Confluence Concerts have announced a five concert and two special event virtual 2020/21 season with their usual eclectic and enticing mix of repertoire.
September 23rd 2020 – Something to Live for; A Billy Strayhorn Celebration
A detailed look at the story of the great 20th century classical and jazz pianist and composer. Best known for his long-time collaboration with Duke Ellington, Strayhorn composed Take the A Train, Lush Life, Something to Live For, Chelsea Bridge, and A Flower is a Lovesome Thing.
Curated and arranged by Andrew Downing
Featuring Larry Beckwith, Alexa Belgrave, Leighton Harrell, Aline Honzy, Drew Jurecka, Marion Newman, Patricia O’Callaghan, Alex Samaras, Suba Sankaran and more.
Tapestry have another in their outdoor “box concerts” series coming up Friday, August 7th at 2pm at Ehatare Retirement and Nursing Home, 40 Old Kingston Rd, Scarborough. It features tenor Asitha Tennekoon and if you are in the neighbourhood you should be able to find them. The series is aimed at community groups, retirement homes etc and if you are so inclined you can arrange for them to come visit. Details are on the Tapestry website.
Toronto Summer Music have announced their revised “virtual” schedule. Alas most of the vocal music is gone but there is plenty of interesting looking chamber music with, of course, a Beethoven focus. It runs July 16th to August 1st and it’s all free. The full schedule is 
Pretty major announcements from both the COC and the TSO recently; the COC’s reinforced with an on-line Q&A with Alexander Neef last night. The substance of the COC announcement is that the fall season (Parsifal and Marriage of Figaro) is cancelled along with all other in-person performances for the rest of 2020. Parsifal has been rescheduled for the fall season 2022. At this point the rest of the 2020/21 season is still on. Officially at least. However Alexander made it pretty clear that the Four Seasons Centre won’t be reopened until they can sell at least the bulk of the seats which would mean the end of social distancing. I don’t see that happening until a Covid-19 vaccine is generally available and can’t imagine that being soon enough to save the winter season and maybe not the spring season either. Meanwhile the COC is looking at its virtual options.
Sephardic Treasures is a collection of traditional Sephardic songs in less traditional arrangements. The texts (Ladino and Spanish) and melodies are original and drawn from a collection of songs thought to originate in the 12th to 15th centuries. The arrangements, by bassist Alan Lewine, draw on jazz, flamenco and Israeli folk music incorporating instruments like bass, trumpet, flamenco guitar, piano, flute, shofar and percussion to create quite a range of styles that fit the texts well. All of this is grounded in the stylish and idiomatic singing of soprano Ana Maria Ruimonte. It’s fun listening. Some of the songs have that twisted, even gruesome, quality of a lot of medieval songs; husbands who have their wives executed, wives who feed their step children to their husbands etc, but others are very light hearted, like the one about the cat who is so surprised by a proposal of marriage that he falls off the roof and is killed but when they try to bury him in a sardine box the smell revives him!
The Royal Conservatory’s 2020/21 concert season has been announced.. It’s the usual eclectic mix of all kinds of classical music plus jazz and world music spread across the Conservatory’s three performance venues. It looks like the provisional planning is for some kind of social distancing. When that will be possible and how long it might go on is, of course, anybody’s guess but the planning assumes some kind of performances will be possible from October.
The Dora award nominations are in. The most interesting thing is that the COC doesn’t dominate the Opera category this year. In fact Tapestry has most nominations with thirteen. In general, it was really nice to see new “committed” opera dominating the list rather than the usual stuff. Indigenous themes did very well too which is very pleasing. Loads of nominations for Shanawdithit, including Best Performer in a Leading Role for Marion Newman, which pleases me greatly. Good to see FAWN’s Pandora and Soundstreams’ Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállábártnit featuring along with LooseTea’s Singing Only Softly/The Diary of Anne Frank: Operas from the Secret Annex. There was one surprise in the list of COC nominations. I’m actually quite shocked that Speranza Scappucci didn’t get nominated for her conducting of Barber of Seville; a really remarkable performance. And one non-surprise; multiple nominations for Rusalka which might just be the best thing the COC have done in quite a while.
operaramblings 