There are a few season announcements piling up in the in box….
First up is the always interesting Confluence Concerts series. It’s an eight show line-up:
- September 24th at 3pm and 8pm at 918 Bathurst the awesome trio of Marion Newman, Patricia O’Callaghan and Suba Sankaran have a recital including a new piece by Ian Cusson and André lexis called The Drawing Room and featuring a possibly recognisable trio of sisters.
- October 12th at .7:30pm at St. Thomas’ Church, 383 Huron Street, Cellist Elinor Frey brings a group of virtuoso musicians from Montreal and Europe for music by Luigi Boccherini and contemporaries.
- November 23rd and 24th at 7:30pm at Heliconian Hall, Suba Sankaran curates an 80th birthday concert for master drummer Trichy Sankaran featuring the man himself and many of his students.
- December 5th at 7:30pm at The Atrium at Shaftsbury Place, the walter Unger salon will feature A Confluence Christmas.
- Sometime in February next year at a time and place yet to be determined Marion Newman will present Tłabat’si (Copper Box) featuring Indigenous classical musicians from across Turtle island in a series of concerts, panels and other events.
- April 7th and 8th at 7:30pm at Heliconian Hall, Andrew Downing will present Songs of Syria; a program of the music of Syria, featuring members of the Canadian Arabic Orchestra.
- May 26th and 27th at 7:30pm at Heliconian Hall will see the season finale, All the Diamonds, featuring words and music inspired by the night sky.
t’s still pretty quiet but there are some things still going on:
ings I am aware of.
Today at 4pm in The Music Garden (Harbourfront) there’s a free concert of music by Métis composers performed by Rebecca Cuddy and the Wood and Wire Quartet. Here’s the full program:
Literally everything on my calendar for July is part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival. I 
A couple more things coming up this month.
As we head into summer, as usual, things start to quieten down. I only have five shows in my schedule for the month of June:
So no big launch event to herald the COC’s 2022/23 season announcement, just an email. I’m not surprised because if the season had been announced in front of a large crowd at the Four Seasons Centre there would probably have been a riot. There are six productions on the main stage and each gets only seven or eight performances for a total of 45 which is the lowest since the house opened. Five of them are revivals and there’s no Parsifal. I begin to think that I have more chance of finding the Holy Grail than ever seeing Parsifal in Toronto.
Toronto Summer Music is back for real with the festival running from July 7th to 30th. There are 26 main stage concerts plus the ReGENERATION and shuffle concerts and the community programmes. The main stage line up has now been announced and here’s my curated pick:
It’s not much of a secret that I’m a bit fanatical about new opera. This year Tapestry has two really exciting looking premieres in Toronto. Later in the year there’s Brian Current’s Gould’s Wall which, as an ex climber, I just have to see but first, in fact coming up next month, is RUR: A Torrent of Light by Nicholas Billon and Nicole Lizée. It’s about robots and it’s a collaboration with OCAD U who are developing some way cool technology for the show. There’s now loads of really good preview material about the show on Tapestry’s Youtube channel. So I have two suggestions to make:
operaramblings 