancers with a Scrabble set.
I attended the second of two performances of their season opener by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Roy Thomson Hall last night. It was an enjoyable and well constructed programme. It opened with two pieces by composer in residence Tracy Wong. Patah – Tumbuh (Broken – Renewed), for choir and children’s choir (Toronto Children’s Chorus) riffs off Malaysian proverbs and gamelan. It’s an upbeat, rhythmic piece that got a really nice performance, especially from the children. Then they got their own place in the sun for a medley of Malaysian folksongs; which was also fun. Was this the first time Malaysian music has been performed at Roy Thomson?
Toronto Operetta Theatre opened a run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance at the Jane Mallett Theatre last night.I think it’s got everything one could expect from a modest budget G&S production and maybe a bit more. Bill Silva-Marin’s production is energetic with a lot of stomping, marching and mincing going on which makes the small stage (even smaller than usual as the band is on stage) look lively and busy. The chorus is good and sings idiomatically. The principals also appear to understand the genre and there’s some good acting and good, at times excellent, singing.
The Happenstancers latest concert We’re Late! happenstanced on Saturday evening at Redeemer Lutheran. It was a typical Happenstancers sort of event with chamber music works for various forces split up into their movements with the components then rearranged to make an interesting line up.
Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle provided the opening piece which also provided the title for the concert as a whole. It’s a setting of Auden for soprano and chamber ensemble and begins “Clocks cannot tell our time of day”. Which was pretty much the theme for the evening. This was followed by Toshi Ichiyangi’s Music for Electric Metronomes which had the whole ensemble banging things rhythmically and making stylsed gestures. Then came the first of three parts of rather a good musical joke; John Cage’s 4’33” arranged into three movements for different forces. which as might be expected cropped up at intervals during the show. For the record the movements were scored for piano and percussion, conductor and oboe and percussion.
